Paul Rehren

The literature on moral progress is full of (supposed) real-life examples of moral progress. These examples have two distinct components: one normative and one descriptive. The former picks out the moral criteria by which an episode of change counts as morally progressive; the latter picks out the unit that has undergone progress and the period of time over which that progress has occurred. While there is general agreement that nailing down the normative component of moral progress poses a substantial challenge, potential problems with the descriptive component have received far less attention and have not thus far been systematically addressed. In this paper, we aim to change this. We describe in detail a series of problems that can arise when selecting the unit(s) and time period of one’s progress claims and show how they can undermine the soundness of moral progress examples. We also sketch and evaluate potential solutions to these problems to improve the methodology of research on moral progress.

Many philosophers agree that philosophical inquiry has become more reliant on scientific research in recent decades. Some go so far as to speak of a methodological revolution. However, there is almost no systematic evidence about when, where and in what way these changes took place—if indeed, they did. To change this, we made use of citation analysis. We collected a large corpus of 9954 articles published in three high-profile generalist philosophy journals (_Noûs_; _Philosophical Studies_; _Synthese_) since 1971. We then extracted reference lists from these articles and associated references to articles with their academic discipline(s) based on the publication they appeared in. We find that the overall proportions of articles from the sciences broadly understood and of articles from disciplines that primarily output empirical research referenced in these journals has seen little change over the last 50 years. At the same time, we also find that there have been major changes with respect to the specific disciplines philosophers cite from: disciplines that focus on the (empirical) study of human thought and behaviour have gained in importance, while the importance of the formal and physical sciences has been declining. We discuss the implications of our findings, and address potential criticisms and limitations of our research and the conclusions we draw from it.

In recent years, a number of philosophers and social scientists have argued in favor of or against retributive theories of criminal punishment based on empirical findings about folk punitive judgment and decision-making. In this paper, we will argue that these arguments do not succeed. We will raise two objections. First, there are serious gaps between the empirical findings these authors cite and the descriptive premises these findings are meant to support. Second, in many cases, the existing research does not support the specific empirical claims that feature in these arguments. Specifically, a large part of the existing psychological research and some philosophers claim that people are mainly driven by retributive motives. We will show that a large portion of the empirical research is not designed in a way to specifically test this claim, and to the extent that some studies are able to investigate this claim, we show that the evidence suggests that people are motivated by a variety of concerns, including consequentialist motives. We discuss possible responses and implications for the philosophy of criminal punishment, and provide suggestions for improved study designs.

An important question about moral progress is what causes it. One of the most popular proposed mechanisms is moral reasoning: moral progress often happens because lots of people reason their way to improved moral beliefs. Authors who defend moral reasoning as a cause of moral progress have relied on two broad lines of argument: the general and the specific line. The general line presents evidence that moral reasoning is in general a powerful mechanism of moral belief change, while the specific line tries to establish that moral reasoning can explain specific historical examples of moral progress. In this paper, we examine these lines in detail, using Kumar and Campbell’s (2022, A Better Ape: The Evolution of the Moral Mind and How It Made Us Human. Oxford University Press) model of rational moral progress to sharpen our focus. For each line, we explain the empirical assumptions it makes; we then argue that the available evidence supports none of these assumptions. We conclude that at this point, we have no idea if moral reasoning causes moral progress.

Implicit cognition is cognition that happens automatically and (typically) non-consciously. In moral psychology, implicit cognition is almost always understood in terms of dual process models of moral judgment. In this chapter, we address the question whether implicit moral judgment is usefully cashed out in terms of automatic (“type 1”) processes, and what the limitations of this approach are. Our chapter has six sections. In (1), we provide a brief overview of dual process models of domain-general (moral and non-moral) cognition. (2) reviews a recent debate regarding the soundness of dual process models to begin with. Section (3) is about dual process accounts of moral judgment specifically. The last three sections then survey attempts to go beyond a simplistic automatic/controlled (“type 2”) distinction in conceptualizing implicit moral cognition. Recently, three main theoretical approaches have emerged, which all revolve around the questions whether type 2 processing can successfully penetrate implicit moral cognition. First, rational learning approaches highlight how episodes of moral learning can feed back into and shape our moral intuitions (4). Second, so-called triple process models suggest that automatic cognitive outputs can under certain circumstances be reined in by reflective cognition (5). Finally, recent evidence shows that moral reasoning is not as impotent as earlier developments in empirical moral psychology claimed to demonstrate (6).

Many believe that moral education can cause moral progress. At first glance, this makes sense. A major goal of moral education is the improvement of the moral beliefs, values and behaviors of young people. Most would also consider all of these improvements to be important instances of moral progress. Moreover, moral education is a form of social learning, and there are good reasons to think that social learning processes shape episodes of progressive moral change. Despite this, we argue that instead of being a cause of moral change, the main effect of moral education is often to provide stability or continuity. In addition, we will argue that even when the conditions are right for moral education to contribute to moral change, it is far from clear that the resulting changes will always, or even most of the time, end up being progressive.

Psychologists and philosophers often work hand in hand to investigate many aspects of moral cognition. In this paper, we want to highlight one aspect that to date has been relatively neglected: the stability of moral judgment over time. After explaining why philosophers and psychologists should consider stability and then surveying previous research, we will present the results of an original three-wave longitudinal study. We asked participants to make judgments about the same acts in a series of sacrificial dilemmas three times, 6–8 days apart. In addition to investigating the stability of our participants’ ratings over time, we also explored some potential explanations for instability. To end, we will discuss these and other potential psychological sources of moral stability (or instability) and highlight possible philosophical implications of our findings.

Several philosophers and psychologists have argued that evidence of moral framing effects shows that many of our moral judgments are unreliable. However, all previous empirical work on moral framing effects has used between-subject experimental designs. We argue that between-subject designs alone do not allow us to accurately estimate the extent of moral framing effects or to properly evaluate the case from framing effects against the reliability of our moral judgments. To do better, we report results of our new within-subject study on four types of moral framing effects, and we discuss the implications of our findings for the reliability of moral judgments. Overall, our results strengthen the evidence from moral framing effects against the reliability of some of our moral judgments.

Societies change over time. Chattel slavery and foot‐binding have been abolished, democracy has become increasingly widespread, gay rights have become established in some countries, and the animal rights movement continues to gain momentum. Do these changes count as moral progress? Is there such a thing? If so, how should we understand it? These questions have been receiving increasing attention from philosophers, psychologists, biologists, and sociologists in recent decades. This survey provides a systematic account of recent developments in the understanding of moral progress. We outline the concept of moral progress and describe the different types of moral progress identified in the literature. We review the normative criteria that have been used in judging whether various developments count as morally progressive or not. We discuss the prospects of moral progress in the face of challenges that claim that moral progress is not psychologically possible for human beings, and we explore the metaethical implications of moral progress.