[card_zero]

I'm totally down with the arrogant "morality is objective" viewpoint. However, I don't think it can be reasoned from first principles: I think "from first principles" gives a bad smell to almost any reasoning. I see knowledge as web-like in structure, not hierarchical, and I see moral ideas as belonging to a separate realm where they're supported by other moral ideas. (Consider that "gain" entails values, which are moral.) Some of these ideas are basal urges, but that doesn't make them superior. So, I can't agree with making historical figures at fault for their failure to arrive at a present-day state of morality by figuring everything out from first principles, because I do think it's something the culture does, gradually, as a group effort, with individuals considered "bad" only for failing to be up to speed by the standard of the time.

Incidentally, if they are to be blamed for failing to arrive at future morality by using the first-principle building blocks you suppose it to be made from, then so are we, and so are all future people, since morality is open-ended and there's always more to learn. We're all terribly guilty for not belonging to the infinitely far future, apparently.

Well, I suppose you can say "that whole society, in that place at that time, went down a morally wrong-headed path". I'm not very knowledgeable about Aztecs, for instance, but I believe they had some nasty traditions, as well as a cyclic world-view. Yet there must have been good Aztecs. (Even objectively, we have to consider things in context.)

[anonymous908213]

If we were to leap 300 years into the future, I don't think it'd be very surprising what they look down on us for, presuming they've advanced in a logic-oriented direction and not, say, a relapse into purely religious doctrine, which is by no means a given to occur. We will certainly be condemned, at minimum, for our utterly inhumane treatment of animals, for our relentless exhaustion and destruction of natural resources, for our abuse of the scientific method to proclaim things as factual with studies that can't actually be replicated, and for much more.

Perhaps it would be surprising to some people who haven't thought much about it that we will likely be viewed poorly for wasting non-replenishable helium, necessary for advanced medical technology, on party balloons. But I don't think there is anything we do that we can't currently reason about being considered immoral for. I have absolutely zero doubt that George Washington would not be surprised to leap to 2025 and see someone condemning him for his slave ownership. There is nothing about living in the 1700s that would prevent him from reasoning that what he did was immoral, and indeed, many people in the 1700s did reason that.

Cultural adoption of morality moves significantly slower than reason about morality. This is because cultural adoption requires action. Humans will behave immorally even if they know their actions are immoral, for their own benefit. To counteract this requires coordinated group effort, which is an extremely slow process because, for example, convincing people that it's worth them risking death in a bloody war to stop other people from owning slaves, when they are not themselves ever at risk of being treated as a slave, is a very challenging task. That one participates in selfish, immoral actions for one's own benefit because one's society does not yet coerce one through collective threat of violence to behave morally does not absolve one of one's actions, which can already be reasoned through even if the collective will to enforce it does not yet exist.

Cultural adoption can also diverge from reason about morality completely, of course. This is because selfish people with power can use their power to enforce immoral values like absolute service to themselves, for their own benefit. If a society does not collectively overcome powerful individuals acting selfishly, then the culture's apparent morality will be warped in the service of what benefits a specific individual at the greater expense of society. However, even in such a state, people can and do reason about morality. Human history is a long, long tale of people defying immoral abuse of authority.