Talk:Moral progress

Neutrality dispute
I'm not sure that this article is neutral as it doesn't take into account that people disagree on what the idea of moral progress is. I'd also like to put some of the moral circle expansion content in a separate article, but wanted to start a discussion about this first to see how people think it can be fixed. Some specific examples of statements that I think violate NPOV:

- The Examples section gives undue weight to the views of Allen Buchanan

- The third paragraph of the Aspects section (arguments against the idea of moral progress and arguments against its measurement) is not prominent enough/buried under a somewhat inaccurate heading

- The 2nd paragraph of Aspects is undercut by the third paragraph

I'm not really sure how to fix all this but wanted to bring it to others' attention Mcavoybickford (talk) 16:19, 4 August 2022 (UTC)


 * The article can be improved and expanded. I am not sure if the neutrality issues are severe. Are Buchanan's views controversial? Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 19:17, 4 August 2022 (UTC)
 * I don't know if Buchanan's views are especially controversial, but there are many thinkers working on this subject, and it would be great if the article could include work from more thinkers, although has made a good start. For example, the following passage that I recently read lists some thinkers that are not mentioned in this article (see the reference below for full citations): "Group-level or society-level change is a broad phenomenon that typically involves changes in beliefs, attitudes, behaviours, as well as institutions. Change of this sort is discussed, among others, in the philosophical literature on moral progress (Buchanan and Powell 2018; Eriksen 2020; Hermann 2017, 2019; Jaeggi 2018; Kitcher 2011, 2021; Klenk and Sauer 2021; Moody-Adams 1999; Smyth 2020; Singer 2011; see Sauer et al. 2021 for an overview). Yet, while the concept of moral progress is characterized by a positive evaluation of change, recent literature on moral revolutions tends to avoid this evaluation (e.g. Baker 2019; Eriksen 2020)."
 * There is a critical discussion of Buchanan's book written with Russell Powell, The Evolution of Moral Progress: A Biocultural Theory (2018), in the symposium on moral progress in Analyse & Kritik 41(2), 2019. Biogeographist (talk) 19:15, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
 * @Biogeographist Thanks for commenting here and pinging me. As I said, the article can be expanded - it is just C-class right now and obviously there is much more to be written, up to and including, as you note, discussing view sand thoughts of other scholars. I'd encourage you to add this information to the article, at least by citing sources in the "further reading" section. I'll also remove the NPOV template, as there is no argument here that the article is not neutral (not being comprehensive is not the same as not being neutral). Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 03:48, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Well, NPOV "means representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic". The references I mentioned suggest that not all significant views on the subject are in the article, or as  said, that it gives undue weight to the views of Buchanan. I don't know whether the problem is severe enough to require the NPOV tag, but it seems plausible that NPOV is indeed an issue. Biogeographist (talk) 04:06, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
 * @Biogeographist Perhaps it's wiki-subjective stuff. I tend to think NPOV tag is for major issues. Here, perhaps Undue weight could be added, but even that IMHO suggests bias, whereas what we have here is just lack of comprehensivness. Maybe Missing information? But again, this article is assessed as C-class and it's assumed C-class articles are just not comprehensive (see WP:ASSESS: "The article is substantial but is still missing important content or contains much irrelevant material... Considerable editing is needed to close gaps in content"). And we don't go around tagging all C-class or weaker articles with such tags just b/c they are incomplete. To conclude my point, there's a difference between article that is incomplete (that's normal) and article that is biased (that requires an NPOV tag). A biased article would unduly stress Buchanan's views, likely with WP:PEACOCK wording, to create the impression that they are the most important scholar in the field. I don't think this is the case here? PS. Although I agree this article is mostly about Buchanan's views, but as the primary writer of this, I would hasten to explain that my goal was to just summarize some research that I found, instead of providing a comprehensive treatment; I'd be totally fine with seeing this article expanded to present opinions of other scholars and to minimize it's focus on Buchanan. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 06:08, 2 February 2023 (UTC)