One approach of embracing this uncertainty is to undertake a stance of axiological open-mindedness towards the long run. We can get a way of what this would possibly entail by contemplating the way it works right this moment.
In his guide, The Geography of Values, Owen Flanagan explores the ethical variations between cultures and argues that we are able to study from this variety. As an instance, he factors out that many Western cultures are wedded to an ethic of individualism whereas Buddhist cultures reject that ideology, arguing that fixation on the self and its flourishing is usually a supply of struggling and frustration. At first, these worth methods might sound alien to one another, however they each maintain significant methods of life. What’s extra, folks from these cultures usually experiment with parts of each. Flanagan argues that there are sometimes good causes for them to take action and means that we stay keen to experiment with completely different ethical views.
Where Flanagan focuses on geographical ethical variety, we are able to give attention to temporal ethical variety. In different phrases, we are able to strategy the ethical future with a level of curiosity and pleasure, neither as zealots selling change nor reactionaries opposing it, however as vacationers keen to experiment with it.
How can we do that if we don’t know what the long run holds? Two methods current themselves. First, we are able to keep in mind the oft-quoted line from William Gibson: The future is already right here, it’s simply erratically distributed. Scattered round our world right this moment, maybe in rising subcultures and the imaginations of science fiction authors, are the seeds of future moralities. If we’re keen to discover them, we are able to get a way of the place we is likely to be headed.
Second, we are able to design our social establishments in order that they allow better normative flexibility. One approach to do that can be to make use of summary requirements—reasonably than exact guidelines—when legislating for the long run. For instance, we are able to create legal guidelines that target transportation and communication generally, reasonably than on specific modes of transportation and communication, similar to the auto and cellphone. Another choice can be to allow simple modification of any formal guidelines (legal guidelines, regulatory codes, or tips) to streamline adaptation.
More essential than both, nonetheless, can be adopting a extra experimentalist strategy to social morality. Instead of simply ready to see what’s going to occur, we should always actively create areas (maybe we might name them “moral sandboxes”) for subcultures to check the ethical waters with out committing a complete society to a brand new ethical code. For occasion, there are rising technological developments in brain-to-brain communication which may permit folks to really feel what different folks really feel, see what they will see, or share their ideas. To some, this nascent know-how is terrifying, an assault on our ethic of individualism, and a step towards a Borg-like society. To others, it’s thrilling, holding up the potential for better intimacy, empathy, and collaborative problem-solving. Instead of committing to both of those views proper now, we might facilitate managed and punctiliously noticed experimentation to discover the consequences of this know-how on current values, similar to autonomy, self-control, intimacy, and empathy.
There are, after all, limits to what we should always experiment with. The Nazis had been ethical revolutionaries, however not in a great way. We can’t be so open-minded that we lose all conscience. There are, maybe, some values that ought to stay foundational, however there’s a steadiness to be struck between the extremes of progressivism and conservatism.
Source: www.wired.com