Moral Progress?

Day 1: Introductory thoughts about what this class is about:

"Moral Progress"?

• What is it?
• Does it ever happen?
• How does it happen?
• What prevents or discourages it from happening?
  

Moral Progress (improvement, getting better, getting closer to the moral truth about what should be done and how things ought to be) regarding:

1. thinking, reasoning, arguing, debating
2. feelings and attitudes
3. actions, behavior, policies

Three "logical skills":

1. attending to the meaning(s) of unclear terms: what do you mean?
   
2. making claims precise regarding number or quantity: all or some (if some, then which ones?)?
3. identifying missing unstated premises, unstated assumptions that need to be identifed so the pattern of reasoning is totally clear: making the argument logically valid.

The 3 examples below were used to illustrate the importance of these three skills for identifying and evaluating arguments.