Some of what used to be regarded as perfectly normal we now look upon as morally wrong - even deeply, horribly, wrong. Will future generations think similarly about attitudes and practices of our own times? And can we foresee which of these they will, in their turn, condemn? Kwame Anthony Appiah proposes three signs indicating that a present practice may come to be the subject of future condemnation. They are: (1) that the moral arguments against it are already well known; (2) that its defenders have no counter-arguments but fall back on 'tradition, human nature or necessity'; (3) that they also affect ignorance of the evils involved in the practice in question, looking away from what they prefer not to see. On this basis, Appiah picks out the US prison system, industrial meat production, the treatment of old people and environmental recklessness as things for which future generations will condemn us.
I won't quarrel with these particular forecasts of his; but I want to register four misgivings about the argument by which Appiah generates them. First, it seems to take the inevitability of moral progress for granted. A future in which attitudes and practices had regressed morally from the standards Appiah approves (and takes his readers to approve) might not condemn, just for example, cruelty to animals. Though, like Appiah, I too look forward to further moral progress, and indeed think there are powerful reasons to expect it, I don't think it can be taken for granted. And I don't think Appiah himself thinks it can be taken for granted. In his concluding line there is the implication that moral progress is something we have to strive for, and this must surely allow the possibility that progress doesn't happen of itself. We also know from historical experience that there can be calamitous setbacks.
Second, though Appiah sets this up as being an exercise in anticipation ('Is there a way to guess etc?'), what he says about each of the four issues on which he carries out the exercise indicates that for him the moral questions are already settled. For the moral arguments against the given practice are, he says, familiar even now; there are no moral counter-arguments; and defenders of the practices he laments pretend ignorance of the mischiefs which they involve. The condemnation, then, is not something lying ahead; it is already with us.
Third, Appiah is too sanguine in claiming that defenders of the practices he discusses have no moral counter-arguments. He himself may not accept these counter-arguments, but to imagine that those who think differently from him really think the same but are just not willing to face up to the fact is to oversimplify moral disagreement. Thus, for instance, someone untroubled by current methods of meat production may just not place the same disvalue on animal suffering as Appiah does. It's possible, of course, that they're hiding certain things from themselves. But they may not be; they may just not care.
Finally, while it is true that looking away from some evil can be a method of denying its existence, it doesn't have to be. Even morally aware individuals can shut out certain facts about the world, so far as they are able. They need not have any desire to pretend these evils aren't there. Figuring, however, that they cannot act effectively against them, they may want to spare themselves the pain of being closely affected by them. A small example (in the light of more terrible cases): she sees a father on a train being unkind to his child, but isn't confident of being able to make a difference for the better (for the child) by intervening. She changes carriages - rather than have to witness further unkindness.
