In response to “Human beings are improving, despite fears of moral collapse”

In the article “Human beings are improving, despite fears of moral collapse” (2012), Peter Singer believes that human’s ability to reason can lead to a moral progress, despite the manifestation of moral collapse nowadays. Firstly, he asserts that the capacity to reason is a significant advantage of human that acts like an escalator which takes people to places they have ever imagined. Secondly, he argues that the decline of violence is fundamentally due to human’s reasoning. Thus, he concludes that reasoning is the main root that leads to the fall of murder rate, which entails moral progress. In my opinion, while his argument seems logical generally, some of his points are not essentially persuasive.

Initially, Singer claims that the ability to reason is a leading advantage of human because it helps increase survival chance. This claim is true as suggested by White (2011), human reasoning is the ability to make better decision, which leads to higher chance of survival because the process of natural selection tends to favor those with better decision. Then, he likens the ability to reason as an escalator, which takes people to places that they never expect to reach. In fact, people can expect the place where they need to get out of the escalator; therefore, this is a false analogy. The author thus should make a more precise comparison for the role of reasoning ability to improve his argument.

Next, Singer suggests the crucial cause of declining violence rate is the rise of human’s reasoning, which is flawed because of the following reasons. Firstly, he does not give a proper definition for the word “violence” but explicitly assumes that the dropping murder rate is also the decrease in violence rate. As stated by Advameg Inc. (2012), violence is the use of physical force to damage property or injure people; moreover, violence may appear under various aspects such as domestic, community, power and media. Since murder rate is just one of those, from its decline, it cannot be concluded that violence has decreased in general. As a result, the author should provide such appropriate evidences that cover crucial aspects of violence to make his conclusion more convincing. Secondly, by referring to the Flynn effect, he claims that the crucial factor that causes the rise of IQ is the rising human’s abstract reasoning. This explanation is somehow biased because in fact, IQ tests primarily take into account linguistics, mathematical and logical intelligence (Brooks, n.d.); thus, the ability to reason is not the only contributor to the resulting IQ. Moreover, according to Cohen (2012), there are plenty of factors that affect IQ such as the environment that a person was brought up, the childhood nutrition and the heredity from parents. Therefore, rising human’s reasoning is not persuasively a main cause of higher IQ. Thirdly, there are many factors contributing to the decreasing violence rate, in which the human’s reasoning may not be the most important one. According to Haq (2010), a tough and proactive police system together with strict incarceration policies have played a significant role in reducing the violent rate. Another report from Dorish (2009) suggests that one of the most critical causes of declining violence rate is the economy state, which is reflected by inflation rate and welfare policy. In all, the claim that declining violence rate is because of human’s reasoning is biased and lacks objectivity; a more objective assessment on a wider basis is, thus, needed to better the argument.

Additionally, the author assumes the declining violent rate correlates to moral progress, which has no relation. This is because from his very first point, he defines moral progress is the expansion of circles of beings to whom people extend moral consideration. Moreover, this assumption is not right because such a moral progress not only consists of the decline of violence but also covers a wider spectrum. Therefore, it will be unjust and biased to conclude that morality is progressing merely because of the decline of violence rate. Nevertheless, Singer can make a more persuasive argument by giving a more appropriate definition and considering more relating evidences to support it, rather than relying merely on the declining violence rate.

In conclusion, even though some of Singer’s points are not convincing, he is able to make a true claim such as the claim of the leading role of reasoning. However, his claim, which states that the rising ability of human is responsible for the declining violence rate, needs objectivity. Finally, a wider range of consideration is necessary to conclude that declining violence entails the moral progress. Indeed, should more general assessments about the relation and the cause of the trend observed be incorporated, Singer’s argument would be a persuasive and influential one.