I've disagreed with him for some time on this issue in the headline, going back to this piece of mine five years ago, re St. David of Hume and his racism, but a new piece by him last month leads me back to the issue.
(It also leads to the sidebar note of him now becoming a pretty hardcore determinist, and also, and at least tangentially related to that, pulling back from anything but a mild version of emergent properties — an issue in both biology and in philosophical issues related to consciousness, I find him less and less interesting as a thinker. And, this doesn't even count his being wrong more than a decade ago on bombing Libya and still being unapologetic for it. It doesn't count him presumably supporting NATO "barking" at Russia via Ukraine and more. It doesn't count him supporting genocide in Gaza.)
Speaking of that last in parentheses? Re presentism, if you’re OK with genocide in Gaza, that means you don’t have to worry about applying that standard to the mythical call to genocide in the Tanakh/Old Testament, from which modern supporters of this particular genocide talk about Amalek, do you?
Back to my main point, though.
I can both disagree with, and even criticize, an ancient culture from the point of view of “Presentism” but still learn from said culture at same time. Seriously, this is not a zero-sum game, and Massimo, who if he once had a bromance for Buddhism, per the otherwise wrong Doug Bates, surely had a bromance for Robert Wright (wrong on Buddhism not being a religion) that he used to do the TalkingHeads and stuff with. In other words, Pigliucci should know this is not a zero-sum game.
And, on things like racism or sexism, even if far fewer people, as a percentage, were enlightened in Attica of 2,500 years ago than today, a few were enlightened back then, so it’s not really a stereotyped version of “Presentism” anyway, now, is it? It’s not like some genetic mutation produced a gene that coded for a tendency toward higher levels of sociological enlightenment.
So, yes, this comes off like falling hard on the "nature" side of "nature vs nurture." That said, that seems to be of a piece with Massimo backing off broader versions of emergent properties, and being more of a hardcore determinist.
That said, there's more. This?
I will instead propose a third way, a sort of Aristotelian virtue-in-the-middle, that preserves the notion that humanity has made real moral progress and yet that it is fruitless to sit in judgment of earlier cultures.
Did you forget your Santayana, Massimo?
OK, let me remind you.
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
So, wrong! It's actually fruitful indeed if we sit in judgment, as long as we move beyond the judgment to the learning. Extending Santayana's comment, I take him to be talking about learning from the past, not just remembering it. (This is one of the reasons I think well-written alternative or counterfactual history essays are worth reading.)
Maybe that's why he remains unapologetic about Libya.
Pigliucci eventually hits the paywall on his piece, right before he may nuance his thoughts, I can't sa more. That said, since I’ve already indicated I’m neither a moral realist nor a moral anti-realist, I also approach Hume’s “is ≠ ought” which he notes in an old, linked piece, from a different angle. (I am, if anything, in some sense, a moral skeptic, which says “mu” to the “realism-antirealism” polarities.) I also am an eclecticist on schools of ethical behavior, not a virtue ethicist.
I think it's the first time I've used it for him, but the "philosophism" label — philosophism is to philosophy as scientism is to science — comes out.
Or, to put it another way, some of his recent philosophical shifts have awakened me from a dogmatic semi-slumber on lack of a critical approach to him.
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