“Moral Imagination & Effective Altruism” by Toby_Ord

Michael Nielsen has a beautiful new essay on moral imagination: the ability humans have to 'develop and transmit new notions of good action, indeed, even new kinds of good'.

As examples, he gives:

• Hammurabi's creation of a code of laws (in 1754 BCE) and his justification of his rule not in terms of divine or hereditary right, but by the delivery of justice to his citizens.
• St Gregory of Nyssa's argument (in 379 CE) that the entire institution of slavery was morally wrong.
• Joyce Roush's (1998 CE) idea that she should altruistically donate a kidney to help save the life of an unknown stranger. 

Nielsen acknowledges that any particular act of moral imagination often builds on earlier precursors, but that this shouldn't lessen our appreciation for these major steps forward.

One could think of moral imagination as a key part of making moral progress. Moral progress (moving towards better systems of morality) involves the creation of new approaches to morality, and the critiquing of what has been suggested. Through the iteration of creation and critique, we slowly make progress. Some of this process happens within moral philosophy (especially the critique), but much of it happens in the wider [...]

The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration.

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First published:
August 23rd, 2026

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Zaf7FLBBmeAcXgW3Y/moral-imagination-and-effective-altruism

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.