Thank you for the very gracious reply, and please take your time in getting back to me with a fuller reply! I really look forward to pondering it, as ever with your posts.
I would certainly not deny, and indeed did not actually deny, that reason can be "a" key driver of moral progress. Had that been the question, my answer would not have been nearly as doubtful of the premise.
In my original post, I wrote:
Reason by itself, as abstract logic, can result in very diverse justifications for practices that many of us in the West would regard as grossly immoral but not necessarily irrational or devoid of logic. Reason with empathy has certainly been essential to arguments about morality and changing moral norms, but by itself - no, I don't think so.
The question posed was: is reason the key driver of moral progress, and to that the answer must be a definitive "no" on my part, both in terms of historical record and empirical science.
I think the studies by Haidt, Greene, Morelli and Paxton, among many other experimental psychologists and neuroscientists, have amply demonstrated that there is an intuitive or instinctual response to moral violations - "quick, automatic evaluations", to reference Haidt - and that empathy, or what @Polymath257 calls an increase in "compassion" (rather than logic), is the pre-eminent 'driver' of morality and moral-decisions, including any perceived "moral progress" in social norms.
These intuitive evaluations have been replicated in study after study, and they are to quote Professor Joshua Greene: "implicit and the factors affecting them may be consciously inaccessible".
Such moral intuitions - conscientia or conscience, and founded upon unreasoning, consciously inaccessible 'empathy' with others - come first and are born of emotional activation, before ratio or any operations of the rational, logical mind using controlled thought come into play.
Conscientia is direct, automatic, intuitive whereas ratio is calculating and uses ratiocination or discursive thought (i.e. through the mediation of 'concepts' - the idea of a progress or development in morality being one such example, ironically!).
This does not mean, as one might think if an emphasis upon intuitional morality is taken to an extreme (whereby it approaches mysticism), that ratiocination is entirely excluded from moral decision-making or indeed moral "progress" so to speak.
If one tries to derive morality solely from reason (without that initial intuitiuve, empathetic response - as unfortunately many Greek philosophers believed was the mark of "wisdom" or apatheia), in addition to Polymath's warning above that it starts without any axioms of its own, it often leads to a narrow focus upon maximizing gain or obtaining the most desirable overall outcome (i.e. utilitarianism). This happens because the emotional parts of decision-making are ignored.
The converse, conscientia without reflection, can lead to the kind of situation you describe above - "kill the child-molesters, all of 'em, no one who harms a child deserves life" - because the person, understandably, is empathsizing with the child and automatically places him or herself in the victim's shoes - and sometimes the person subsequently, once they have initially been emotionally triggered, contemplates and comes to a more (ready yourself for this) "reasonable" response.
But @Polymath257 is quite right, in my opinion, that "the fight for women's rights, fights against racism, fights for gay rights" is largely the product of an "an increase in compassion" (in conscientia) rather than an improvement in logic, although I would say the environment is of equal importance in this respect.
As I noted earlier, and I reiterate the point, it is my sincere understanding that reason by itself, as abstract logic, can result in very diverse justifications for practices that many of us in the West would regard as grossly immoral but not necessarily irrational or devoid of logic. Reason with empathy has certainly been essential to arguments about morality and changing moral norms, but by itself - no, I don't think so.
So, while I do readily agree that: "reason [can] be be used to generalize and extend empathy", I must qualify it as 'can' rather than "is". It does not always, nor will it essentially, lead to the 'generalizing and extension of empathy' (as if out of some intrinsic, teleological end or natural outcome of 'reason'). Indeed, it is relatively easy to conceive of reasoned arguments that aren't self-contradictory or illogical but result in the 'narrowing and restricting of empathy' to more contained social groups, or even to the exclusion of individuals and groups. Involuntary euthanasia and eugenicism is an example of this throughout history. Eminently logical and defensible through purely rational means, but only if you ignore intuitive appeals to empathy with the victims of these policies.
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