Existence of the objective morals & problem of moral relativism
With the expansion of Western hedonism, it is very apparent that moral relativism is becoming prevalent. We could go as far as to answer the question:
(1)
Was fascism bad?
"That cannot be known, the good and bad is not absolute, for someone it was bad and for someone it was not."
This answer, however, is not in accordance with moral relativism, it makes morals non-existing because the only answer that has been given is that there is no answer. True moral relativism would have to state why it is bad or wrong and how it applies to this particular case (1).
An answer of moral objectivist to (1):
"Yes, fascism was bad and if one claims that the opposite is true or that the question cannot be answered then they have to justify deeds of fascism."
Moral objectivist finds good and bad to be defined by fundamental human values. Even animals have their own values (reproduce, help others of their own kind, live in accordance to the hierarchy), so to say that there are no fundamental values would be a sign of confusion. However, there is one critical question:
(2)
Are we different to animals? Could we be put in a different category than animals?
If so, that would mean our fundamental values have to be different to purely animal values. Aristotle's: "The more you know, the more you know you don't know." would imply that we are more self aware and our ability to explore is bigger than that of an animal. That also applies to our moral questions, we can actually articulate our questions and use methods unknown to animals to achieve knowledge.
When speaking of morals, we encounter another question:
(3)
Can we state whether anything is good or bad with certainty?
Moral relativism would advocate the idea that no moral question can be answered with absolute certainty. How come no question can be answered with absolute certainty if we have the fundamental values as previously mentioned? The good is what is in accordance with those unchangeable values and the bad is what goes against them.
I welcome a discussion on this topic.
(1)
Was fascism bad?
"That cannot be known, the good and bad is not absolute, for someone it was bad and for someone it was not."
This answer, however, is not in accordance with moral relativism, it makes morals non-existing because the only answer that has been given is that there is no answer. True moral relativism would have to state why it is bad or wrong and how it applies to this particular case (1).
An answer of moral objectivist to (1):
"Yes, fascism was bad and if one claims that the opposite is true or that the question cannot be answered then they have to justify deeds of fascism."
Moral objectivist finds good and bad to be defined by fundamental human values. Even animals have their own values (reproduce, help others of their own kind, live in accordance to the hierarchy), so to say that there are no fundamental values would be a sign of confusion. However, there is one critical question:
(2)
Are we different to animals? Could we be put in a different category than animals?
If so, that would mean our fundamental values have to be different to purely animal values. Aristotle's: "The more you know, the more you know you don't know." would imply that we are more self aware and our ability to explore is bigger than that of an animal. That also applies to our moral questions, we can actually articulate our questions and use methods unknown to animals to achieve knowledge.
When speaking of morals, we encounter another question:
(3)
Can we state whether anything is good or bad with certainty?
Moral relativism would advocate the idea that no moral question can be answered with absolute certainty. How come no question can be answered with absolute certainty if we have the fundamental values as previously mentioned? The good is what is in accordance with those unchangeable values and the bad is what goes against them.
I welcome a discussion on this topic.
Comments (138)
Moral relativism is the belief that there are no actions that are intrinsically bad/wrong/immoral.. rather, relativists believe that morality is a matter of opinion and/or preference. So, if asked, "is it wrong to X?" The moral relativist would just ask, "from whose point of view?" Or perhaps they would merely state their opinion/preference.
The moral relativist denies that morality could be objective (no moral facts), while an objectivist believes that morality is objective (perhaps moral facts, or quasi-realism... while admitting there are disagreements). Relativists believe that morality is and can only be opinion and preference.. Objectivists suggest that morality is more like the field of medicine, or mathematics- there are differing opinions, but some math and some medicine is objectively better than others.
I suspect a moral relativist would just tell you his opinion or his preferences about the questions above, while from the standpoint of moral objectivism, an objectivist would make an argument for why said thing is objectively right or wrong, based on a system of morality (virtue ethics, utilitarianism, Kantian ethics, etc.).
(By the way, I've been compiling a list of philosophers who argue for objective morality from a completely secular point of view).
But it's also the case that many of the questions sorrounding the nature of 'true goods' such as real knowledge, virtue, bravery, etc, are often left open - many such questions are explored in the dialogues, but they often end in aporia - they don't present a final definition so much as explore various possibilities.
Aristotelean philosophy adopts and modifies many of these themes in such seminal ethical works as the Nicomachean Ethic.
Analogies to the allegory of the Cave can be found in other classical philosophical systems, such as Advaita Vedanta and Buddhism.
Even though all of these schools differ considerably in matters of doctrine, they all orient themselves around the idea of the realisation of higher truth, the attainment of which is the rationale for their ethical philosophy. In traditional philosophy, east and west, there are "levels of being" with the more real being also the more valuable; these levels appear in both the "external" and the "internal" worlds, "higher" levels of reality without corresponding to "deeper" levels of reality within. On the lowest level is the material or physical world, which depends for its existence on the higher levels. On the very highest and deepest level is the Infinite or Absolute - conceived variously in terms of the Good, the Deity or First Principle.
It is precisely the absence of that sense in modern and post-modern philosophy that has undermined the background necessary for a so-called 'objective' morality (although the very term 'objective' is problematical, because the relationship that dictates morality in theistic religion is not 'subject-object' but 'I-thou'.)
I live the US. It's very polarized here. Most folks are sure that they are good and that their opponents are evil. Some of the more restrained express pity and compassion for the poor fools still in the dark, but even this can be interpreted as a superior expression of superiority. So moral relativism, as I see it, is actually rare.
It's rare enough in fact that a certain detachment or slowness to judgment and commitment starts to stand out as the "thoughtful" position. Maybe there is some genuine relativism on some issues. "If one prioritizes this, then this follows, etc." But perhaps we also have the prioritization of reason or criticism above some other form of virtue. "I'd rather be a little amoral than a thoughtless or incorrect conformist." In short, we still see moral preference. It's just that the "good guy" involved takes a different form. I don't believe in sincere or total moral relativism. That sounds like a person without preferences.
Evidently we tend to dislike harm and like freedom, which clearly is subjective (or mind-dependent if you will).
Since those are morally informative (while assuming some moral awareness), they exemplify subjective morals.
Yet they're not moral relativism, not arbitrary, ad hoc opinion or discretionary.
So, there's more to the story, it seems.
Why do moral relativists think of morals at all? It does seem that moral relativism goes against itself because it'll start disproving it's own reasons for why an action was good or bad, sooner or later.
I would like to take a look at the list when it's done if you don't mind sharing it.
Even if they don't present a final definition, they don't start denying that there is a true/objective good, do they? It still is there for them, it's just that they can't define it.
Quoting Wayfarer
Did this absence arise because objective morals could not be well defined or because the term objective is problematic? I still don't see a reason to abandon the idea of objective morals.
One of the arguments in relation to moral relativism is that a true moral relativist would have no reason to judge another's morality. If a moral relativist was consistent, then everyone else's opinion/preference about morality has just as much validity as their own. If relative morality, then no opinion/preference about morality could be better or worse than another... a moral relativist can only talk of differences.
Here is my list of philosophers who argue for objective morality from a secular point of view.
Paul Boghossian is Silver professor of philosophy at New York University, where he was Chair of the Department for ten years (1994?"2004) and responsible for building it into one of the top philosophy programs in the world.[1] His research interests include epistemology, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He is Director of the New York Institute of Philosophy and research professor at the University of Birmingham.
Timothy Williamson is a British philosopher whose main research interests are in philosophical logic, philosophy of language, epistemology and metaphysics.
He is currently the Wykeham Professor of Logic at the University of Oxford, and Fellow of New College, Oxford. He was previously Professor of Logic and Metaphysics at the University of Edinburgh (1995?"2000); Fellow and Lecturer in Philosophy at University College, Oxford (1988?"1994); and Lecturer in Philosophy at Trinity College, Dublin (1980?"1988). He was president of the Aristotelian Society from 2004 to 2005.
He is a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA),[1] the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters,[2] Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE) and a Foreign Honorary Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.
Simon Blackburn is a British academic philosopher known for his work in metaethics, where he defends quasi-realism, and in the philosophy of language; more recently, he has gained a large general audience from his efforts to popularise philosophy. He retired as professor of philosophy at the University of Cambridge in 2011, but remains a distinguished research professor of philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, teaching every fall semester. He is also a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and a member of the professoriate of New College of the Humanities. He was previously a Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford and has also taught full-time at the University of North Carolina as an Edna J. Koury Professor. He is a former president of the Aristotelian Society, having served the 2009?"2010 term.
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong (born 1955) is an American philosopher. He specializes in ethics, epistemology, and more recently in neuroethics, the philosophy of law, and the philosophy of cognitive science. He is the Chauncey Stillman Professor of Practical Ethics in the Department of Philosophy and the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University.[1] He earned his Ph.D. from Yale University under the supervision of Robert Fogelin and Ruth Barcan Marcus, and taught for many years at Dartmouth College, before moving to Duke.[2]
His Moral Skepticisms (2006) defends the view that we do not have fully adequate responses to the moral skeptic. It also defends a coherentist moral epistemology, which he has defended for decades. His Morality Without God? (2009) endorses the moral philosophy of his former colleague Bernard Gert as an alternative to religious views of morality.[citation needed]
In 1999, he debated William Lane Craig in a debate titled "God? A Debate Between A Christian and An Atheist".[3]
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong argues that God is not only not essential to morality, but moral behaviour should be independent of religion. A separate entity one could say. He strongly disagrees with several core ideas: that atheists are immoral people; that any society will become like lord of the flies if it becomes too secular; that without morality being laid out in front of us, like a commandment, we have no reason to be moral; that absolute moral standards require the existence of a God, he sees that people themselves are inherently good and not bad; and that without religion, we simply couldn't know what is bad and what is good.
Louis Paul Pojman [1935 - 2005] grew up in Cicero, Illinois, where he attended Morton High School and Junior College. He went on to receive a B.S. degree from Nyack College and a B.D degree from New Brunswick Theological Seminary, becoming an ordained minister in the Reformed Church of America. After serving an inter-racial church in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, he returned to seminary, attending Union Theological Seminary at Columbia University in New York where he studied under Reinhold Niebuhr and earned a Ph.D. in Ethics. During this time he received several fellowships to study abroad. In 1969-71 he was a Fulbright Fellow and a Kent Fellow at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and in 1970 a Rockefeller Fellow at Hamburg University, Germany. Upon receiving his PhD from Union, he decided to study analytic philosophy and went to Oxford University from which he earned his D. Phil in 1977. He also lectured at Oxford. In 1977 he became a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Notre Dame. After this he taught at the University of Texas (Dallas), and became a Professor at the University of Mississippi, where he was Chair of the Philosophy Department. He was also a visiting Scholar at Brigham Young University, University of California, Berkeley and New York University among others. He recently retired as Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus from the United States Military Academy at West Point, where he was a Professor for nine years. In 2004-5 he was a Visiting Fellow at Clare Hall, Cambridge University, UK, where he became a Life-Fellow. He has read papers at 60 universities in the USA, Europe and Asia.
I just came across this talk by Peter Singer: Ethics Without Religion.
I'm a moral relativist. More specifically, I'm a subjectivist/noncognitivist/basically an emotivist on morality/ethics. In other words, I believe that moral stances are simply ways that individuals "feel" about interpersonal behavior. A la emotivism, it's more or less "yaying" or "booing" behavior.
Quoting Kazuma
No many moral relativists would answer that way. The problem is that you're seeing relativism from an absolutist/objectivist context. You see it as if relativists are acknowledging that ethics is objective, but we just can't know the answer to ethical questions. That's not what we're saying, however. We're saying that ethics is a matter of how people feel about behavior. So when someone asks "Was fascism bad," they're asking how people feel about fascism, and why they feel that way.
Without more context, a relativist would often just answer with respect to themselves--do they feel that fascism was bad, and why. They might answer for particular other people instead, though. Then it would depend on the context--whose opinion are we asking for?
We're not going say, "This can not be answered," because we're not assuming that there's some nonpersonal answer to it. It can be answered, easily, simply by talking about how people feel about fascism.
Quoting Kazuma
If we're talking about certainty in the sense of whether something "can not possibly be incorrect," we'd simply say that's a category error. Moral claims are not correct or incorrect. They're rather reports of how people feel about things.
Can moral relativism disprove moral objectivism? It does seem that moral objectivists try to prove the objectivity but moral relativists just say that they feel or believe that it is the way they see it. Hence why moral relativism is more popular nowadays.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Agreed.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Can you state that with certainty? You seem to be certain about the fact that it's just how people feel about things.
The concerns with proof/disproof and certainty are misplaced in my opinion. Empirical claims are not provable, falsification is problematic a la the Duhem-Quine theory, and certainty is going to be inherently psychological.
That's very anti-philosophical to me. Not using philosophical reflection in order to come to the conclusion of a philosophical problem is just ignorance. There are arguments for the existence of objective morals, yet you try to disprove them by completely ignoring them.
Because the term 'objective' is problematic in relation to this question.
Are you familiar with David Hume's statement of the 'is/ought' problem?
(Quoted in Wikipedia, where there is a useful discussion of the issue.)
Here Hume articulates the issue clearly. At issue is that ethical judgements, by their very nature, are reliant on 'ought' judgements - what one ought to do. Hume is saying that these kinds of judgements are of a different nature to factual statements. I think this is the issue that Kant then tackled in Critique of Practical Reason: he grants that we can't establish the reality of God as a matter of fact, but that as a requirement of practical reason, we have to assume it.
However, what has happened in practice is that science - which is concerned with the domain of the objective - has become 'the arbiter of reality' for Western culture (see, for example, Steven Pinker's Science is not the Enemy of the Humanities.) However, science itself has no particular competency in respect of morality - as far as neo-Darwinism is concerned, morality, like everything else, is an artefact of survival. We co-operate or are altruistic because of adapative necessity. Science assumes a physical universe that is intrinsically meaningless, onto which h. sapiens 'projects' meaning for social or other reasons.
So when the term 'objectivity' is used, it generally pertains to factors that can be measured objectively, that can be made subject to quantitative analysis. Nowadays 'objective' and 'really there', are almost used synonymously. That is what I was drawing attention to.
Here’s an argument for objective ethics that doesn’t depend on universals. As example: the goodness of ice-cream flavors.
To whom will the flavors be good or bad? To the individual(s) in question. In this sense, it’s all relative to individual beings. But …
You’ve got chocolate v. vanilla. OK, this is up in the air as an yay/boo issue.
Now, you’ve also got sand-mixed-in-with-ice-cream flavors and flavors that are not sand-mixed-in-with-ice-cream. More will hold a boo for the first then the second. So we’re approaching an objective yay/boo value, but we’re not there yet.
Last on this list, there’s the razorblades-and-nails-and-boric-acid taste verse the non-what-was-just-stated taste (for clarity, where each taste carries through its promise of lethality or non-lethality). Here, at last, we’ve encountered a universal boo for the first flavor—and an objective bad—and a universal yay for the second—an objective good. For the sake of argument, those that might prefer the lethal ice-cream taste are no more (because its lethal); hence, again, resulting in the ubiquitous, objective “boo” for lethal ice-cream.
This same overall principle can be applied to most anything. Orwellian government is to me bad because it takes away from my life as a social being--a personal boo. If Orwellian government could be inferentially shown to be detrimental for all in the long run as an objective fact, then Orwellian government will likewise be evidenced to be an objective bad. And this because its yay/boo value is no longer relative to individuals but, instead, becomes relative to that which is universal to all individuals in an objective way.
So, out of curiosity, how would you argue that razorblades-and-nails-and-boric-acid ice-cream is not an objectively bad type of ice-cream?
----------
Edit: OK, I've just been struck by the hypocrisy in my post. Oops. Objective good/bad would be a universal good/bad. Though maybe a slippery slope toward the metaphysical universal of good/bad, the argument I’ve just outlined—I still believe—does not need to be associated with metaphysical universals by physicalists. (let me know if I’m wrong on this)
You didn't seem to understand the post you're responding to at all.
To start with, I say that concern with proof/disproof and certainty is misplaced. You respond by saying that I'm trying to disprove objective morality.
And then even though I'm referencing both falsificationism and the Duhem-Quine thesis, two very well-known philosophical theories that have to do with how proof and disproof relate to philosophical views, you respond by saying that it's "very anti-philosophical." And then you follow that up with an implication (in context) that concern with proof/disproof and certainty is the whole gist of philosophy.
My initial post in this thread was intended simply to clear up some conceptual errors you were making with respect to relativist ethics. That doesn't amount to attempting to disprove anything. I was simply trying to help you understand just what it is that relativists say versus don't say, and why they say it. It's simply a matter of whether you're interested enough in not presenting a straw man instead.
Wait--why are you talking about ice cream flavors being good or bad? That has nothing to do with ethics. Ethics is about interpersonal behavior that people consider to be more significant than etiquette. At any rate, okay, we can just make it about value judgments that don't depend on universals (not that I think that the issue hinges on universals in any way, but I'll proceed) . . .
Quoting javra
"Now we're approaching an objective value" is completely arbitrary there, unless you're equating "objective" with "agreement." Objectivity doesn't have anything to do with agreement. It has to do with whether something is a mental phenomenon or not. "Subjective" refers to something being a mental phenomenon. "Objective" refers to it not being a mental phenomenon. Everyone ever alive could hypothetically have the same judgment about something. What makes it subjective or objective is whether the judgment is a mental phenomenon or not. So if judgments are mental phenomena, then the judgment in question is subjective, even though every person there ever was and ever will be agree on the judgment.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Are you trying to say that by being moral relativist you do not oppose moral objectivism? That's a very shy approach indeed, to even imply such thing. I do agree that I portrayed view of a moral relativist differently.
But if you haven't come here to actually discuss whether morals are relative or objective, then I guess you're free to go.
PS: It's not philosophical to just point out that there is some philosophical theory. I could very say that there is a thesis against the theory that you're proposing. You have to be more specific.
It addresses the metaethics of what good/bad entails, without which no morality/immorality could be purported.
Quoting Terrapin Station
I’m thinking of objective in the sense of that which is independent of opinion, judgement, etc.
If the argument I previously made were to be extended, there is an onus to evidence that there are universal properties to all sentience that occur objectively—as the term has just been addressed by me. One example would be that all sentient being sense things. Note how this couldn’t be accomplished experientially but would need to be justified rationally. Here, however, the argument is made with importance given to an implicitly affirmed, self-evident property of sentience: maybe it can be worded as, “life lives its life to the fullest capacity given the limitations it encounters”.
If “life is to be lived to the fullest” were to be an objective property intrinsic to all life, then one could establish what is objectively good and bad based on this … not on the principle of agreement but on a metaphysical principle of being entailed by that which is objective. To try to put together both our semantics: that which is objectively present to all subjectivity.
In this manner, ought could be cogently derived from is. That which best satisfies the objectively intrinsic property X ubiquitously present to all sentience then becomes equivalent to an objective good. Again, not due to accord but due to the "is" entailing the "ought".
Quoting Terrapin Station
I prefer the definition of "independent of opinion, judgment, etc." Is this something you'd disagree with?
No, but I wasn't suggesting that I was disproving moral objectivism either. I was explaining an alternate point of view.
In my opinion, there's no question that ethics (as well as aesthetics or any valuations) are not objective. If you're unsure of your view and want to explore some problems with specific arguments for objectivism, I'd be happy to explain the problems in my opinion with the arguments in question. Again, this wouldn't be "disproving" objectivism. It would be merely explaining a different point of view. It will ultimately be up to what makes more sense to you, what seems more accurate to you, etc.
Quoting Kazuma
Neither falsificationism nor the Duhem-Quine thesis are nonspecific. You should become familiar with both if you're interested in philosophy.
I wouldn't say it does if it has nothing to do with ethics. There's a commonality, I suppose, in that we're talking about preferences, but gustatory preferences are very different in quality than feelings about interpersonal behavior.
Quoting javra
Right, but talking about something where everyone is making the same judgment isn't addressing something that's independent of judgment.
Quoting javra
But "objective" doesn't refer to "universal properties." Again, suppose there are universal properties of judgment. Well, that's not independent of judgment, is it?
Quoting javra
To say that something like that occurs independently of opinion, judgment, etc., we'd need to show some evidence of it occurring independently of opinion, judgment, etc. Talking about someone having the opinion that "life is to be lived to the fullest" obviously isn't showing evidence of it occurring independently of opinion, even if we're talking about an opinion where everyone who has ever lived, everyone who will ever live, has that opinion.
I looked up “ethics” on Wikipedia to validate my assumptions; SEP doesn’t have a generalized entry. They there define it in terms of right and wrong conduct. In my brief glance at the entry I didn’t find a necessity for ethics to be about interpersonal behavior. Most, btw, would have an easy time affirming that it is wrong/bad/unethical for a person to choose to ingest razorblades—an awful example when taken seriously, I grant (my apologies for having brought it up)—this having to do with what a living being should and should not do to themselves.
As to debate about what is denoted by ethics, I’ll defer to Wikipedia for now.
Quoting Terrapin Station
I find this to be the main element that you’re either not accepting or not understanding.
Is there anything ontic about sentience that is there independently of ideas, opinions, or judgments? If there is, it is objectively there: whether or not one has ideas, opinions, or judgments about it. Just like rocks right in front of oneself: they're objective, even though one has judgments about them.
Validating what this might be is another story altogether. Validating what is ontically present to all sentience all the time is yet another--but, if this can be validated, then one can get from what is to what ought to be. All I'm here saying is that it holds potential to be demonstrated.
Wait--you were talking about ice cream flavors being morally good or bad??
At any rate, sure, I consider behavior towards oneself to be a moral issue (if we're talking about significant enough behavior, at least).
Quoting javra
Subjectivity is basically "the realm of the mental," so that would include sentience in general. However, even if you were excluding sentience in general, morality necessarily involves judgments.
Re rocks, it's important not to conflate the perception of them with what the perception is of. With moral judgments, there's no evidence of anything external or any reason to believe that we're talking about perception in the first place.
No. That’s you talking.
I, again, intended to address the metaethics of good and bad--not ethics. What is good and what is bad, in manners that encapsulate both morality and amoral actions, is not at all easy to define in the abstract independently of context—and is of itself different from ethics. Again, meta-ethics.
I could ask things like, “How is “yay” a moral judgment rather than a guttural preference, regardless of what’s addressed?” but I won’t start in so doing.
Quoting Terrapin Station
We previously agreed on what “objective” signifies. Now its being willfully ignored. Also appears you’ve overlooked most of what I wrote.
Never once brought up perception. The point was that you judge rocks to be objective, and yet they’re still so despite you holding a subjective judgment about them. What you address is, in addition, a strawman: I brought up the issue regarding objective properties of sentience … not in regards to particular moral judgments. Two very different things. But I don’t like being overly repetitive about what I previously wrote.
I addressed this with:
Quoting Terrapin Station
Re this:
Quoting javra
The answer is that it's not a moral judgment regardless of what's addressed. What makes it a moral judgment is that it's an expression of approval or disapproval about interpersonal behavior considered to be more significant than ethics. Again re interpersonal behavior, that can include behavior of one towards oneself, or of anything looked at with sufficient personhood to amount to moral agency towards the same.
Quoting javra
If you're referring to you saying:
Quoting javra
And me responding with:
Quoting Terrapin Station
That's because in the post you had responded to (with your comment "I'm thinking of objective in the sense . . .") I had just written:
Quoting Terrapin Station
Judgment, opinion and et cetera are mental phenomena, and something independent of them is "not being a mental phenomenon." Sentience is a mental phenomenon that your et cetera would cover.
Quoting javra
I brought up perception, because that's what's going on in the case of rocks. You have a perception of them, perception being the reception and processing of information from outside of yourself. You're not judging rocks to be objective, especially not in the same sense that the term "judgment" occurs in ethical judgments. You perceive rocks. You experience something objective via perception.
Quoting javra
It wasn't a straw man because I didn't present it as being your argument. Rather, I presented it as an argumentative point of my own against your argument. What you were arguing for (in general in your comments) was the objectivity of moral claims. It didn't become apparent until that last post that your earlier "I'm thinking of objective in the sense . . . " was maybe meant to say that only judgments and opinions, and not other sorts of mental phenomena--despite your "etc."--are subjective, so that sentience in general wouldn't be necessarily subjective. I don't at all agree with that, but I argued that even if we allowed sentience to not be necessarily subjective, that doesn't at all help ethics to be objective, because we don't have ethics if we don't have judgments.
Human normative behavior is objectively present wherever man is. Of course, contexts can vary significantly from one society to the next, in this relative sense that what is normative in one society, may not be so in the next. Morality is a subset of normative behaviour.
I think individuals rely on the normative moral rules of the society where they live, the practices instilled by family, school, peers and so on. Our sense of duty to others and ourself arises from these norms. I think we are morally constructed, and our behaviour in varying degrees mirror normative practices.
I don't think most people have to think very hard to judge what's right or wrong in the vast majority of moral choices. It is only in a true moral dilemma, that we are challenged. How we respond is based on the possibilities inherent in the situation. Thinking of Sartre's example:
A eighteen year old boy in France in WWII wants to go and join the resistance to fight the Germans and to help regain his country, which is in a desperate occupied state at this point. He lives out in the country in a secluded area, It is only him and his mother who is sick, dying perhaps. He knows that if he goes and leaves her there is a very good chance she will die. Does he stay and care for his mother or go and help reclaim his country?
I don't think such dilemmas are easily resolved, but I do think such difficult decisions demonstrate our moral character.
Stay and care for his mother. He's highly unlikely to make any difference to the war, but he's highly likely to make a difference at home.
To me we’re still talking past each other some, but so it goes with some debates.
I agree that sentience consists of subjectivity, by the way. The etc. still stands. Don’t know if this will make a difference: my contention was that some properties of subjectivity can be ontically determinate properties of all subjects all the time … and, thereby, can be universals of subjectivity that occur regardless of what anyone has to say about them. I am not giving this as a proven case-in-point but as a hypothetical example: e.g., all subjects perpetually have the attribute of a capacity to sense psychological pain and pleasure. If this were to be ontically so regardless of what anyone might say about it, then it would be a universal to all sentience that objectively is. … Even though it fully pertains to processes (and/or states) of subjectivity. Here I’m thinking in terms of objective data concerning the ontic reality of subjectivity which, as data, is addressed in the third/forth-person--rather than, for example, what subjectively occurs in the first-person.
Hope this is better understood, but further debate on this proposal (which I at this point presume would still plentifully occur) becomes one of metaphysics and epistemology, not ethics or metaethics.
Why would we believe that everyone has some mental attribute regardless of what anyone might say about it? I also don't even really know what that would amount to claiming. Something about unconscious minds or something?
Also, if it's some mental attribute, it would be universal in the sense that everyone has it, and maybe even universal in the "type" sense--maybe you'd be positing something like something mental as a real abstract that occurs separately from any individuals, but it wouldn't be objective if objectivity refers to the complement of mental phenomena.
Maybe it the slippery slope toward an acknowledgement of universals. No, it would be addressing what to us are conscious states of being.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Yea, this is framed in terms of a dichotomy between objects and subjects. We take the former to necessarily be objective the latter to necessarily be subjective. But one can start asking why physical objects are objective, why are they judged to pertain to the category of “objectivity”? Isn’t it because they ontically are regardless of what anyone has to say about it?
[We could confound this even further with questions of why commonsense has it that “I” is a pronoun for a subject and “me” is a pronoun for an object. It’s a complex issue for me—not dispelled by assertions that commonsense is nonsensical.]
Just trying to support my own previously mentioned case that elements of subjectivity can objectively occur in manners applicable to all sentience. Though I’m well aware of the potential for befuddlement. As for me, I’ll let it rest on this thread.
(2) We are animals. We differ from non-human animals in various ways, just as human animals differ from one another.
(3) Absolute certainty about anything is impossible. Pragmatic certainty is another matter.
One reason I'm adverse to moral relativism is that it appears to inevitably results in the dictum of might makes right—be this the force of an individual or the force of the masses (slavery can come to mind).
Is there any way that moral relativism can remain consistent without resulting in right/good/ethical being that which is willed by the whims of power?
Sure.. they could just call for a vote. But does consensus really mean something is morally acceptable?
If to be morally acceptable is to be acceptable by the majority, then yes.
Can you elaborate? Your framework seems to be "I don't like it". We should anyone care what you do or don't like? From the standpoint of a serial killer, he likes to kill. How would you convince him to change his mind?
Why try to change anything in any society then? Reformers go against public opinion.
According to the moral relativist, yes. It's true by definition.
Because people want and like different things. They'd prefer a different morality.
Then morality isn't actually based on consensus.... Apparently it's more about preferences (according to moral relativists). Apparently, we must decide whose preferences to follow. And then it looks like we're back to "might makes right" again <-- as javra pointed out.
What about the changes that have occurred in societies? Is there such a think as moral progress? Why do people listen to moral reformers?
Doesn't follow. A thing is legal if it's agreed upon by the legislature. If some members of this legislature would prefer something else to be legal then they try to change the law. But it's still only a law once it's been agreed upon by the legislature. It's not the case that the law is just preferences.
And so a thing is moral if it's agreed upon by society (as an example). If some members of this society would prefer something else to be moral then they try to change the moral rules. But it's still only moral once it's been agreed upon by the society. It's not the case that morality is just preferences.
Of course it's possible to be wrong about morality, just as it's possible to be wrong about the law. But it's still the case that whether or not some given action is legal is relative to each individual country/state as determined by the legislature of that country/state. And so it'd still be the case that whether or not some given action is moral is relative to each individual society as determined by the members of that society.
You're contradicting yourself. Societies did believe that slavery was ethical. So, it was ethical (according to relativism). But, a minority believed it was wrong... If morality is based on consensus, then why would anyone try to change what the society believed? And why would that society change? By definition, a reformer is just wrong (according to relativism) because he disagrees with the consensus.
So, is it preference? or is it consensus?
I'm not contradicting myself. It's not the case that those societies believed that slavery was ethical. It's the case that slavery was ethical in those societies. But a minority despised the practice and wanted it abolished, and so they fought to change their society's ethics.
Again, it's no different in kind to laws. You don't say that the UK only believes that it's illegal for someone under the age of 18 to buy alcohol. It is illegal for someone under the age of 18 to buy alcohol. But that doesn't mean that we can't try to reduce the age to 17. In wanting to change the law we're not somehow implying that it's already legal for 17 year olds to buy alcohol. And so in wanting to change our society's ethics we're not somehow implying that it's already unethical to practice slavery.
There's a "domain" confusion here.
"Might makes right" is a descriptive aphorism about what happens--or at least tends to happen--socially. The ethical stances that become entrenched legislatively, or culturally as mores, etc., are those that either through concentrated power/influence or sheer numbers have force behind them. They're literally enforced, either through agents sanctioned by the government or at least via social acceptance versus ostracization.
"Might makes right" is not anything prescriptive or that relativists are endorsing or anything like that. You seem to be looking at it as if relativism has to suggest some ultimate prescriptive principle that functions just like an objective principle would.
Of course, some relativists do focus on socially accepted or enforced moral stances as what's moral for that society, but they're just doing that descriptively--they're simply telling you that that's what's accepted in that society (which is hardly debatable), and they're additionally saying that there's not some (objective) overarching morality that makes that society's entrenched ethics wrong. That doesn't mean that they're saying that that society's entrenched ethics is right, either. They're just saying that what's right in that society, descriptively, is what's entrenched.
Other relativists, like me, focus on individuals, and stress that what's right is per individual, where individuals very well can, and often do, disagree with what's entrenched in their society. Again, this is just descriptive. But as something descriptive, it's not saying that what's right (in a broad sense) is whatever is "willed by the whims of power."
I wouldn't say that descriptively, what's right is a matter of whim by the way. Most folks' moral stances obtain at more of an intuitive "gut level." They're dispositions that people have, not momentary whims. You can't just choose to change them.
For one, believe it or not, some people do actually care what (at least some) other people feel, simply because they like and care about other people, they're interested in other people qua other people, etc.
But aside from that, a lot of what we do when it comes to morality is to try to persuade other people to particular stances by appealing to their own dispositions, their own reasoning, etc.
Also, we could just as well say to objectivists, "Why should anyone care that such and such is factually right/wrong. If it's factually wrong to murder others, why should a serial killer care about that? He likes to murder people. He'd rather do what he likes."
Not objectively, no.
Quoting anonymous66
First, it's not going to be that you believe it was factually or objectively wrong. Keep in mind that ethical right/wrong to a subjectivist, say--which is what I am--is a matter of feeling, basically a negative preference against it, basically "booing" it. So you can definitely change your mind so that you "boo" your previous stance.
Stances change for a number of reasons, where combinations of these can be factors. Some examples:
* You weren't sure how you felt about the behavior in question. You thought you felt one way, but as you contemplated it more, you realize that you feel a different way instead.
* You have new experiences or new information that cause you to feel differently about some behavior.
* You realize that your stance on one thing conflicts with your stance on something else and you're not comfortable with that inconsistency, so you modify stances to make them consistent (usually while trying to ferret out how you "really feel" about some of the conflicts).
* Someone presents some rhetorical argument to you that you find persuasive--maybe something you hadn't really thought of before, some angle, etc., and so you realize that a different stance is more in line with how you feel.
Quoting anonymous66
Moral progress would simply be morality shifting to stances that you prefer.
Quoting anonymous66
When they do, it's simply a matter of the moral reformer presenting new information, different angles, saying things that make the person in question realize they really feel a different way, etc.
Of course, there are also non-ethical social factors, such as people tending to go along with certain crowds, wanting to please or get along with certain others, etc., and those actions can wind up having a psychological affect on how someone feels about the stances in question.
I don't agree with Michael's view (in my opinion, morality IS just preferences of a certain sort), but his view makes logical sense: He's saying that IF morality is not just preferences but what's communally accepted or enforced in a given society, then simply having different preferences doesn't mean that one has different morality--it's not morality until it's communally accepted by the society. That doesn't imply that one doesn't have different preferences. One would prefer a different morality. So one tries to influence things so that the different morality obtains instead (via communal agreement in that society).
As an aside, it's not even my view. I was just making sense of (cultural) relativism. I'm inclined to a collective view than includes cultural relativism but also emotivism, prescriptivism, and error theory.
Is it correct to say that moral relativists believe that the majority determines what is moral? That doesn't sound right.... because I try to imagine myself as a moral relativist, living in a society where slavery is accepted. I hear reformers trying to convince other people that slavery is wrong... I know the reformers are wrong, because they are arguing against the majority. If reformers succeed (presumably because the majority aren't moral relativists), and now slavery is determined to be wrong, wouldn't I be disappointed that our society made a mistake (because they now accept the minority position)?
OR, is it rather the case that moral relativists believe that morality is merely a matter of preference. In that case, then why do I care what other people prefer? Why would I think that other people would care about my preferences? Why would I complain or attempt to change the view of other people, since I understand that they just have different preferences?
First, anyone saying that would be saying something descriptive about a culture. In other words, it's more like doing anthropology in that respect.
What a lot of us would say is simply that people with enough power/influence in a culture (that could be a majority, but it doesn't have to be) determines what is culturally moral for that society.
Quoting anonymous66
You could say that relative to what is culturally moral for that society (at that time) they're advocating something contrary to what's moral. Again, this would simply be a descriptive, anthropological account of what's going on there.
In terms of right/wrong judgments, however, that depends on who is making the judgment. Obviously some people are going to feel that slavery is right (they're yaying slavery in other words), some will feel that it's wrong (they're booing it).
Where you're going off the rails in trying to understand this is that you're conflating a descriptive/anthropological account with making ethical judgments. The two aren't the same (and I already explained this to you above). While someone could personally feel--so we're talking about on what basis they're making moral judgments--that they should follow whatever the majority feels, that would be quite rare.
Quoting anonymous66
You realize that you live in a society where people interact, and where some people have the power to make laws, enforce laws, socially ostracize, etc., right? Most people care about what they can and can't do when they're interacting with other people. They care about what they might be arrested for, what they might be socially shunned for, etc.
No, I meant the dictum to be a descriptive aspect of what is, not a prescription of what ought to be. Although, given the variety of characters in the world, it is doubtlessly that some will come to interpret it in prescriptive ways for themselves and their own cohorts. (Regardless of our objections to their so doing. Social Darwinism as an example taken from history of prescription derived from description.)
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Regarding laws, hypothesize a government’s well established law that people will be publically decapitated if they in any way speak out against the laws of the government.
Were this government to be so endowed with authoritarian power so as to overtake the entire world, this law would become global, as would the mores that go along with it.
This now hypothesized global law would then become ethical to any moral relativist embedded within such global governance?
Okay, but how would that even be in dispute? It's obvious that folks with the right influence/power in a society are the ones that entrench ethical stances in legislation and cultural mores.
Quoting javra
AGAIN--all anyone is saying re the "might makes right" aphorism is a descriptive, anthropological fact.
The "would then become ethical . . ." has to be asking if the relativist from that point on makes the judgment that the law is indeed morally right. Why does it have to be asking that? Well, because you're stipulating that in terms of legislation, it becomes the morally entrenched stance. So you can't be asking if the relativist would then say that the law has become the legislatively morally entrenched stance of that culture. The answer to that is obvious--you just stipulated that it IS the legislatively morally entrenched stance of that culture, and anyone--moral relativist or not, would agree.
OK, I’ll put myself in the little lonely ostracized corner of disagreement. The Golden Rule isn’t right because of its mass appeal, nor because of legislation—nor, for that matter, because some person sitting on top clouds has decreed it so. Thank you for the answer, though.
But do you understand that no one is saying that it's right because of mass appeal or because of legislation?
What people are saying insofar as either of those go is that it's culturally considered right because of mass appeal or that it's legally considered right because of legislation. In other words, it would just be a journalistic description of what most people accept or what's a law in the culture in question.
Hold on there, the Golden Rule is either there due to some power(s) so decreeing it to be right or, else, it stands on its own regardless of what various powers have to say about it. You can argue that it’s relative to human nature, but then it would no longer be an issue of moral relativism. This because it becomes again conjoined to the issue of objective universals.
By the way, I’m not denying that many go with the flow of whatever is popular for the sake of their own immediate stability of being. This conversation though concerns whether there is anything objective about ethics.
Moral judgments are how individuals feel about behavior (leaving out the qualifying details there). When some moral stance, like the golden rule, say, becomes entrenched in a culture or legislation or whatever, it's because individuals feel that way about behavior, and via interactions, where they influence each other and so on, enough of them (if we're talking about something culturally entrenched), or the ones with the right power (if we're talking about something like legislation) feel that way about behavior.
So it neither originates with a social decree nor is it independent of what various people have to say about it.
You could say that it has to do with "human nature." as long as you're not referring to something like an "essence" there that's independent of humans. It has to do with human nature simply by virtue of the fact that moral judgments are how individual humans feel about behavior.
So when we're talking about moral judgments per se, we're talking about something relative to individual humans.
When we're talking about what's morally accepted, we're talking about larger social groups and how they interact with each other, from more of an anthropological perspective.
There's nothing objective about it because we're talking about a mental phenomenon. "Objective" refers to things located outside of minds/phenomena other than mental phenomena.
I’ll take a leap and proclaim we’re using “independent of” in different ways. You understand it in terms of “severed from” and I understand it in terms of “indifferent to”. Hence, for me, the Golden Rule isn’t severed from people but is stands in ways indifferent to people’s rationalized opinions.
If it doesn’t originate with power so willing it as a right—which shouldn’t be confused with powers defending it against corruption or the like—then doesn’t it stand on its own as a right in manners indifferent to what people may will, say, or think about it?
In more concrete terms, Gandhi defended the Golden Rule; Stalinism went against it even while mimicking its motto of comradeship. Was the Golden Rule then unethical during Stalinism? If so, then it too originates with the dictums of power—and, again, I here disagree. However, if Stalinism can be declared corrupt only due to comparison to the Golden Rule (and its implications), then the Golden Rule, again, stands regardless of what authority wills—be it authority of individuals or of the masses.
In short, if it doesn’t originate with power, then the Golden Rule isn’t an aspect of moral relativism.
No--how could it "stand on its own" where it's "indifferent" to what people think etc. about it? How could it even exist at all in that case? Where would it be located? What would it be a property of?
Quoting javra
What we'd say in that case would be that under Stalinism, the golden rule was unethical. Or in other words, per the tenets of Stalinism, it was unethical.
That's not saying that it's unethical outside of that context.
Because we'd also say in that situation that to Gandhi, the golden rule was ethical.
I don't know how someone could argue with either of those points given the situation we're talking about (assuming the description is correct, of course).
Quoting javra
That's not "indifferent" to what anyone thinks, however. Stalinism would be declared "corrupt" due to comparison to the Golden Rule to someone who feels that the golden rule is a normative basis for ethical judgment. So that's dependent on what someone thinks.
Quoting javra
All valid questions, but tangential to whether or not the Golden Rule stands on its own or is a product of agency so willing it to be (see below). Let’s not sidetrack the main issue.
Quoting Terrapin Station
One does not need to have a formalized theory of the Golden Rule for it to be innately present, such as instincts are. To say otherwise would be to say that there can be no sense of fairness devoid of there being cognition of what fairness implies. A child playing in the school yard doesn’t need to know what the abstract concept of fairness is—to have thought of fairness—in order to sense that it is unfair to be bullied or to bully, for example.
Some social lesser animals have a sense of fairness, aka the Golden Rule, and they don’t hold it due to thought concerning what the concept of fairness entails.
So no. Feeling something is not equivalent to thinking something. Nothing new in this. Do we will those basic feelings of fairness into being? … is the question here addressed to moral relativists. This is contrasted to those basic feeling of fairness being part of our inherent biological makeup as humans, which would make the foundations of ethics no longer morally relative.
Quoting Terrapin Station
< gees > power is ability to accomplish; it is therefore what agency entails; moral relativism requires agency to originate that which is ethical—for, otherwise, that which is ethical would be in manners independent of/indifferent of what agency wills; therefore, if it isn’t originated by agency/power it isn’t encapsulated by moral relativism. < can we stop with the sighs and such; rational arguments welcomed >
That's the point I'm making about relativism vs objectivism. Objectivists DO acknowledge that people can be and sometimes are wrong about morality.. objectivists do acknowledge that serial killers don't care... If it is wrong to murder, then someone who murders is in the wrong, and murder would not be allowed. Whereas, according to relativism, a murderer isn't wrong, he just has a different point of view/different preferences.
It seems you must have some way of judging between preferences, if some preferences (murder) are not allowed, but others are. ( Objectivists obviously do have a way of judging.)
You also made a valid distinction between descriptive and prescriptive. Which are you advocating? Are you merely stating the facts as you see them(descriptive) "people do disagree about morality"? or are telling us(prescriptive) how we ought to act - "people ought not be allowed to____ and ought to be allowed to___".
Lastly, you observe that a - presumably incurably psychopathic - serial killer will not care. That doesn't matter. All I need to do is to persuade enough people to take action to arrest and imprison him. What the serial killer thinks about that is irrelevant.
So again... in a society with some people with some preferences, and others with other preferences... how are we to decide which to allow? Do the stronger make the rules? Does the majority rule (vote on it?)
And again... are you merely telling us facts? or telling us what should be done?
Quoting anonymous66 Neither. I was answering your question, which was not about either of those alternatives. Your question was about what I would do, in a situation in which somebody is doing something that I find morally abhorrent, but which they do not.
I wouldn't say that wondering how the golden rule could even exist at all "standing on its own" would be tangential to the issue of whether it stands on its own, but okay.
Quoting javra
The concepts involved do not need to be something they could express to others very easily, but I'd say that if they don't have thoughts of fairness or something like it present in their consciousness, then they have no sense of fairness at that time.
So yeah, I'd agree that one doesn't need to have something like a "formalized theory of the golden rule," but I'd say that there's nothing like the golden rule if an individual doesn't have something that amounts to the golden rule present-to-consciousness.
Quoting javra
Feeling something implies conscious mental content on my view, otherwise there's no reason to believe that the individual in question feels something.
Quoting javra
It's simply a way that one's brain works. But I'd say that it's not working that way if the content in question isn't present-to-consciousness.
Quoting javra
Aside from my comments above, this argument doesn't hold water. Say that a sense of fairness is unconscious, that it's innately part of our biological makeup. Well, there can be an individual who has physiological abnormalities so that they have no such unconscious sense as part of that individual's biological makeup. Thus, the sense of fairness is still relative to individuals. It's present in the individuals who have it, and not present otherwise.
Even if you were to argue that it's impossible to have a human with abnormal physiology, so that they have no sense of fairness, and necessarily, all humans have the sense, it would still be relative to humans, since it's not a part of rocks, say.
Quoting javra
Ability to accomplish what? And you're obviously equivocating here, as you were talking about power in the context of governments and societies and "might is right."
This is incorrect. According to relativism, a murderer isn't wrong per some absolute. That in no way implies that he's not wrong per some relative morality, such as communal or personal moral views.
Quoting anonymous66
Of course, and we do. We think about them and state what we think/how we feel.
Quoting anonymous66
Emotivists are relativists. Moral stances are relative to how one feels.
Quoting anonymous66
I'm not advocating one over the other. Some comments about ethics are not themselves ethical judgments and are made from a descriptive perspective.
Some are ethical judgments, and some of those are made from a prescriptive perspective.
Quoting anonymous66
Again, descriptively, that is obviously how things work now and how they've always worked, regardless of anyone's ontology of ethics.
Have you ever had a moral disagreement?
Say for example a friend of yours did something that you believed was morally questionable.
You understand why your friend thought what he did was right but...
If it had been you then you would have done it differently.
That is what it is like to be a moral relativist.
What it aims at is to describe why people or cultures believe that their values are moral.
Regarding this and a few subsequent comments, when addressed biologically, the sense of fairness would be something inherited through genotype. The reason I’m avoiding questions such as “where would it be located” is because it’s located in psychological (and not strictly physiological) phenotype. And this is a hefty topic, not too much unlike asking, “where is that emotion located?” (e.g., to dichotomize between conscious and unconscious locations would be a misplaced dichotomy).
Quoting Terrapin Station
Genetic abnormalities do complicate matters, granted, and in this view the issue is no longer white & black on either side. But say there is a person birthed devoid of capacity to sense physiological pain. I still would say that this capacity is nevertheless a universal human trait. You can argue that it isn’t. At the end of the day, though, do you perpetually question whether the individually person next to you is so endowed with this capacity?
It can get complicated in other ways as well: one can lose all sense of empathy as an adult due to horrendous experiences as a child; preadolescent bullies most always have a bad time at home, though most still hold onto some empathy.
Yet the same question can be brought up: do we as agents originate the reality of the Golden Rule individually and communally in manners in which the Golden Rule could fully vanish among the morality of people were all people to so will?
Quoting Terrapin Station
Anything. Just checked, this definition is accordant to definition 1.1 on Wiktionary--“ability to affect or influence”--as well as definition 1.2: “control or coercion” [emphasis on the “or”].
No equivocation on my part. Moral relativism addresses morality which is due to individual(s)’ ability to affect, influence, control, or coerce others (in this case, regarding that which is moral) – hence, ethics which is there due to power.
Then: the might (a term synonymous with power) to affect, influence, control, or coerce others makes right. More briefly: might makes right.
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Quoting Terrapin Station
Yes, as I’ve already stated. It would then be a human universal.
Descriptively it would be more like.
"it is believed that it a thing is right because the might makes it so"
The capacity for it, but again, I'd say that it doesn't occur if it's not conscious mental content.
Quoting javra
Not unless it seems like they aren't, but that doesn't imply that I assume that it's universal, and whether it's universal has nothing to do with whether it's objective, because even if it were universal, it would be a universal mental phenomenon, and by definition, that makes it subjective.
Quoting javra
Maybe I'm too tired at the moment, but I can't work out what this is asking. I'm getting lost in the prepositional phrases.
Quoting javra
The morality part is the judgments about/preferences of behavior part--not the actions part.
Do you think there is something beyond 'herd' morality? Or is this precluded in capitalistic societies where flourishing is conflated with economic success: ideal marriage, college education, perfect job, nice house and reasonable mortgage... the 'good' life rules.
It seems to me that relativism is the morality of the herd. If man has a human nature then I suspect that morality might be a salient characteristic in his nature. Kant choose reason, since it common to all men but he left the position/role of desire as only viable as part of our absolute duty to do good. If rules, like the Golden Rule, can be anthropologically supported, as the way humans in general have acted throughout time, regardless of context, then perhaps they can serve as basis for objective non-variant rules in morality.
Even under the view that what morality is relative to is individual disposition?
Quoting Cavacava
Why wouldn't that be a contingent matter in that case? It would be that humans have happened to believe/act that way, but not be that it's a metaphysical necessity for them to act that way. It would be metaphysically possible for there to be a human who doesn't believe in the golden rule or act per the golden rule.
Of course, that we'd be able to show that every human who has ever lived has believed in or acted per the golden rule is completely dubious, but assuming we could do that somehow, I don't see how we'd show that it was metaphysically necessary rather than just contingent. Can we empirically show that anything is metaphysically necessary for that matter?
The "individual disposition" is to a large extent a delusion, we are all part of a tribe, a city, a state, a nation; what and how we think are structured by these roots, whether we are aware of it or not. Again, its the 'Good' life that become the goal in a capitalistic society, and those who achieved it societal icons.
The ancient Egyptians had a version of the 'Golden Rule' according to Wikipedia. Do you think that certain behaviors speak to what man is. What is "metaphysical necessity"? Does metaphysical necessity mean every act is contingent, or are there causes. The idea that things that are a certain way, tend to act a certain way, which does not preclude the contingency of each act. [I am a compatibilist]
Do we have to show that every human being is rational? Or do you accept that reason is part of the accepted definition of what it means to be human. I an suggesting that if reason is part of 'human nature', then perhaps a non-variant objective morality may also be part of it.
It says nothing about what people ought to do to be moral.
Instead it is an attempt to describe why people believe that this or that is the moral thing to do.
It's the latter part that I have a problem with.
I did not realize there was such a thing as normative moral relativism, forgive my mistake.
An individual delusion?
So how would you explain this: we have a family with four siblings, who were all raised by the same parents, went to the same schools, the same churches, there was some overlap of friends, they mostly saw the same movies, none of them read many books, etc., and the issue of how it's ethically acceptable to deal with the perpetrators of a home invasion comes up, and one is a pacifist who says that under no circumstances is it okay to react with violence, and another says that it's okay to react only with sufficient force to subdue the perpetrators until the authorities can apprehend them (after you've called 911, of course), and the third says that it's okay to incapacitate them or even kill them so long as they're threatening you in any manner, and the fourth says that it's okay to shoot and kill them even prior to them even entering your home--as long as they're on your property you can shoot and kill them, just you should them drag them into your house and make them appear armed.
Quoting Cavacava
If x is metaphyically necessary, then it's not metaphysically possible to not-x.
Quoting Cavacava
If you're going to claim that not only was every human being who ever existed rational, but that it's a metaphysical necessity that they're rational, I would say yes, because the notion is implausible. There are human beings who existed who weren't rational--because they were born with severe brain abnormalities so that they were effective vegetables, for example. The same goes for the golden rule. There are clearly humans who don't or haven't subscribed to it.
Is the "ought" here a moral ought? So we (morally) ought to tolerate the behaviour of others because nobody is right or wrong. Which then also means that this moral claim is not (objectively) right or wrong.
It seems to me that meta-ethical moral relativism is inconsistent with normative moral relativism.
Let's call that "V."
I didn't see who said that, but it's not correct. What's almost always the case there is rather this: ethical objectivists/absolutists who think about moral subjectivism/relativism wind up believing V, because they have an unpacked assumption that only objective/absolute judgments justify uttering a judgment (where presumably what one is doing when uttering a judgment is trying to report the objective/absolute judgment correctly), and since there are no objective judgments under moral subjectivism/relativism, the natural upshot under this view is that there is no justification for uttering a judgment.
The problem with this, of course, is that moral subjectivists/relativists do not share that unpacked assumption, and it should be obvious that this is the case, because they do not believe that there are objective/absolute judgments in the first place, so they're not going to hinge anything on there being objective/absolute judgments.
Unsurprisingly, there's absolutely no reference in the Wikipedia article to anyone who considers themselves a moral relativist who says V.
There's a reference here to Wong, D.B., 1984, Moral Relativity, Berkeley CA: University of California Press. who argues for normative relativism. He derives this position from meta-ethical relativism and "the justification principle", the principle that "we should not interfere with people unless we could justify this interference to them".
Of course, it would seem that meta-ethical relativism undermines the justification principle (unless one accepts the justification principle as only being true relative to a particular society).
So we can say that in our society one ought be tolerant, but nothing can be said against any society that doesn't accept the justification principle.
Actually, according to the Stanford article, Wong doesn't actually endorse V. He thinks that interference can be justified It's just that he'd say it's not always justified. However, yeah, he appears to say that when it's not justified we shouldn't interfere.
In my opinion, I'd say that it's not clear that he's a moral relativist if he thinks that there's a non-relative principle about whether we should or shouldn't interfere with other moral stances.
My own view is that moral relativism as a philosophy is ultimately casuistic. Anyway - excuse my being caught up in a ‘run-on’ type sentence btw but, as an excuse - what a distracting 'Hornet's Nest', I'm sure you'd agree, this type of question really is!
There is nothing contradictory between a hierarchy of morals and there being an invariant, objective good. Most everything else in your comments is then superfluous to the issue. It can all go hand in hand with the reality of an objective good.
Think of it this way, to say that “might makes right” is not the correct description of metaphysical reality is not to deny that power-games are an integral staple of existence. But that’s rather obvious, isn’t it?
No I think we all act in or out of accordance with norms. The relationship of norms and our actions is one of authority/universal and responsibility/particular. All four of your siblings work from normative positions, while each has a difference stance, these stances in how you explained them all seem normative. If you measure up the actions of any group of individuals you will typically see a bell shaped distribution...the normal distribution.
How we act is a lot like how we fill in the conceptual rules we use to act. Similar to how a judge in common law decides a case by existing presidents and what he believes fits as a conclusion that falls in line with existing case law. We make a lot of these judgments every day and as I I have suggested most moral decisions require very little decision.
How we decided what to do changes our outlook, it changes our concepts in the same way a truly new work of art can instantly change the art world, a whole constellation of concepts. View points are critical. Hegel said:
This sounds like a stale polemic response.
Existential universality must be proven by exception. To say the person who has brain damage or other issues is less a person only proves the status of man as a rational being, because the exception here proves the rule. It is not a disproof, it is proof in my estimation.
With the first part, you didn't actually address, in my opinion, what I wanted you to address. Given your view that morality isn't relative to individual disposition and that it's rather a matter of transmission from social interaction or culture, how can you explain the four siblings with four very different views on the same moral question? I'd only count as an answer an explicit explanation of how the scenario would be possible under the view that morality isn't relative to individual disposition. If all they're doing is regurgitating what's been transmitted to them socially (whether by rote or where they have to piece things together), that they'd have four different answers would be inexplicable. So you need to explain how they could have four different answers.
Re the second part, no one said that anyone was "less of a person." Clearly, some humans are not rational, and some have not accepted the golden rule. So clearly both "all humans are x" in these respects and "it's metaphysically necessary to x" are wrong.
I said that all of the siblings in your example act normativley, I said the general population acts normatively, and their acts are not outside the normal distribution for such actions.
It's similar to voting. You have an individual vote to cast but a limited slate of candidates. You are no more responsible for the slate candidates then you are for the moral alternatives you have to choose from, which I think are provided by the dominant normative practices of your society (the herd).
In context, I have no idea what that means then. What does it mean?
Okay--so it's suggested by the herd on your view, but how is it determined?
Historically/genealogically as previously suggested in the judge example.
???
Sibling 1 is a pacifist. Sibling 4 is in favor of killing people just because they're on your property without permission.
In your view their different stances on this issue are suggested by the herd.
How are their different views determined however? Why is sibling 1 a pacifist while sibling 4 is in favor of killing someone just because they're on your property without permission? You're saying that those differences between siblings in the example I explained are determined "historically/genealogically as previously suggested in the judge example"? What different history/genealogy are we talking about?
If there are any normative moral relativists out there, I'd be fascinated to hear from them, since it seems to me that the putative worldview of this straw man category is self-contradicting.
Isn't Angela Merkel one of those?
I am suggesting that societal norms drive herd behavior, which is not to suggest that there are not outliers, but that vast majority don't actively consider their actions or goals for that matter they simply follow the herd, its accepted behavior. On a deeper level I think norms limit what we think about, even how we think. Kant didn't prove morality, he assumed its normative existence, he then distilled through his analytic regressive analysis the presumptive norms that drive moral actions.
You ask how an individual determines what to do. A person has many experiences and builds on these experiences all the time. To the extent that a new experience requires a response which may be beyond the range of prior experiences, I think we try to do as close to what we have done in the past as we can get, incorporation what we have read, seen or imagined (in a word what we know). Each new decision we make, changes our basis for making the next decision. There is a genealogy in such decisions, a history of behavior. This is why I gave the example of a Common Law judge. Common Law is built on precedents, not statute and each decision forms the basis for judicial consideration for the next case.
My point is that options for action (your 1-4 example) are limited by the normative environment where we have developed. We are limited by what we know and what we know we learn from what is taught to us in society. These limitations keep us going in the same direction as the rest of the herd.
So you'd say that sibling 1 versus sibling 4 must have read or been exposed to something different that they're effectively regurgitating?
Each has their own history, which provides direction and basis for the actions taken, what they do.
I like many though think the significance accorded to Nietzche's views to be spurious, his casuistic ideology having served in turn for instance to provide a pseudo-authenticity for Neo-Nazi ideology as it has currently been resurected by the extreme right - claiming as it does to constitute an ultimately 'invarient objective good' and using the tired old line to justify transgressing 'conventional' morality, "You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs"!
Okay, but what sort of history differences are you suggesting in this case? Let's be a little more specific.
So, in your view, there is no objective standard for right and wrong, it's merely a fact that the strongest impose their morality on the weaker? And you personally wouldn't impose any preference of your own on anyone else, because you believe that all preferences are equally valid?
This is what looks like a contradiction to me. I see people telling me that they are moral relativists, that that morality is only a matter of preference, but also they admit that they care very much about morality, and that they want to impose their preferences on others.
Or am I misreading that? Do moral relativists merely believe that moral relativism is a descriptive term, and accept whatever morality happens to be in place (purely descriptive, no attempt to impose their preferences on others)?
Do you actually make judgments? Or do you think about them and talk about how you feel? I thought THE difference between moral relativists and moral objectivist, is the claim by moral relativists that there is nothing wrong in and of itself... that all talk of morality is only talk about preferences. While moral objectivists believe that there is a way to judge between right and wrong. That some actions are wrong... (i.e. there is something wrong with people who kill for fun, vs. killing for fun is an acceptable preference). The moral objectivist believes that some people are mistaken about morality, while the moral relativist believes that it's only a matter of preference... a moral relativist couldn't be wrong about a preference. Actually, if morality IS a matter of preference, then no one could be wrong about a preference.
The way I see it, in very culture, there are moral disagreements. It sounds to me like moral relativists want me to believe that I should accept every act that anyone wants to perform (killing for fun), and just accept that that person just has different preferences... but when pressed they also speak of voting, and who is strongest.
It seems to me that we do make judgments and do decide what to allow or disallow. The question is... how do we decide? A moral relativist has one of 3 options.
1. the strongest make the rules
2. vote on it
3. allow all "preferences"
I don't see a good fit w/ relative morality as descriptive. It seems to me that people in general do believe that morality is objective. We think of making moral progress (a society w/o slavery is better than a society w/ slavery). We think of some moral attitudes as being wrong (slavery). We listen to unpopular reformers (because they convince us that we were wrong... but, we can make things right).
Rather than it being the case that relative morality is descriptive, it's rather the case that some people reject the idea that there could be objective moral principles (it's wrong to kill for fun) that some people get right and other people get wrong, because they (moral relativists) are convinced that morality IS and can only be a matter of preference.
You seem to be looking for reasons, but I don't think that is the way we react in circumstances such as you have outlined. The decision is more likely a reaction, and what I am saying is that however they react it will be based on a number of limited, socially accepted or rejected norms. Genealogical studies and arguments help disentangle reasons from causes. One reason why Nietzsche did a Genealogy of Morals, I think.
What I'm looking for is an explanation, under the umbrella of your view, and re specifics, how the siblings would wind up having such different stances. And I'm looking for that because I'm challenging the claim that it's explainable under your view.
I want to break this down into what I take to be the bare elements. There’s domination imposed upon sentience by sentience as a good, and then there’s egalitarianism as a good. The first can lead to enslavement and tyranny; the second can lead to peace, love, and understanding … also to democracy [something that to me is vastly different from mob-rule, i.e. mob tyranny].
Within moral relativism, whether domination of equalitarianism is good will be relative to opinion.
Within the framework of there being an objective good, the leading philosophical issue is which of the two equate to what is morally good. Here isn’t the problem of particulars but of what is the universal right/correct/non-fallacious good; otherwise stated, within this framework one of the two “oughts” is an illusory good (that leads to bad in the long term) and the other is real (a good that, where it not for bad intervening, would be a stable good in and of itself).
Both moral relativism and the upholding of an objective good have their own internal difficulties.
Again, though, it’s not in any way contradictory that there be an objective good and that multiple moralities co-occur.
To illustrate via use of a relatively weak argument that occurred in ancient western cultures: one can, as an example, simplistically argue that all bad (e.g., hatred, resentment, envy, etc.) stems from fear of good (i.e., love). It’s a simpleton/laconic argument, I acknowledge. Yet, even in its simplicity, it is noncontradictory to there being an objective good in conjunction with many mores/morals that are opposed to it. More complex arguments can at least potentially be brought up that, nevertheless, address the same pivotal relation between an objective good/right and an objective bad/wrong. (The objective bad/wrong being nothing else than an illusory, or fallacious, good/right).
For emphasis, I’m only arguing that an objective good is not contradictory to a hierarchy of morals.
Subjectivists do not say that one can be mistaken about morality or that one can be objectively wrong, of course, but why would that amount to not having preferences and making judgments that are expressions of those preferences?
Can you elaborate on the judgments you do make? Can you give me some examples?
Sure. For example, "Murder is wrong." "Rape is wrong." "Murderers and rapists need to be separated from the general population."
But, to continue, you do understand that we are up against people who do want to murder and rape, because, according to you, they have different preferences. So, why do you judge the preferences of not allowing rape and murder to be better than allowing rape and murder?
Yes.
Quoting anonymous66
I've never said anything like that, and in fact I've explicitly said a number of times that this describes no relativist/subjectivist in my view. It's rather a misunderstanding of relativism/subjectivism.
Quoting anonymous66
There's no contradiction there. There's only a misunderstanding based on a view that there needs to be an objective basis for judgments.
I explained this earlier. The might makes right thing is descriptive.
Actual moral judgments we make are not descriptive.
I think that the circumstance as you have described it, does not allow for much in the way of rational decision, rather I think that each one of the siblings reactions are based on their particular history. So any explanation of their action, which might be insightful, would have to delve into the particular history for each.
Tell me do you think that similar options would arise if the household were in Syria. The 911 call might not be one of them.
That question suggests that despite being an apparently competent speaker of English, you have no conception of what preferences are. I have preferences about murder and rape, and preferences about whether we should allow people to murder and rape. For some reason, you keep reading relativism/subjectivism as if it suggests that we'd have no such preferences.
You said this before, and so I asked you to give some specific examples of what you think would be different in their histories that would be behind the different responses.
Say one of the siblings had a friend whose home was invaded and parents killed, he starts a defense course, and starts reading about guns, he buys a handgun for protection because that is what you do, don't you when you fear such things. Watches Dirty Harry reruns. Your #3.
Okay but you're keeping in mind that they have some overlap of friends, they mostly see the same films, etc. right?
So you'd be arguing that minor differences, rather than parental influence, other elder influences--teachers, religious leaders, etc., shared friends, shared cultural experiences, etc. are what determine moral stances? Why would that be? It seems not only completely implausible, but it seems to negate the general theory that moral stances are transmitted by culture.
No, that is not what I am saying. You asked for a specific cause for #3's actions, of course there are a variety of factors, but the norms that drive these actions are those of a righteous sort of violence. The norms he assumes are there to be assumed, and he and others assume them. It is human nature to react to violence is some manner, but the range of these reactions are already available for adoption in culture and for the most part people do what other people do, they make it their own.
But the only differences available in this scenario are minor differences.
The problem I have is that you say you are an emotivist, but you also tell me you can make judgments about morality. It seems to me that emotivists can only tell me what they prefer (or as Ayer puts it, an emotivist would tell me about his emotional reaction). It seems to me that you do acknowledge that people do have disagreements, but according to emotivism, all disagreements are merely a difference of preference (or rather a difference in emotional reaction) I'm trying to determine what an emotivist would do with those differences.
Are you familiar with A. J. Ayer? He was an emotivist... Here's an article about his Emotivism.
and here are some criticisms...
First, you're not addressing the issue I brought up. You keep making comments about relativism/subjectivism as if we'd not be expressing preferences, including preferences about whether we should let people commit murders, for example.
Re your comment above, confusion is arising because of us using terms differently. You're apparently reading "judgment" so that it necessarily refers to assessing whether something is true or false. "Judgment" can be a lot broader than that--in common/colloquial usage, for example, and that's how I'm using it. When I say that I'm making a moral judgment, all that I'm referring to is that I'm expressing (or that I'm simply aware of) how I feel about the behavior in question. In other words, "yaying" or "booing" a la emotivism is making a judgment in this sense of judgment.
The same thing is apparently going on with "disagreement." You're presumably thinking that one can only disagree with someone else if the two people have different views of whether something is true or not, accurate or not. "Disagreement" can be broader than that, though. It can simply refer to people feeling differently about something.
In any event, what we need to focus on is why you can't get it through your head that relativists/subjectivists have preferences about behavior, inluding preferences about what behavior we should allow socially, and because they're preferences, they're not just going to sit on their hands and ignore them.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Okay, I'll take your word that some people who identify as emotivists/subjectivists/relativists aren't going to just sit on their hands. What would they do, instead of just sitting on their hands?
It seems to me that if one really believed that no one can be wrong about moral opinions, then one couldn't really do much of anything... Except...
1. believe that might makes right- that the strongest determine moral rules
2. vote on morality- believe that the majority determines what is moral
3. Accept that everyone has different views.
I want to just focus on this for a minute, because it's frustrating that you don't seem to be able to understand it. Why do you think that someone wouldn't try to shape things--culture, legislation, etc.--so that they're closer to their preferences?
Is that your answer? In your opinion culture and/or legislation determines what is moral?
Dude, I asked you a question. I'm starting to think that you're a troll.
Do you have an answer to the above? You insist that they would do something.. what would they do?
Can you respond like you're not a telemarketer?
I'll take that as a no.
In general, it can be said that moral objectivists believe there is an objective way to view morality... That morality is not determined by culture, or preference, or a majority. That there are objective moral principles that one can get right or wrong.
Moral subjectivists believe that the individual determines what is right or wrong. In that case, it's hard to see how anyone could be wrong about their opinion.
Moral relativists believe that one's culture determines what is right or wrong. Again, it's hard to see how a culture could be wrong about its moral views.
Emotivists believe that there is no way to determine right or wrong. that there is no truth about moral claims. . that we're all just expressing our emotional reactions when it comes to moral issues.
Is the definition of "morality" in your definitions descriptive or prescriptive? Generally, people who claim morals are not objective usually are using the word descriptively. So, when a cultural relativist states morality is determined by the culture, they are not saying that the individuals inside that culture are obligated to follow the moral norms of that culture, but rather are stating that what we call morality is determined by culture.
I have no issue with that, except that I'm not convinced that relative morality actually does describe, in general, what people think and how they act when morality is concerned, as I mentioned in another post.
I do obviously agree that some people are correct when they describe themselves as people who believe that morality is not objective.
If we are defining moral relativism as cultural relativism, I agree that it does not adequately describe how people think and act on a personal level, but, then, I'm not sure if that is what it strives to do. I think what it aims to do is describe morality in the same terms we would discuss other cultural practices like a historian or sociologist would. The cultural relativist is stating morality is like fashion or etiquette and varies from cultural framework to cultural framework. It doesn't really work as a pure meta-ethical stance because it doesn't handle deviants or extreme minorities in moral opinions very well, but it works as a desciption of morality in a general sense.
Right! It works from the viewpoint of a sociological description, but maybe not as a means to set the moral compass.
I agree that cultures (and individuals) disagree about morality. I can accept that without being a moral relativist (or subjectivist, or emotivist), I can accept that there are disagreements about morality without making the claim "all morals are relative to___".
I can accept that people disagree about any subject X without being a relativist about that subject.
It doesn't look to me like it works as a description of morality in a general sense.
It doesn't explain the idea of moral progress. Or why people listen to unpopular moral reformers. Or why people even make judgments about morality. (if people truly believed that morality was relative, then they would believe that others couldn't be wrong- if morals are relative, then the others aren't wrong. They just hold different views that are right... from the others' perspective. If they accept that the others are right, then by why would they care what they think?).
Quoting Chany
People don't act like they believe that morality is like etiquette or fashion. They act like they believe that morality is something so important that differences can't just be accepted (like differences in etiquette or fashion are accepted.)
You're assuming that everyone is going to see moral right/wrong as a statement about objective properties.
As previously stated, I don't very much care for cultural relativism, though this is more because of the "cultural" part, as there are subcultures and radical individuals that the theory does not account for to be considered complete in my eyes, as well as other problems like viewing morality as purely social. Rather, it only works in the language of a sociologist, describing what groups of people consider good behavior. Since what I will say applies to the majority of nonobjective meta-ethical stances, I will stop referring to cultural relativism specifically and talk about these positions more generally.
First, none of nonobjective moral positions I am aware of state that everyone will accept the truth of their position. These positions can hold the majority of people will believe morality is objective. Second, compare morality to a similar concept in the study of value theory: aesthetics. There are a lot of groups of people who argue that aesthetic qualities are objective (in some sense of the word, "objective"), that a particular painting is objectively bad and that people ought to respond to it as bad. Beauty is a real objective property that certain objects possess. Now, there are people who dispute this notion; they claim that aesthetic values are ultimately subjective. They may say that, due to our shared nature as human beings, that we tend to find certain things pleasant, but ultimately what we get out of aesthetics is subjective. Certain people have certain tastes and that is all there is to it.
This does not stop these people from arguing over aesthetics, saying "that was a bad movie", arguing against paintings in their dorm room because they find these paintings ugly, commenting on how art affects people generally, and such. This also does not mean that whenever people see something they aesthetically disagree with, they do not shrug their shoulders and cease to care. They may, for whatever reason, try to actively or passively oppose certain artworks, particularly if the art is public in nature and they cannot avoid the art. Subjective aesthetics also does not mean that trends can change over time, that art once considered bad and unpopular becomes popular and even considered the new "normal."
The parallels to morality are obvious. The reason it is more acceptable to say aesthetics are subjective is that, at least in the present time, not as much rides on our conceptions of what is good art. However, a large amount of our lives revolves our personal morality and the moral system that is accepted by the larger society. Most people can't act like morality is subjective and take a live-and-let-live conception of morality because no matter what, people have to live under moral systems. How this world views morality, what it permits and what it allows, directly affects what we care deeply about. Moral progress can simply be viewed as moral change with general trends based on prior moral views. It should be no surprise that we see the progression from the past to the present as progress; this is not due to some continued march towards moral perfection, but rather us seeing the past historical events that chronologically lead up to the current state of affairs. Moral reformers may start the trends we call moral progress, but some (I would venture most) of what we call unpopular moral reformers simply were ignored by the larger population.
To repeat what Terrapin Station stated, you are claiming believing nonobjective moral stances necessitates not caring about morality discussions anymore. It is like expecting all nihilists to cease to perform all actions because they think their life has no objective meaning.