Following the advice of Arnold Winkelried, here’s a spinoff debate thread. I had said that that Pinochet’s atrocities in Chile were trivial compared with the atrocities committed by communism. Fiver responded
Dr. Ennig responded
My contention is that moral relativism is necessary and appropriate. E.g.[li]It’s appropriate to have automobiles, even though traffic accidents cause over 30,000 US deaths per year. []It’s approprate to do medicine, even though medical treatment kills a certain number of patients.[]It may be necessary to ally with an evil country when fighting a war against more evil country.[/li]
I can connect with Fiver’s and Doc’s position on an emotional level. One ought to have sympathy for every victim. However, emotion cannot replace policy analysis.
The trouble with sympathy is that it tends to be focused on just a few problems. Further, that focus can be manipulated. E.g.,
[li]A gun opponent can focus on gun accidents, but ignore deaths prevented by guns []A conservative can focus on crimes against the right, while ignoring crimes committed by the right.[]A Luddite can focus on the risk of eating genetically modified foods, even though that risk is tiny.[/li]
So, my thesis is: Clear thinking requires moral relativism.
Well, you’ve certainly given us a good example of fuzzy thinking, but it’s not quite the way in which you intended, I think.
december, moral questions only come into play when there is either an “immoral” situation for which a remedy is available, or a clear choice of actions, one or more of which will cause “bad” things to happen. Let’s take a look at your examples.[ul][li]Use of motor vehicles for transportation: The moral questions here concern individual choices in driving habits, and governmental choices in regulation and infrastructure maintenance. The collective decision to “allow” automobiles is not a case of moral relativism; it’s an application of cost-benefit analyses and the ethics of public mobility.[]Medical practice: Attempts to cure diseases and repair injuries are clearly moral. There are ethical considerations in the practice of medicine, but again, no moral relativism.[]War-time alliances: In general, limited political alliances work toward expressed objectives. The morality of those alliances depends entirely on those objectives, and on the terms of each alliance. You can certainly find historical examples of moral relativism in action here, but they’re all examples of why it’s a bad thing.[/ul][/li]
Clear thinking requires consistent application of ethics and a clear understanding of moral considerations. Justifying one set of atrocities because they were conducted by an opponent of a system which conducted atrocities on a larger scale is neither ethically consistent nor morally considerate.
Interesting premise. My take is that, while moral relativism is necessary for clear thinking, it is not sufficient for clear thinking. Different perspectives provide different information, and as a rule decisions are best made with a maximum of information. Therefore, it is necessary to consider both relative and absolute positions when making decisions.
From a relativistic standpoint, what you said is true. But from an absolutistic (is that a word?) standpoint, 30,000 deaths a year is a bad thing, and we should take steps to reduce that number.
[QUOTE] Originally posted by december *
My contention is that moral relativism is necessary and appropriate. E.g.[li]It’s appropriate to have automobiles, even though traffic accidents cause over 30,000 US deaths per year. []It’s approprate to do medicine, even though medical treatment kills a certain number of patients.It may be necessary to ally with an evil country when fighting a war against more evil country.[/li][/quote]
Sure, but this isn’t moral relativism. Moral relativism would take the form of there always being an moral solution to a particular problem, that is, based on the context. Moral absolutism says that things are moral or imooral regardless of context.
As you mentioned in this quote, “It may be necessary to ally with an evil country.” What makes them evil if you’re going to ally with them? It seems you are more like me. You realize that there isn’t always a moral out; that is, that in every situation it is not guaranteed that there will be a moral choice possible.
It doesn’t require one to be clear or fuzzy to make a statement for either camp. I lean more towards the absolutist side, personally, but whatever.
This isn’t moral relativism, this is pragmatism or utilitarianism.
The problem with moral relativism is that it requires personal interpretation of context, which then paves the way for rationalization of actual ethical and moral choice/responsibility.
Just thought I’d throw that out there. Moral relativism != utilitarianism, and no moral system mentioned so far in this thread implies automatically a fuzzy logic.
I agree with (what I believe to be) the OP, though I’m not up on the exact meaning of the term “moral relativism” and don’t wish to debate this angle. What is true is that one is sometimes forced to decide between two unpleasant outcomes - to chose the lesser of two evils. This in itself implies that a value can be assigned to each evil, and the one deemed less evil chosen. If all evil is deemed to be equally evil, no such decision would be possible.
To use december’s example, if a choice must be made between a policy that will cause the death of 100,000 people and a policy that will cause the death of 200,000 people, most people would agree that the correct choice is that which will cause the death of 100,000. This implies that 100,000 is deemed to be a lesser evil than the death of 200,000. It would follow that someone who kills 100,000 people has perpetrated a lesser evil than someone else who has killed 200,000.
Or does it? This was debated long ago in Star Trek II Wrath of Khan, et al.
Seriously though, isn’t moral absolutism morality in a vacuum? e.g. like arguing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin? and not useful in nature?
You do remember World War 2? You know, the one where we were allied with the Soviet Union (among other countries) against Nazi Germany? I’m sure that’s what december had in mind.
december, when I asked in that other thread if you were joking, I was referring to your attempt to use mathematics to say one form of government was “X” times more evil than another. By your method, Ted Bundy was 28 times more evil than John Wilkes Booth! (Bundy confessed to 28 murders, though he may have committed more. AFAIK, Booth killed only one person.) There are some questions mathematics cannot answer. Morality is one of them. All murderers are evil, no matter how many people they have killed.
I’m sure I could grasp the anology. My point was that they were evil, as well, which was noted.
The question, “Is it right to kill one man?”
The absolutist (me): “Never.”
The relativist: “How many more will die if we don’t?”
The utilitarian: “Is the result of his death better than if he lives?”
Jab, your statement, “All murderers are evil, no matter how many they killed,” is exactly the kind of statement that gets tangled in these sorts of things. Is self-defense murder? Wartime killing? Legal system enforcement? If all murderers are evil, how relative is that?
Are all moral judgements relative? That is, a country which massacres 50,000 of its residents is less evil than one who massacres 75,000, but is that enough of a spread to justify allying with one to vanquish the other? Of course, in practice it would rely on the context since that is the basis for the relativism.
Indeed, if moral relativism is true any explicit legal system which attempts to base judgement on morality is in error, or at least not completely suited to the society which it regulates.
I have no beef with moral relativity. I just find problem with the notion that non moral realitivists are fuzzy thinkers. Reminds me of some people saying atheists have no morals.
I also wanted to add that moral relativism isn’t necessary in a pluralistic society. I just found a pretty good article about it which focuses on the abortion issue here.
The author makes a rather strong claim at the end by saying that philosophers “almost unanimously” reject moral relativism which I think is a little off base. But I will stand by the view that you don’t have to be an idiot to be an absolutist. In fact, it doesn’t even help.
Thank you Guin for illustrating the point of this thread. Why are you so focused on Pinochet, who has been out of power for years? Yet you didn’t express any concern about communism, even though a billion people in China, Cuba and North Korea are unlucky enough to be burdened with that system right now.
Did you read about the massacre in rural China about a month ago, when soldiers fired into a crowd of farmers demonstrating against high taxes? Do you care that people in North Korea are starving? Are you interested in the thousands of political prisoners is Cuba?
I could mock you too, if we pubbies weren’t so nice.
First of all, it is not so clear that we are the ones who are so damn focussed on Pinochet. It is not like we are going around spontaneously starting threads about how evil that Pinochet was. We are just reacting to attempts at revisionist history.
Second, as I pointed out in a previous thread on this subject, the big difference is the extent to which the atrocities occurred because of the complicity of our government (for those of us on this board who are Americans). That is a very important difference! I suppose one can make the case for a certain amount of complicity in the case of China, which we are in bed with for economic reasons…but certainly not for Cuba and North Korea (except to the extent that our extreme and disproportionate isolationist policies towards them, at least Cuba, have probably prolonged the rule of the very people we vilify).
[QUOTE]
First of all, it is not so clear that we are the ones who are so damn focused on Pinochet. It is not like we are going around spontaneously starting threads about how evil that Pinochet was. We are just reacting to attempts at revisionist history.**
Guinastasia brought Pinochet into the discussion in the predecessor thread.
**Second, as I pointed out in a previous thread on this subject, the big difference is the extent to which the atrocities occurred because of the complicity of our government (for those of us on this board who are Americans). That is a very important difference! **
jshore, what an interesting and deep concept. It raises the question of sins of omission vs. sins of commission. Should the US have done more to overthrow the governments of the PRC, Cuba and North Korea?
Arguably jshore’s philosophy may be too inward-looking. It focuses on US actions, rather than the victims. The 100 million murder victims would still be dead if the US had supported communism rather than oppose it.
I also wonder whether jshore’s philosophy is essentially an excuse for finding fault with right-wing baddies while excusing or ignoring left-wing baddies. Hmmm…
I tend to be a moral absolutist. If something is wrong, it is always wrong, always has been wrong, and always will be wrong, regardless of social customs, mors, etc.
Example: Slavary was once common practice. We have since become enlightened to the fact that it is wrong. That doesn’t mean it was right before, It just means that a lot of people were doing evil things in the past.
The problem with moral relativism is that it becomes a slipery slope defining evil based on what fits our objectives and motives at a given point.
Example: Forcing Japanese-Americans into internment camps during WW2 in the interest of “national security”. Well, what’s the point of securing a nation where you can be grabbed of the street and sent to a prison camp just for your background?
What you’re describing (just FYI, since you don’t want to debate this point) is not “moral relativism.” Moral relativism would be thinking that killing 100,000 people is wrong if it’s in the name of ABC-ism, but just peachy if it’s for the sake of XYZ-ism. Believing that killing 100,000 people, though generally evil, can be justified if it means you don’t “have” to kill 100,000 more is called “situational ethics” (on a grand scale).
I think your example of “two choices” (100K deaths vs. 200K deaths) is missing the alternate choice which always exists and is also missing a requisite consideration. Moral choices come in two basic flavors: either one must decide whether to pursue an action which might cause evil, or one must decide whether to pursue action to try and prevent evil.
If we imagine a situation where a country is presented with Option A, in which 100,000 deaths are expected, and Option B, with 200,000 expected, we must also imagine that there is an objective to these actions. If the objective is not to prevent a greater evil (say, just for drama, the destruction of Earth’s entire biosphere), then both options are immoral, and the objective should not be pursued (the unstated Option C). If the objective is to prevent a greater evil, then the moral decision would not only be based on the scale of the consequences, but also on the effectiveness of the actions toward the objective, and no moral relativism will have come into play.
Where did I say I wasn’t concerned about the attrocities being committed in China or communist countries?
I don’t like communism-I hate communism, and I’m very much against it. That being said, I was merely pointing out that just because China is bad, doesn’t excuse anything by say, a Noriega.
One of my dearest professors spent some time in the gulags in the early 1980s. The stories he told me made my hair stand on end. YET…the fact that so many people rant and rave about the communist attrocities, but turn a blind eye to the ones committed right on our doorstep, and with OUR tax dollars.
I think I understand your post, but yet don’t see any connection to anything I’ve said (or anyone else).
I don’t see where anyone has said - and can’t imagine that anyone would say - that the crimes of communism would excuse or cancel out the (unconnected) crimes of dictators. Still, you can compare the evils of the two systems and determine that one of these is the lesser of two evils.
I’ll tell you why. Because the Communists had announced their intention to spread Communism all over the world, and had already had significant success in doing so. By contrast, there was no movement of thuggish dictators dedicated to spreading thuggish dictatorships all over the world. Most people are far more horrified at atrocities that they are worried might happen to themselves - and rightfully so.
Now that the USSR has fallen and Communism is in retreat, there’s been a lot less focus on the horrors of Communism.
