Well, surely all but perhaps members of the most hardened orthodox monocultures agree with some degree of relativism. You don’t seriously expect anyone to believe that you honestly propose that all humans be clones of yourself with all the exact same thoughts, beliefs, and preferences, do you?
Didn’t think so. So you’re a relativist too. Where the debate comes in is, which things, and to what degree, can we say that things are either inherent or subject to personal preference?
Then we get into the other important category besides inherent goodness or personal preference: context.
So for example, drawing an ace is “good” for the purpose of the the goal of winning a card game. But you can’t say that drawing an ace is “good” outside of the context of card games.
A more difficult example: killing. Surely killing is never “good” right? On the other hand, what about pulling the plug on someone in horrible pain? Killing animals for food? Defending yourself or your country from attack?
Many supposedly good goals, such as, preserving life, preventing suffering, being intellectually honest, obeying your parents, freedom, honesty, providing food and shelter, often conflict with each other in ordinary circumstances.
And of course, some goals are even self-conflicting. In order to preserve ten lives, you may be forced to take one.
So you can see, no thing has inherent goodness. Things only have goodness with regard to their ability to further goals.
And even the goals themselves cannot be said to be inherently good - there are many possible candidates for worthwhile goals, but they can all potentially conflict with each other or even themselves.
Then of course we get to the specific controversy of cultural relativism. Of which there are:
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Anthropological - I think this one is important - you can’t study something properly without impartiality
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Political - It’s important to note that while hard relativism says that nothing is inherently “better” than anything else, it doesn’t actually say that there is any reason not to act to further your own preferences.
So while raping little girls is not inherently “worse” than protecting them, it is of course at odd with the goals of gender equality, bodily privacy, preventing suffering, maintaining the innocence of children, etc. In those places or for those people for whom other goals take precedence, it may be considered “good” for their goals of power, or sexual satisfaction, or transferred revenge, etc.
I of course, prefer protecting little girls from rape. And I support taking action against other people and cultures that are a party to it. But I don’t believe that most of them consider themselves to be doing “wrong”. They are merely pursuing the goals and values which they consider to be important.
Now of course, while things don’t have inherent goodness, most people are very adverse to pain, suffering, and death, plus they are hardwired with their mirror neurons to naturally imagine how others are feeling or would feel. So there is a solid basis for certain preferences to be more statistically likely.
Which gets us to the social contract. It’s fun to think of people caring about others, and many of course, do. But even in the total absence of that, we could still have a nice society for ourselves with the social contract. By not doing the things we don’t want have done to us, we silently communicate the kind of world we want to live in. The social contract, or golden rule, allows us to align with the majority of people with common goals or preference to create the kind of experience we want.
I think probably the most encompassing goal is freedom. Of course, freedom comes in three flavors, and these flavors can conflict:
- Freedom to choose
- Freedom to have
- Freedom from
I think it’s very brave, to give such consideration and respect to the worth of human beings very different from yourself as to reexamine your own long term values and preferences.
I kind of thought the whole point of relativism was that there is no innate morality. Just because there is no morality does not mean that there is no basis for ones actions. There are still preferences and goals.
