Taking a stand on moral relativism

Great Debates
101

Re: Matt

I’d say the sexual jealousy trait isn’t ‘evolved’, but is simply a mechanism of our monogamous marriage system. Or even our marriage system alone. That is to say, unless you can prove to me our marriage system is purely an evolutionary characteristic, then the sexual jealousy trait has nothing to do with evolution.
Of course you’re right about the giant clam thing, but…, that would be expected.
In America, it’s not uncommon to put your parents in nursing homes as they get older. While not a strict question of morals, this is considered socially acceptable. In Taiwan however this idea is rare, and not generally a widely accepted way of taking care of your elders. Is this because the Taiwanese people evolved differently that they have this point of view? No. It’s simply a cultural difference. Evolution has little to do with moral systems.
Eris

After re-reading the OP for the whatever-eth time…
Perhaps a better way to pursue the OP is to begin suggesting reasons why other alternatives to moral relativism might have reason to not believe in moral relativism.
The only problem I find with this is that there aren’t too many schools of thought in this area, and it’s hard to say whether all the schools would be exclusive of eachother. I’d also venture to say that some of the people asserting their distaste for moral relativism in your OP aren’t entirely sure what it means. Not that they’re necessarily unintelligent, just that they had a different understanding of it than what it actually is.

102

dakravel said:

"That is to say, unless you can prove to me our marriage system is purely an evolutionary characteristic, then the sexual jealousy trait has nothing to do with evolution."

Heh. Can’t do that, nor do I believe it.

I don’t want to highjack the OP too far with this. My position is that our behaviour is to some extent influenced by our genes, just as our physiology is. We have in-built drives, “carrots” and “sticks”, that influence our behaviour. E.g. both the pain of “hunger” and the pleasure of “satiation” act to cause us to eat, which is a necessary survival strategy for both individuals and species. A being that took no pleasure in eating and felt no hunger while starving would probably be chronically malnourished, and be reproductively less successful.

Where we will probably disagree however, is that I also regard e.g. the pleasure we take in each others company, and the pain of “loneliness”, as similarly inbuilt drives that act to cause us to bond and co-operate, again as a survival strategy. Also embarassent, guilt, jealousy, disgust, territoriality, xenophobia and a whole bunch of others. Emotional tools that make us work together in groups, compete against other groups, pair bond long enough to raise our helpless young, etc. And these inbuilt drives form a framework upon which our various cultures build, and they will play a part in the development of our moral codes.

Back to sexual jealousy - what is jealously? It is a very specific kind of pain, quite unlike physical pain, or shame, or thirst, which are also kinds of pain. Where does the capacity to feel this particular pain come from? Why is it different from thirst evolving to make us attempt to drink, jealousy evolving to make us attempt to monopolise our sexual partners? Both will favour the passing on of our genes, after all.

103

I live in Canada. We also have a government, of sorts. Some laws, even.:slight_smile: But I can’t agree that laws and morals are automatically and exactly equivalent, which is what you seem to be saying.

For instance, until quite recently, only a heterosexual couple could be legally married in Canada. That has changed as a result of decisions made by the judicial systems of British Columbia and Ontario and now there are homosexual couples who are legally married.

Is sexual orientation a moral issue, or choice? I don’t believe it is, any more than eye colour is. To my moral sense, my country’s laws were immoral in their discrimination based on sexual orientation. This was and is my moral opinion, which, as far as I know, was and is quite legal to have here in Canada. My moral opinions, my ideas of morality are not, of course, shared by all Canadians. Yet we live under the same laws.

Yes, following or obeying rules, ideals and laws put forth for any reason, especially rules, ideals or laws which are purported to be for the good of the people, simply because they exist as artifacts of the society in which one lives is to approach one’s life as a bit of machinery which can do neither wrong nor right, but only what it is designed to do. There is no room there for even the concepts of personal responsibilty or accountability. They are no more applicable to such an existence than they are to the existence of the keyboard on which I’m tapping out this reply.

Having an active standard of morality, or an active moral system – being a moral agent, as erl puts it – implies IMHO the ability, the willingness and the responsibility to question one’s own actions and inactions, as well of those of the rest of the world – including the society of which one is a part; the willingness to be to be accountable.

The idea of dissent, or questioning is, I’d say, pretty central to moral relativism. When we question, we are open to change, to learning something new, to becoming something more, or something different than we have always been.

104

Social customs are not the same things as moral systems.

105

Neither is molecular biology.

106

Hmmm, I’d think it would be more accurate to say that social customs are not necessarily the same things as morals.

I don’t necessarily believe that marriage or sexual orientation have anything to do with morality.

But to deny people the right to one based on the other has everything to do with the overall moral system of Canada, as well as with the personal moral systems of each of its citizens. To overturn that denial and allow people the right to one regardless of the other seems to me to be an example of awareness of moral failing and of the willingness and flexibility to change in light of that awareness.

To sum up with my own one-liner: Moral relativism allows moral systems to remain relevant.

107

Question: by what standards can a moral system be said to have failed?

108

Answer: By the standards of whoever is appraising the moral system.

109

Some of you seem to want it both ways: you want people’s individual perceptions to determine what is morally valid, but you don’t want people to behave in a manner consistent with that principle.

Aren’t we missing a very basic point, here? If we accept that people’s perceptions of what is valid determines the validity of moral systems, then whatever determines people’s perceptions determines the validity of moral systems.

Finally, if morality is truly in the eye of the beholder, why are we bothering to debate it?! The only thing we could ever demonstrate is that some of us think the same way.

110

Huh?

Not if the moral system comes from a social-cum-cultural custom like religion or societal customs like laws. Morals needn’t come exclusively from subjectivism—that’s just my own views, which I can more or less justify to varying degrees of success.

The point of relativism is that morality can’t be said to be “truly” anything.

111

** Everyone is making the assumption that “respecting the beliefs of others” is the correct thing to do, but the idea that correctness depends on individual perception doesn’t require that. The position that we don’t have to respect the differing views of others is perfectly valid according to this criteria.

** That doesn’t remove the problem at all – what validates the societal traditions?

Wonderful. Now we have an empty word instead of a perfectly servicable concept.

112

Not by my reckoning. Recognizing what drives terrorists to detonate bombs is not condoning or even respecting that action. Why would it be?

Perhaps nothing; justifications have to come to an end somewhere, after all.

Why is it empty? Electrons are electrons, they aren’t anything else. Is the concept “electron” empty?

113

Look… The whole idea that morality is determined by evolution is worse than absurd; it’s entirely nonsensical. Yes, evolution may have given us our ability to reason, but after that we came up with morality on our own. Just as we’ve come up with standards with regard to what is “good” art, music, architecture, literature, or any other human endeavor. General (though not “absolute”) moral precepts can certainly exist, but they derive from logic and reason. Yes, one can argue that we only have logic and reason because of evolution, but that doesn’t make evolution the direct cause of these precepts.

And the argument that morality can’t be decided by majority rule is nothing more than a straw man. Nobody is arguing that morailty is whatever the largest number of people accept as valid. Somebody made the comment that if everybody accepted that a certain action was moral it would be, by definition, moral. That is not the same as saying, though, that actions become more moral the more people accept them as moral. And, since there will never be a case where everybody in the world agrees on anything, the whole issue is pointless.

Finally, as to the statement, “Everyone is making the assumption that ‘respecting the beliefs of others’ is the correct thing to do,” I once again cry bollucks! I, for one, am certainly not making that assumption. Understanding the underlying reasons for the beliefs of others is the correct thing to do. Once you understand the underlying reasons for a belief system, you are then able to judge whether those reasons are valid or not. And yes, in some cases, this means accepting that a particular society has a valid reason for having a different moral code than what you would otherwise consider to be “correct.” In other cases, however, this means rejecting that society’s moral code as not supported by any valid reasons.

As I’ve stated over and over again in this thread, moral relativism does not necessarily mean accepting any moral code as equally valid. “Respecting the beliefs of others” is just as bad as trying to apply one society’s moral codes on another society without regard to the second society’s unique circumstances. Moral relativism, at least the way I’m defining it, means coming up with general principles that can be applied to most situations, and then realizing that exceptions need to be made in other situations.

Barry

114

** How is understanding the motivation of, say, terrorists, an example of moral relativism?

** There’s a difference between recognizing that past a certain point, trains of causation are both infinite and unknowable, and leaving a train of causation hanging in empty air.

Electrons are well-defined theoretical constructions, all of which are related but not necessarily identical (for reasons of convenience).

If morality can’t be said to be “truly” anything, it’s a label that isn’t attached to any concept.

115

Not at all. Evolution is the only standard that morality can reasonably be judged by.

Which is of course why extremely young children have highly developed sense of “fairness”, why basic conceptions of fairness and justice are virtually universal (although specifics admittedly do vary), and why certain moral principles appear to exist in all human cultures…

** Most of those are arbitrary. We can argue whether a piece of art is “good” as an example of its type – but there are standards that define that.

There’s quite a bit of evidence suggesting that the fundamentals of music are universal among humans. Again, regional styles and traditions of music vary, but the mathematical relationships are always the same. Additionally, the aspects of music that induce emotion seem to induce the same sorts of emotional responses regardless of culture once factors like familiarity are accounted for.

And there most certainly are objective standards for architecture – but perhaps it would be more accurate to use the term “architectural engineering”.

Why not absolute?

** Evolution selects among moral systems – some lend themselves to transmission, some don’t. Some tend to preserve the societies that have them, and some don’t.

** Error: invalid argument from probability. It is not at all impossible for everyone to agree, merely extremely improbable.

The claim itself is wrong. If everyone accepted something as moral, that would mean only that everyone agreed.

Why? According to what standards?

** Then either my sense of what’s “correct” contradicts what is valid – and I’m using a system I explicitly recognize is invalid – or the definition of validity is wrong.

** Again, what are valid reasons? How do you determine what valid reasons are?

** In your earlier example of leaving the elderly out to die, aren’t the cultures involved attempting to reduce human suffering? Isn’t that also the motivation of the culture that refuses to kill the elderly? If the people from the second culture were placed in the circumstances of the first, wouldn’t the first strategy be the “correct” one?

And given that such is the case, aren’t both cultures really following the same rules, merely applying them to different circumstances?

Invalid claim. Exceptions “need” to be made only if the principles fail according to even higher principles. Why do exceptions need to be made?

116

It isn’t; it is an example of a facet of a different moral system.

We’re not discussing causality, we’re discussing justifications, specifically moral justifications which, like all justifications, are ultimately founded on things which cannot themselves be justified. If you feel this is “hanging in the air”, well, ::shrug::

It is a concept: the concept of what a person should do. What label do you attach to “what a person should do”?

117

As far as I can see, the only reason to disagree with moral relativism is if you don’t accept the assumptions necessary. The one most commonly rejected is the second assumption, meaning there is a privileged moral system, that is to say, one that is right in itself (for some reason).

118

I am not sure what you hope to gain by continuing to point to objective standards. An objective standard is, for example, a standard of measurement. A standard of measurement will not determine how long a driveway will be, it will only measure it. Similarly, we might appeal to objective facts about human psychology, physiology, and so on, in determining some morals. This does not guarantee us that there exists only one moral system, however; it merely gives those of us who accept those means of justification a common frame on which to base discourse on the matter of ethics. Why we should even have these as measures of morals is itself a moral question.

Assuming this is true (and I strongly hesitate to, it is a strange hypothetical to me)…like evolutionary traits (that is, genetic traits), the only ones selected are selected against. Morals that develop may, in fact, have no impact on survival, in which case they would be carried on as well. This will give us a variation of morals: multiple moral systems with no way to select among them ourselves.

119

Not at all. Reason and logic are the only standards that morality can reasonably be judged by.

Your turn.

Barry

120

** But this is incorrect. Valid justification chains are founded on things that don’t need justification.

To do what?

Of course, this is a trick question.