Is there someone who would say that this is wrong?
The hungry children of the baker who had to sell the bread in order to afford the next batch of flour, eggs and fuel for the oven.
Inspector Javert, for one. Although Monsieur Valjean would disagree.
Ok, um…I don’t know who they are.
Not at all. It fits well. 
The “brand” of relativism I was introduced to would attack this question on two points.
First point: you didn’t specify who said it was wrong.
Second point: it surely wasn’t the Nazi’s.
People arguing against moral relativism want a standard they can push above others to make “safe” moral judgments. I find it wholly unilluminating and completely obvious that the standard they push is their own.
I think Nazi’s were wrong. I’d have killed them for it were I a soldier in WWII.
My brand of relativism: I am a moral agent; I make the moral choices, I choose the moral system(s); all moral decisions I make are relative to me. I cannot answer all moral questions. Relative to other standards, different questions may be answered. My capacity for empathy will drive the base of which relative standards I choose. Further to that end, on a more general basis all moral judgments are relative to the system that spawned them. Moral systems can only be compared by already being inside a moral system. There is no escape from relativism.
Appeal to culture is often given as the only justifiable end of moral analysis re: relativism. While I admire the bravery of the person to propose it, I think this form of relativism has taken enough beatings to render it at best an incomplete analysis. The limitations of human cognition and knowledge, the varied systems which determine what metaphysical and empirical facts go in to making moral judgements, the culture we were raised in both in a large sociological sense and a smaller family sense (among an entire spectrum of social groupings), are all a part of the analysis.
One thousand red chinese can’t be wrong, especially if we only ask them. But you aren’t asking them, you’re asking me. Why would you then be so surprised if the moral judgment was also with respect to me? If you didn’t want it relative to me, why didn’t you just pull out a diving rod or seek an oracle? (Of course, then the answer would only be relative to those devices—the weakness of moral absolutism is grounded in epistemological limitations, though there may be other sources that cripple it.)
Sorry, Lord Ashtar. I was waxing literary. They’re characters in Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables. Jean Valjean goes to jail for five years for stealing a loaf of bread (he actually spent nineteen years there, but that’s not relevant here). Once he gets out, Javert is a long-running thorn in his side, pursuing him relentlessly for years once he violates his parole and goes into hiding.
All over a loaf of bread to feed a starving child.
hansel, you’re doing an excellent job of arguing my side, so I don’t feel the need to go into detail.
However, consider…
The other day I was looking through the gummit’s enormous list of terrorist organizations and noticed that the Islamic Jihad is also known as the “Organization of Right Against Wrong”. Thus I thought of that immediately upon reading the thread title. If that concept doesn’t indicate the vastly different perspectives people hold of “right” and “wrong”, it’s difficult to imagine one that does.
It would seem to be wise of us to avoid similar hardline notions of moral certainty.
Thank you, mrblue92.
Eris, you should pick up some Charles Taylor, who would argue that your relativism is correct, except that you cannot separate yourself from your culture and history, which limits and defines the realm of the possible for you. You are a prisoner of your location in space-time, and your relativism is dependent upon that, not upon your autonomy as a moral agent.
erislover, even Nazis would have said that the Holocaust was wrong (assuming full information). Even slaveholders knew that slavery was wrong; e.g., Thomas Jefferson. If their internal moral systems are incoherent or wrong even by their own reckoning, then why do I have to say “oh, I think that slavery is wrong, but that’s just my opinion”? So, hansel, I’ve made a second-order judgment. (Or if not, I’m at least comfortable in saying that there’s far less disagreement about morality than we might think simply by pointing out Nazis and slaveholders.)
I think what’s going on here – and if I’m wrong, please correct me – is that moral relativists reject the idea that we can be objective when speaking about morality. Am I misunderstanding you, erislover, if I say that you believe that moral judgments are inescapably subjective? Say, as opposed to statements about chemistry and physics, which are not inescapably subjective? I’m not sure if I’m getting this point right. Is the idea that all moral judgments really rely on intuitions and that when we make moral judgments about other people we’re guilty of projection? And that when a group of likeminded people – let’s call them a “culture” or “society” – do the same, they too are making intuitive judgments, and are guilty of projecting if they make these sorts of judgments about other cultures or societies?
Assuming that the above is correct, I think that the analogy between science and morality is a fruitful one. It seems to me that moral relativists often use the words differently: “science” is a normative word and “morality” is a descriptive word (at least as used in this thread). By saying that “science” is a normative word, I mean that there’s some sort of evaluation implicit in the use of the word that restricts the word’s application. For example, to be a “science,” the thing so labeled must be logically consistent, empirically testable, and have explanatory effectiveness. And these norms define what it is to have “scientific knowledge.” But by contrast, people seem to be using the word “morality” descriptively. That is, you can just call something a “morality,” and by so calling it, there’s no restrictions on it.
As a consequence of this disparity – “science” being a word used normatively and “morality” being a word used descriptively – moral relativists can say several things. They can say that scientists can distinguish between what is a science and what is a pseudoscience, whereas a moralist can’t say what is a “true” morality and what is a “false” morality.
This viewpoint would reject the following analogy: “Christian Science is to neurology as Nazi Morality is to, say, Kantian Morality.” A moral relativist, I think, would say that this analogy is misleading most importantly because differences in scientific judgments can be resolved by facts, whereas differences in moral judgments turn on attitudinal differences. (I guess there are other criticisms that anyone could make about this analogy: the word “science” is used equivocally, in that Christian Science doesn’t claim to be a “science” in the same way that neurology does, whereas the word “morality” isn’t used equivocally.)
But I’m not so sure that one couldn’t use the word “morality” normatively in sort of the same way we use the word “science” normatively. If we can do this, then I think that we really can make second order judgments of the type hamlet says we cannot. For example, perhaps we could say that part of the normative definition of “morality” is some sort of formulation of the “golden rule,” which seems to me to be a universal precept.
Or is this attempt to define the word “morality” normatively hopeless, in that the criteria used are merely projected from some society’s morality? I’m getting myself hopelessly confused. Maybe some more philosphically-inclined non-relativist will help me out here.
First, I would dispute that Nazis or slaveholders in general knew that the Holocaust/Slavery was wrong. I suspect that there was also a certain amount of willful blindness. There were enthusiastic camp guards and commandants for the former, and defenders of the institution of slavery for the latter. They weren’t wrong by their own reckoning, and those who thought it was wrong, were silent minorities (possibly majorities near the end, but still silent) who accepted the status quo, which puts doubts on how “wrong” they thought it was.
Second, I’m not saying that you have to qualify every moral judgement you make with “but that’s just my opinion.” To do so would be to practice the self-refuting form of relativism that you articulated in your first post. Rorty’s point is exactly that you can condemn slavery/the Holocaust without that qualification, and when pressed to justify it, you refer to your reasons for believing so. What’s philosophically incoherent is justifying your moral assertions with reference to some absolute standard of morality, as if you’re holding the universe’s rulebook. You can make second-order judgements (meaning judgements about your judgements), but they’re no less relative than your first-order judgements.
Yes, there’s far less disagreement about morality than we might think–something like the golden rule is probably acceptable to most people, in some form. What that signifies to Rorty is that the moral community of which we’re a part is pretty large, not that those who believe in the golden rule are somehow closer to the eternal truths.
I’d say that’s fairly accurate, to the extent that “objective” means “discussing something that exists independently of humans/sentients/creatures able to feel pain/whatever your category is.” The world exists physically independent of us. Morality, to relativists (of Rorty’s and my stripe) is more like law–something to which a moral community agrees, generally.
The absolutist attack on this position takes the form of a reductio ad absurdum: if there is no foundation for moral judgements independent of the judges, then morality is simply subjective opinion, and has no power. To which the relativist replies: the law has power only because we agree communally that it has power, and live according to that agreement (which includes incarcerating those who break the agreement). There are disagreements, and there are changes, and in retrospect the changes seem good or bad–and that doesn’t subtract from the authority of law itself.
When judging other cultures then, one is judging them in the sense of “if they did that here…” or “if they did that to a member of my (moral) community” (i.e., they’re breaking my laws, but those laws don’t apply to them for one reason or another). In the extreme case, we attack that other community because their sins are so heinous, or the threat they present so great, and that amounts to survival actions–we can’t live with the existence of this or that.
I think you’re correct that “morality” is somewhat descriptive to relativists, rather than normative. That’s a necessary consequence of accepting the lack of a supervening authority to decide that which is moral and that which isn’t. I also think you overestimate the normative power of the word “science”.
I think your science analogy is fruitful in a different way. Imagine a pseudoscientist (say, someone who believes in ESP, and claims to have “scientific” proof that is proof only by his pseudoscience) who says that theirs is a science. You respond “no, it’s not”, and go on to elaborate many reasons why it’s not. But no matter what you say, the pseudoscientist maintains that they have scientific proof of ESP. What’s your ultimate recourse? Can you point him at some final statement that settles the issue? No. You can argue all you want, but what you’re appealing to is the consensus of scientists about what constitutes a science, and if you’re unsuccessful, you walk away, shaking your head. You still believe in what you consider to be science, and your failure to convince the pseudoscientist otherwise doesn’t change that. You’ve made a second order judgement about science that depends upon a community of agreement, and is relative to that community, and has no less force for that being the case.
I think you’ve captured it here: “the criteria used are merely projected”. There have been societies that didn’t hold to the golden rule, Ancient Sparta being one of them.
How much suffering would you like to endure before someone killed you for whatever reason, perhaps they were hungry. It is never ok to cause harm, but I realize we do it, and will continue to do it, however that don’t make it right.
It is interesting in NDE “life reviews” the harmful things we do are graded. From things “did on purpose” through things we were “not aware of” to “things not meant.” Interesting.
Love
Leroy
I agree, in some cases “small harm” must be done to stop greater harm, however that does not make it right, only necessary.
Love
Leroy
ERISLOVER–
Why isn’t the moral choice that one makes for oneself founded upon “absolute morality”?
My typically obscure point is that, as no two moral situations are precisely the same (to be the same they would have to happen to the same moral actors in the same way at the same “point of eventuation” in space and time…and thus would not be “two” at all)…it could easily be the case that an “absolute morality” would require differing responses in (apparently; but not actually) identical situations.
This is not, by the way, a “contextual” ethics, as I understand the term.
lekatt and et al: what do you guys think of the principle of the double effect? I think it’s originally a Catholic moral doctrine from Aquinas. It talks about when it’s ok to do something that’s evil. The way the double effect works is that it’s morally permissible to do something that we know will have an evil effect if:
- it also has a good effect,
- we take the action in order to achieve the good effect and not the evil effect, and
- the net effect of the action is good rather than evil.
Might this be a more nuanced explanation for when it is ok to do something with an evil effect rather than simply because it has a net good effect? After all, imagine that we were deciding whether to kill a miser, whose will distributes his money to a variety of charities. Let us suppose that in the aggregate, the “evil” of the miser’s death would be outweighed by the “good” the distribution of his estate would cause. If I kill the miser because I hate him and want him dead, I still think that this action is immoral.
The Doctrine of Double Effect makes a lot of sense to me. It’s very much related to Kant’s notion that no action can be said to be truly moral unless it’s contrary to your inclinations and preferences, and with no benefit to yourself. In your miser example, though, it’s not applicable, since you’re killing the miser for the purpose of killing him, not for the purpose of forcibly redistributing his wealth. Under the DDE, your execution is immoral.
Is my explanation of a relativist position clear now, Mr. Hand? I’m not asking if I’ve convinced you, just if I’ve made my case comprehensible.
hansel, it makes sense, but I’m not convinced. I guess I just find it an odd position. First off, it could be totally irrelevant if every society/culture has the same moral code. The case that all moral codes boil down to the same irreducible core – while beyond me and certainly beyond the constraints of a message board – doesn’t seem impossible to make. We’d never know if our moral code was relevant or not.
Second, it still seems open to the same objection I had to say about the crude form of moral relativism. I mean, how can any moral relativist condemn me for making what I purport to be a second order judgment? They simply cannot say that it is “wrong” for me to do so, and to act on the basis of that judgment.
Third, I think that moral relativism in its more dogmatic forms can be just as dangerous as moral absolutism in its more obscene forms. Just because moral questions are hard to resolve provides no excuse for not making them. And it seems to encourage what could be a dangerous strain of tolerance. Of course, that’s not to say that moral absolutism can’t do the obverse – be incredibly chauvinisit and intolerant.
Now, this is interesting. I’m an athiest, but for your hypothesis we’ll assume that god exists. Now, the way I see it, if you’re correct:
God either prefers me not to believe in him,
or
God permits me not to believe in him, but I should believe in him, and that my lack of belief in God is WRONG.
In which case, I’d have to say, without getting into anything that my be more appropriate for the pit, that somebody is being a little self-righteous today.
You’re right, it would be irrelevent in that case; but I think you’re severely underestimating the difficulty of making the second claim, that there’s an irreducible core to all moral schemas. On the other hand, my thesis advisor, Sue Dwyer, was working on the idea that morality does have some kind of genetic foundation. In other words, like Chomsky’s thesis that languages are the expression of something bound up in the physical nature of human beings (and thus, all languages have some commonalities, and avoid the same grammatical errors in many cases), the commandment “thou shalt not kill” is an expression of our genes–there can be variation in how each culture embodies it, but fundamentally, it’s there. Evidence for something like this is that there are no societies (of which I’m aware) where lying and thievery have been virtues.
You’re not letting go of the idea that relativists refuse to judge other cultures, which has been my point: relativists don’t refuse to judge other cultures. They’re just more cautious about it, because they’re aware of the limitations of their own judgement. Of course there are crystal-rubbing twits who will refuse to make any condemnation of anyone; but in general, a relativist of the type I’m describing is simply a lot more careful about over-reaching in one’s moral judgements. I’m perfectly happy saying the female circumcision is an evil thing, that “honour killing” as practiced in some Middle Eastern societies is an evil thing, that Sharia law permits some evil acts.
An awareness of the relativity of moral judgements doesn’t lead one to abstain from judgement, it leads one to recognize that in battles between moral systems, the only resolution after debate is pure, naked force. For a moral absolutist, that force may be justified by his righteousness; for a relativist, it’s just force.
Certainly true.
Mr Hand
Then I am at a loss to explain these events. Consider a little “proof”:
All people think war is wrong.
For there to be a war, there must be people.
Therfore, there is no war.
Can you guess which one is the incorrect assumption, no matter how many pacifists you trot out for counter-proof? We know there was a holocaust, we know there is war to this very day. Someone out there doesn’t think it is wrong.
Because you had to make the judgment that good, or proper, moral systems are internally consistent.
Probably, because it sidetracks the two main points (for me) here.
- Moral judgments must come from moral systems; and,
- I choose my moral system.
If chemistry and physics are not inescapably subjective, then neither is morality. Subjectivity in judgment is useful for my second point, when I am the one making the judgment, much as it would be useful when I was the one interpreting data to form a conclusion. It would be useless for the first point, which demands moral judgments be made from within a moral system.
The limits of human knowledge forbid us from determining whether or not there is a perfect or natural or “objective” morality.
They might. So many people have said so many things about so much to do with morality that I can’t begin to defend any person who calls themselves a relativist. Sorry.
hansel: thanks for the recommendation. A lot. Reading the synopsis given in your link for some of his works interests me immediately.
Scott Dickerson
Without solipsism I’m not sure I see how it could be, except by accident, but in which case I wouldn’t know it anyway.
I cannot, offhand, think that time, space, and agency has much if anything to do with my moral judgments.
For example, and this is just illustrative you understand, suppose I say: murder is wrong. And I end it there without qualification just to make a simple point, not to say that murder is wrong full-stop. So I say murder is wrong. Thus, with a moderately or practically clear definition of “murder”, agency nor time is not a factor of the problem. No two situations need to be the same, they only need to have the appropriate universal qualities that the moral system will consider—how they differ outside of that consideration is irrelevant.
Mr Hand again, this time to hansel, said
Why can’t they? Is the recognition that all people who speak must have mouths (or must do so from mouths) a disproof that we all have different mouths? Or what?