Moral relativism

JLNobody

"Do NOT do unto others as you would have them do unto you--their tastes may be different."

I agree, so how does this jive with your support of rufio's statement?

>> In context, yes. But the contextual morality is based on a morality that is consistant regardless of context.<<

"Consistent" within an individual?

Individuals are constantly changing their views and positions, hell I used to be a materialist. Some people (hopefully) drop their homophobia replacing it with inclusiveness. Democrats become republicans, and vice-versa.

People eat dogs and cats in other countries, a habit they change when they move to another culture with different values. They come to think/believe that eating dogs is wrong because many of their neighbors have dogs and think it's apprehensible to eat them, to eat someone, something they have a deep emotional attachment to.

As a ego centered driven individual I am in constant competition with others. Once enlightened, where this ego centeredness all but vanishes my interactions and evaluations of others would radically change. After the transformation (yet no transformation) I may regard plucking a flower as immoral.

If there is a universal morality what sustains it? And where does it reside?

truth
Boy are you a nudge!

But what you call an "ideal moral" is merely something that humans have decided among themselves.

Being for or against abortion is a judgement call.

Being for or against the notion that "life is more important than anything else" is a judgement call also.

Or at least that is the way I read it.

Twyvel, I'm not suggesting that people don't change, just that the morals that they hold at any given moment aren't affected by material things or emotions.

Certainly, frank, morals are judgement calls. But the broad, general morals that translate themselves into more earthly opinions are universal judgement calls. All people think life is a good thing, and all people think freedom is a good thing. But those are abstract concepts, and life and freedom translate in different ways for different people. For some, abortion is a freedom issue, for other's it's a life issue. The differences come not from people having different morals but from people interpreting situations in different ways, and ranking those morals in different orders - you might see abortion as both a life and a freedom issue, but decide that one of these ideal morals is more important than the other.

Edit: So I probably should have said something like "life is good" or "murder is wrong" rather than "life is more important than anything" since the "more important" part is something that the individuals add to the moral, not something that is there implicit.

source of Planned Parenthood quote, help
Help. I am writing an academic journal article and need the bibliographic citation for the Planned Parenthood quote in the article above. Do any of you have it? Please help, thanks.

"In describing her view on morality, the President of Planned Parenthood Federation of America - the largest abortion provider in the nation clearly basis her case on relativistic thinking: "teaching morality doesn't mean imposing my moral values on others. It means sharing wisdom, giving reasons for believing as I do - and then trusting others to think and judge for themselves."

email me a reply if you can at [email protected]

Sorry, I havn't read the forgoing. I will soon. But I just want to say that moral ABSOLUTISM requires that morals be infallibly deduced from some natural law or the existence of a law-giving diety. In my judgement neither is the case. Morals are the products of human social development; and they may/do vary with the diversities of cultural systems. Hence, I am a moral RELATIVIST, not because I like, or prefer, such a perspective but because I see no alternative. But let me note that when it comes to cultural conventions like African clitorectomies, female infanticide, head hunting and human sacrifice, I cannot help but respond AS IF they were abominations of absolute standards for behavior (which, of course, they are not).

A great topic with some quality discussion and contributions. Glad this was revived so I had a chance to read through. In your example above JL, would it be reasonable to suggest you really do "respond as if they were abominations of absolute standards for behaviour", based, internally, rather than externally? So, we can't help but place certain standards and expectations on ourselves, it makes little sense in our conception of a human being to do otherwise, indeed we aren't capable of anything else.

Good qustion, Ashers. Like Kant, you are suggesting that morals are inherent qualities of the human psyche? While I might agree that, as with Chomsky's grammar, we have an innate disposition to create moral judgements (which only incidently serve as the moral codes of social systems), those morals do differ from society to society. Hence our innate disposition is not to have the particular morals of some religion or culture but just morals in general.
By the way, although I "absolutely" (i.e., without qualification) abhor human sacrifice, that does not mean it is, in fact, absolutely or non-problematically wrong. Aztecs considered it to be the highest of moral obligations.

I think we should distinguish between moral values and moral judgments.

Moral values being the innate values of people (such as pain is wrong, being hurt or taken advantage of is wrong), and moral judgments being the application of that value.

Thus, I think that moral judgments may be different in people because of certain information missing or a fault in logic, but moral value is not.

For example, let's say you meet a slave-owner, you ask him if it would be right if he were to be a slave, he'd say no. Yet, he thinks it's right to enslave others... In that case he's ignoring the fact that the slave is also a person.

I think that moral relativism is a bunch of hypocrisy because you hold a moral stance, something that you believe is an absolute truth, yet you believe that others have as valid a moral stance as you even though theirs might be different.

Basically, I can't accept moral relativism. It's based on an inference that because different people have different opinions on something, then all of those opinions are correct.

Like JL said...morals are relative...whether people like Ray accept it or not.

One may not like that...but there is no alternative.

Ray, you misunderstand me MASSIVELY. First, I did not say that my rejection of human sacrifice reflects my adherence to an ABSOLUTE MORAL TRUTH; I said I reject it absolutely, without qualification, as MY subjective stance, not as an objective truth. Moral relativism does not argue that all moral positions are equally valid; it maintains that all moral positions are equally invalid if taken as absolutes; they are cultural constructions, and even though I "feel" that some of my moral values are not open to negotiation, that does not imply that they are absolutely valid, only personally critical for me. I think that your hypothetical slave owner would more likely say that slavery is good and that he is LUCKY not to be the "kind" of person that belongs to the (perhaps sub-human) slave class.
You say that moral truths or values exist apart from judgements and that while peoples of the world often hold different moral values, that is a reflection of their lack of information or lack of logical behavior. The implication of that is that people who do not share YOUR moral truths/values are your moral inferiors, at least to the extent that they are ignorant and illogical. And you call moral relativists hypocrits?
Your misunderstanding was entirely predictable. Absolutists CANNOT possibly, in my experience, psychologically open themselves to the "threats" of the ambiguity and complexity of reality.

That's not what I'm implying at all. People often make mistakes, and persistent mistakes often integrate itself in time into what a society thinks to be true. Inferiority or superiority is not part of the argument. It's simply evaluating what is right and what is wrong.

By your argument, moral relativists think that their position is superior than mine or anyone else's that disagree with them.

Can you really sit back and say that a group of people who believe that they're the only one who should live have grasped the right moral concept?

That's not tolerance, that's indifference.



Oh no, that I understand perfectly. What I don't understand is how you can argue for your subjective stance of what something ought to be when it is not a possible objective truth.



It is likely to be the case that the slaveowner would treat the slave as somewhat "sub-human," as we see from Kant's rationalization of his own immoral view toward the blacks. If he were to consider the blacks as human (and that he has to understand what it means to be human), he would not have viewed that the blacks should be slaves.



So moral relativism does not argue that all moral positions are equally valid? Then if there is a moral position that is more valid than another,
your position against sacrifice may be more valid than the Aztec's position. Then it would be safe to hold that as a universally valid viewpoint unless you have a more valid viewpoint that would disprove it.



So I'm sure the person who thinks that slavery is abolished even though his culture thinks it to be alright is acting because of cultural constructions.

I'm sorry, but I just cannot for the life of me, accept a view that I think to be utterly meaningless and useless.

People may have different moral positions than another, that is obvious. But to conclude from that, that no moral stance is more universally valid than another, is stretching it.

People also sometimes change their moral view when they obtain new insights and hold that their previous view is wrong.

Sorry, Ray, but I can't even begin to deal with your frame of thought. Your third paragraph is just too much.
You say that you cannot for the life of you accept the moral relativist position. That's what I said. You've expressed your point and I mine. Fine.

Okay. No hard feelings Jl.

Arguments against moral relativism:

According to moral relativism, there is no objective standard of goodness that can be made. Thus, rights and wrongs are therefore only relative to certain cultures. That means, that things such as slavery, rape, or torture is not really "wrong", but it is only wrong for our culture, and it is right for another culture just because that culture thinks it's right, so we have to disregard everything as to "why" we think it's wrong, even though that culture's viewpoint ignores the experience of the victims, and even though the people within that culture who committed the acts themselves would not like or find it "right" for them to be acted upon in such a way.


The change argument:
"Sometimes our view about the moral status of some practice changes...When a person's moral views change in this fashion, the do not merely drop one moral belief in favor of another. Typically, they also hold that their previous moral view was mistaken. They take themselves to have discovered something new about what is morally right. Likewise, then the prevalent moral belief in a society undergoes a significant change, as in the civil rights movement, we are inclined to see this as a change for the better. But the relativist cannot account for changes in our moral beliefs being changes for the better. This is because the relativist recognizes no independent standard of goodness against which the prevalent moral beliefs after a change can be judged to be better than the prevalent moral beliefs before a change."

source:
http://facweb.bcc.ctc.edu/wpayne/Moral%20Relativism.htm


"Not only does moral relativism entail that we cannot make legitimate moral comparisons of different cultures, it also entails that we cannot make legitimate moral comparisons of a single culture across time; we cannot judge whether a changing society is getting better or worse. Generally, though, we do think that we have made moral progress. Moral relativism, arguably, cannot make sense of this."

source:
http://www.moralrelativism.info/moralprogress.html
A case for an objective morality:

The Great reformer argument:

"A final argument against cultural relativism is that cannot account for the existence of great moral reformers. When we consider those people that have helped to bring about those changes that we take to constitute moral progress, e.g. the abolition of slavery, or granting the working classes and women the right to vote, we generally think these reformers are moral exemplars, excellent people.

According to cultural relativism, though, these great reformers were bad people. According to cultural relativism, moral goodness consists in acting in the ways prescribed by the values of one's own culture. Those who seek to change those values, then, are bad people. Martin Luther King, Emily Pankhurst, and Gandhi, all of whom opposed existing values and sought to improve them, must all be judged by cultural relativists to have acted immorally. Those who we tend to think of as heroes must, if cultural relativism is true, be condemned."

source:http://www.moralrelativism.info/greatreformers.html


Objective Morality:

An objective morality is a standard of morals that transcends an exclusive subjective preference. It means that everyone must be considered of equal value. This is what many of us think of when we think of morality.

JL...

...I think I'd better take this opportunity to agree with you 100%.

It doesn't happen all that often...and it is a pleasure to acknowledge it when it does.

I think Ray is a decent person who is simply missing the thrust of your argument...and you quite correctly pointed out that he now seems to be doing so purposefully.

Argue for your limitations...and they are yours!

Yes, it's significant. That's why I said the same thing about two-and-a-half years ago on this thread. I also said it in about one-fifth of the space.

You're wrong.


That's because you've begged the question.


Your "as if" standard has no moral weight, even in a system of moral relativism. At best, your expression of moral condemnation is no different from your expression of visceral distaste. As I have mentioned before, your morality is little more than an esthetic judgment.