Any Moral Relativists in the House?

[vulcanlogician]

Well, beyond ideas about relativisms incoherence, what are our other reasons for rejecting it?  If we're abandoning realism either because we can't maintain it or to assess it critically, but we aren't ready to assume nihilism, that gives us a pretty narrow upper and lower limit.  We're down to relativism, subjectivism, and non cognitivism.  Of the three, relativism would seem to have the strongest evidentiary case from ethnography.

I'm ready to assume nihilism. Like I said, I think it's a fine theory. Is it problem-free? No. But neither is realism.

Incoherence of a theory is enough for me to reject it. But if you're looking for further reasons... consider that you are deliberating with a friend whether she should jump onto the pyre at her husband's funeral. Nihilism would have you ask if that's what she really wanted to do. Realism would steer the debate to whether she is really (in an objective sense) obligated to jump on the pyre or not.

But what kind of questions would relativism have you asking? "Is it culturally mandated that you jump on the pyre?" 

Perhaps it is. Is that satisfying in any way? Good enough to chose an answer because of that?

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As for subjectivism, meh. I don't really mind it. If we're wrong about realism being true, then we're all just subjectivists anyway. We just don't know it.