(June 17, 2021 at 9:42 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: You may be arguing against moral defeatism-as-moral relativism, bit more by the end. Cognitive nihilism would besomething like the claim, as indeed it is, that we can get it right, but we get it wrong. This is not relativism. In relativism, we can get it right, and do, and it's about culture.
Since a relativist believes that the truth value of a moral proposition is dependent on culture, there's no other way a moral statement could be accurate. All moral statements are thus accurate or inaccurate with respect to culture. When you say, put in a more nihilistic manner..I think you might be hitting something. You're actually arguing against nihilism, even in the disagreement about whether we can rationally judge another culture.
Mind...we're both still realists - I think relativists are wrong too..but they actually couldn't be wrong for the reasons we've been discussing.
Well, then maybe this is our impasse, because I think Rachels and Boghossian produce valid criticisms of relativism. I think you actually accept Rachels arguments (as he doesn't argue that relativism is incoherent... he thinks it's just plain wrong). So (correct me if I'm wrong) your real issue is with Boghossian's criticism.
So I want to ask then: doesn't Boghossian's argument say at least something significant? I mean, if a completely unbiased, newly minted philosopher were shopping for a good metaethical theory, would Boghossian's viewpoint serve (at the very least) as a strike against relativism? Would it be worth consideration at all?
Do you think Boghossian's argument is (to borrow the term) incoherent?
