Any Moral Relativists in the House?

[Angrboda]

@Angrboda

I'm going to let James Rachels do a little work for me here:

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Cultural Relativism is a theory about the nature of morality. At first blush it seems
quite plausible. However, like all such theories, it may be evaluated by subjecting
it to rational analysis; and when we analyze Cultural Relativism we find that it is
not so plausible as it first appears to be.
The first thing we need to notice is that at the heart of Cultural Relativism there is
a certain form of argument. The strategy used by cultural relativists is to argue
from facts about the differences between cultural outlooks to a conclusion about
the status of morality. Thus we are invited to accept this reasoning:

1. The Greeks believed it was wrong to eat the dead, whereas the
Callatians believed it was right to eat the dead.
2. Therefore, eating the dead is neither objectively fight nor objectively
wrong. It is merely a matter of opinion, which varies from culture to
culture.

Or, alternatively:
1. The Eskimos see nothing wrong with infanticide, whereas Americans
believe infanticide is immoral.
2. Therefore, infanticide is neither objectively right nor objectively
wrong. It is merely a matter of opinion, which varies from culture to
culture.

Clearly, these arguments are variations of one fundamental idea They are both
special cases of a more general argument, which says:

1. Different cultures have different moral codes.
2. Therefore, there is no objective “truth” in morality. Right and wrong
are only matters of opinion, and opinions vary from culture to culture.

We may call this the Cultural Differences Argument. To many people, it is
persuasive. But from a logical point of view, is it sound?
It is not sound. The trouble is that the conclusion does not follow from the
premise—that is, even if the premise is true, the conclusion still might be false.
The premise concerns what people believe. In some societies, people believe one
thing; in other societies, people believe differently. The conclusion, however,
concerns what really is the case. The trouble is that this sort conclusion does not
follow logically from this sort of premise.

https://rintintin.colorado.edu/~vancecd/...chels1.pdf

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I grant you that "incoherent" may be too strong a term. I don't mind redacting that claim. But my main criticism of relativism is that it says nothing about the status of moral facts. That's something I would prefer a metaethical position do. The nihilists do this: "morality is a fairy tale." That says something about moral realism: "it is false." I appreciate that.

How does "culture A has this moral code, and culture B has some other moral code" relate coherently to the issue at hand in metaethics? (Namely: Are there moral facts or not?) It doesn't.

And, yes. One can use customs and mores to explain cultural practices, just as one can cite injustice to explain civil unrest. But that is a genuine metaethical position (ie. there are moral facts, and here is an example of one. Questionable as a moral skeptic may find such a view,

A sociologist who examines the beliefs of a Catholic population may find that many believe in the healing power of a nearby spring. This has explanatory power concerning the behaviors and practices of that specific population of Catholics. But it says nothing about the healing powers of the spring. Likewise, what a given culture propagates as a moral norm (while it is factual that they propagate it) has nothing to do with it's truth or falsity as a moral fact.

As for individual relativism. I don't really mind it in a broader philosophical sense. It has a kind of Albert Camus charm to it. But it suffers the same faults as cultural relativism when discussing metaethics. It also says nothing about the status of moral realism.

It's too early to think this morning, so I'll defer reading your excerpt. But my first blush would be to say that the morals of a society relate to the facts of that society in the same way that the radius to the circumference of a circle relate to each other yielding an objective constant. The emergence of morals from a society is no more mysterious than median income or average education level are. People occasionally suggest that within Hitler's society, certain things that we find abhorrent were held as moral, and that constitutes a problem. To which I'd respond that when you consider Nazi Germany's morals to our society's morals, you're not comparing morals, because then the social circle includes both us and them in a larger, composite society. Certain things are taken as holding across the breadth of all humans. And when our society expands to include cows, chickens, and chimpanzees, the morals will change as well. How does a moral realist handle the crossing of species boundaries and changes to who counts as a moral being? Unless you're absolutist, realist morals, taking into account context, change as well. How is that any different? The only refuge from context or society is absolutism, which suffers from serious anti-realist objections as well.

Anyway, I'm just spitballing, and haven't read your passage yet. Perhaps I'll have to backtrack once I do. We'll see. Anyway, you're still employing a stolen concept from what I can see from my rather inadequate glance.

Having quickly read your passage, my preliminary concern would be that other meta-ethical positions do not follow from any rational, deductive argument, either. A consequentialist can't assert his theory as anything but a brute fact.

And to finish my quick survey, there are moral facts, they're just not "out there" like an independent metaphysical reality independent of any facts, they are themselves the invariant that societies have an inherent relationship known as morals. A local professor once gave his view of morality as something that one can reason from a consideration of a consciousness' interests being universilizable and second order intention (or something, I'm still a little foggy). In his moral theory, morals arose from a generalization of facts about first, second, and third order intentions. Kant's silver rule was somewhat similar in that it emerged from holding certain things about self-interest and those things being universal implying a necessity for morals to be univerisizable. This may perhaps illicitly engage a moral value of fairness, but it seems that any moral facts which exist must ultimately resolve these issues, and these issues arise from basic relationships about individual constants that are invariant. Rawls' theory is similar. The only difference in relativism seems to be that instead of appealing to invariants that exist because of how and what individuals are, relativist morals emerge from those same invariants which apply at the group level. We are social creatures. That's a basic structural fact of our consciousness, just like space and time are basic facts which structure our reality in Kant's critique. How will or should those morals change if we examine a species with a different basic structure, such as the solitary anteater? And how do we reconcile those differences once we add them to our in-group?

Given the early hour and that I've only had two cups of coffee, I reserve the right to deny that I said any of the above.