RE: Any Moral Relativists in the House?
May 30, 2021 at 1:17 pm
(This post was last modified: May 30, 2021 at 1:29 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
I get that incoherence would be enough to reject a thing, but I thought we've already posited that relativism may not be incoherent? At any rate, yeah, it would be a question of a cultural mandate - though it's a bit more complicated than just saying so and so. That's the thing that can be true or false and is true of the moral report that puts relativism with the other cognitivist positions.
Relativists can have objective debates about anything that realists do, and probably would if/when they wanted to assert their cultures value, either to a skeptic, a competing culture, or a woman considering tossing herself on the fire. I think that we're mistaking relativism for the idea that cultural mores have no underlying reason whatsoever. That nothing true or false can be said of them, in support of them, or in criticism of them.
We could all be relativists, and just not know it. Honestly, though, relativistic moral undercurrents are a feature of contemporary western society (to absolutists constant displeasure). Do you ever wonder or flat out suspect that at east some of your moral apprehensions have been powerfully shaped by human culture? We discuss particular philosophers and their particular views ad infinitum, don't we? The great mass of thinkers effectively made a non entity - and that's going to color our views as well, won't it?
Relativists can have objective debates about anything that realists do, and probably would if/when they wanted to assert their cultures value, either to a skeptic, a competing culture, or a woman considering tossing herself on the fire. I think that we're mistaking relativism for the idea that cultural mores have no underlying reason whatsoever. That nothing true or false can be said of them, in support of them, or in criticism of them.
(May 30, 2021 at 12:43 pm)vulcanlogician Wrote: 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.
We could all be relativists, and just not know it. Honestly, though, relativistic moral undercurrents are a feature of contemporary western society (to absolutists constant displeasure). Do you ever wonder or flat out suspect that at east some of your moral apprehensions have been powerfully shaped by human culture? We discuss particular philosophers and their particular views ad infinitum, don't we? The great mass of thinkers effectively made a non entity - and that's going to color our views as well, won't it?
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