RE: Any Moral Relativists in the House?
June 14, 2021 at 1:20 am
(This post was last modified: June 14, 2021 at 3:53 am by vulcanlogician.)
So I stepped away from the debate because I was thinking too hard about it. And, in such a state, I rarely have any valuable thoughts to contribute. I think my central point got lost somewhere, as I never wanted to argue that relativism wasn't internally consistent.
I did manage to dig up an article by Boghossian where he argues my thesis. The thesis is: realism and nihilism are tenable positions (ie coherent positions that take a clear stance on the status of moral facts) while relativism is not. Why? Because relativism simply lists what is permitted according to the values of culture x, y, or z. And thus gives only a factual account of these cultures' beliefs. But the debate about moral realism's status isn't a debate about what a given culture believes. It is a debate about whether there can be any truth value in a normative claim.
Or put better:
The article addresses many facets of the argument better than I do, so, please, I encourage any of my interlocutors to check it out. It may serve as a better jumping off point for the debate than my OP.
I did manage to dig up an article by Boghossian where he argues my thesis. The thesis is: realism and nihilism are tenable positions (ie coherent positions that take a clear stance on the status of moral facts) while relativism is not. Why? Because relativism simply lists what is permitted according to the values of culture x, y, or z. And thus gives only a factual account of these cultures' beliefs. But the debate about moral realism's status isn't a debate about what a given culture believes. It is a debate about whether there can be any truth value in a normative claim.
Or put better:
Quote:Most moral relativists say that moral right and wrong are to be relativized to a community’s “moral code.” According to some such codes, eating beef is permissible; according to others, it is an abomination and must never be allowed. The relativist proposal is that we must never talk simply about what’s right or wrong, but only about what’s “right or wrong relative to a particular moral code.”https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/20...elativism/
The trouble is that while “Eating beef is wrong” is clearly a normative statement, “Eating beef is wrong relative to the moral code of the Hindus” is just a descriptive remark that carries no normative import whatsoever. It’s just a way of characterizing what is claimed by a particular moral code, that of the Hindus. We can see this from the fact that anyone, regardless of their views about eating beef, can agree that eating beef is wrong relative to the moral code of the Hindus.
The article addresses many facets of the argument better than I do, so, please, I encourage any of my interlocutors to check it out. It may serve as a better jumping off point for the debate than my OP.
