Any Moral Relativists in the House?

[vulcanlogician]

[Jackie]

[Kitan Etos]

[The Grand Nudger]

"Cultural relativism claims that correct moral standards are relative to cultures or societies." That's one person's definition anyway (Russ Shafer-Landau). We can look at different definitions if you wish. But I think this one says what cultural relativism is pretty well. To me, that doesn't make sense. It's an incoherent position because it says cultural conditions (which are ever-changing and develop the way they do for a myriad of reasons) has some bearing on what moral standards actually are.

Is it incoherent to state that a product of society or culture can and will be altered by a change in that society or culture?

[Angrboda]

I'm reminded of discussions I've had surrounding the coherence theory of truth, that truth with a capital T consists in the internal consistency of a set of propositions. One common argument against this is that you could have two systems that are equally coherent, but that disagree on some particular proposition. That seems to be a contradiction. The problem is that there is no "outside the systems" from which to compare the two -- you're simply creating a third combined system that isn't fully coherent. That's not an allowed operation as there is no "outside the system." Truth, in coherence theory, is a property that systems and propositions within systems have. There is no outside perspective. Suggesting an outside perspective is failing to grant the full set of premises of coherence theory and amounts to a bit of question begging.

Your complaint about the seeming anti-realism of relativism seems similar in that you're not granting the full tenets of relativism and instead are importing a concept of "real morals" which is foreign to relativism and can't meaningfully be compared. Morals in relativism are a construct of society and within that society they have a real existence.

I can't help but be reminded of your suggestions about morals being real if they provide fruitful explanations in Neo's thread. I have to wonder if you're willing to apply that to moral realism but not to moral relativism.

Anyway, just some initial thoughts.

[Abaddon_ire]

I don't want to argue a specific meta ethical position here. I want to talk about the status of moral relativism amidst competing theories. I want to say realism and nihilism are coherent positions. But relativism (whether individual or cultural) is not. At least that's what I think. I'd love to be persuaded otherwise, because that'd mean I learned something significant. Any moral relativists in the house?

Sort of. It depends what exactly you mean. I mostly agree with Dillahunty on this matter.

[Sal]

I consider my views on morality to be of the non cognition type. Is it moral relativist? IDK. It has some features that remind me of it, since a lot of it is dependent on the situation of the moral question, i.e. situational.

[Anomalocaris]

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Moral realism and moral relativism are essential the same thing - a realistic view of morality.

Boru

[The Grand Nudger]

Your complaint about the seeming anti-realism of relativism seems similar in that you're not granting the full tenets of relativism and instead are importing a concept of "real morals" which is foreign to relativism and can't meaningfully be compared.  

-bit like objecting to the notion of a spherical earth - saying that it's incoherent for not accounting for the corners.

When we think that something is wrong, we have a tendency to want to tack on incoherent like a chaser.

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Moral realism and moral relativism are essential the same thing - a realistic view of morality.

Boru

Exactly.  Descriptive moral relativism is a well established and easily demonstrable fact.  Moral realism simply posits that we're all doing it wrong when we very much do that.    

Not incoherent - babble and gibberish with no cogent angle to logically approach the problem from.  Wrong in point of fact, not the validity of the inference, but the soundness of the assertions.

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I consider my views on morality to be of the non cognition type. Is it moral relativist? 

Relativism is a cognitivist moral theory.  Moral assertions are reduced to a true property of your ingroup rather than a pure expression of your emotional states (or some other similar aspect of an individual).  

Relativist moralities can be and often are openly hostile to the natural preferences or natural character of their adherents.  They can tell us that what we think is yuck is good, what we think is yum is bad.  That our misery is for our own good, our happiness to be avoided. That we deserve harm or should expect to be harmed if we step out of bounds even through full on hominid bumblefuckery.

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The blunt harsh reality is that evolution is about all life, including humans, and in evolution, evolution does not care if cruelty or compassion work. Just like lions will kill the cubs of rivals. 

Perhaps we misnamed ourselves?  Were not the doubly wise ape, we're the moralizing ape. 

Ultimately life finds a way to get to the next generation, by hook or crook. "Morality" and "ethics" still exist however, and life does have the capability of empathy, even if life includes selfish dominance. 

What do you think of the idea that morality is an expression of successful behaviors rooted in genetics?  Biological, rather than cultural relativism. That we're apprehending something about ourselves and reproductive success, conflict/competition fitness....not something about a thing out in the world or even in our cultures. That, broadly speaking, any organism with our genetics and in our situations will arrive at ideations about moral properties similar to our own?