Thread by @EveKeneinan

Let’s talk about moral relativism, by way of philosopher James Rachels.

Point 1: The main argument FOR moral relativism, and usually the ONLY argument for moral relativism, is INVALID and therefore FAILS.

Rachels calls this the “cultural differences argument.”

It tries to infer for differences in beliefs about morals to moral relativism.

Rachels sets out a few modus tollens arguments to show that it is very unlikely that moral relativism is or could be true. I’ll give four, but these could be multiplied fairly easily.

As everyone who thinks about it knows, moral relativism entails we cannot make the judgment that the Holocaust was evil or even morally objectionable.

But this cannot be right. Our moral knowledge that the Holocaust was evil is MUCH STRONGER than any argument for relativism.

If moral relativism is true, not only is it the case we can’t object to any evils done by other cultures, we cannot praise them for any goods or virtues, either.

But we can do this.

If moral relativism is true, then our moral judgments are very greatly mistaken about moral REFORMER. Saints and wise men or holy men, men like Moses and the Buddha and Confucius and Socrates and Zeno and St. Francis up to Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr. were all BAD PEOPLE.

This is because, since “what is right is relative to one’s culture” the only thing that is quasi-objectively “wrong” must be “disagreeing with one’s culture.”

But that is what ALL moral reformers do.

Finally, there is a very good reason to think that “different cultures believe different things” argument is not as strong as most people think it is.

There is more of an ILLUSION of differences, than deep, substantive differences.

I can’t help but note the example of Margaret Mead’s “Coming of Age in Samoa”, which talked about the Samoans’ loose sexual mores, in an almost hippy-like “free love” sense. This book was greatly influential, and helped drive the sexual revolution in the West.

Was it true?

No. Margaret Mead was, not to put to fine a point on it, a condescending racist bitch, and the Samoans trolled her, vying to tell her ever-more ridiculous things about their “customs.”

Samoa was Christian, and their sexual mores were quite strict.

So let us consider some REASONS why there APPEARS to be more moral disagreement than there actually is.

First—and it is hard to overstate this point—many supposed moral disagreements are traceable back to metaphysical or factual disagreements.

You will be hard-pressed to get even a wild-eyed feminist to claim that the killing of innocent children is morally okay.

What you WILL find “pro-choicer” arguing is that unborn humans aren’t “really human.” That they lack moral status, and so killing an unborn child isn’t “really’ killing an innocent child.

This is not because they think killing children is okay (mostly).

MANY apparent moral differences can be traced back to applications of IDENTICAL moral principles to DIFFERENT factual beliefs.

Almost as important is the QUALITY/QUANTITY distinction.

Moral judgments are all about qualities, “good” “bad” “right” “wrong” “fair” “unfair” “just” “unjust” are all qualities.

But we’ve been talked (falsely) that knowledge requires QUANTITATIVE precision, like physics.

It doesn’t. There is no problem whatever in saying “The Holocaust was a great evil than a man stealing a snickers bar from a 7-11.”

The fact that we cannot MEASURE PRECISELY here is beside the point. We don’t need to reduce evil to an SU (kilonazis) to be able to JUDGE it.

To illustrate the quantity/quality problem a bit bitter:

No one can do this: Rank the top ten physicists in history in order from 1 to 10

This is easy: Name 10 of the greatest physicists of all time

Off the top of my head:

Aristotle, Galileo, Newton, Maxwell, Einstein, Heisenberg, Schrödinger, Planck, Eddington, Bohr

Qualities are “measurable” in tiers or levels. I think of them as a metaphorical bookshelf: who goes on the top shelf? Who on the second tier? Who is third tier?

Third: the language analogy. There are some 6000 languages spoken on earth.

They reduce to a small number of grammars, 26-28, with 98% being only 2 grammars, and these 2 being mirror images, so plausible just 1.

There is a very plausible case that MORALITY lives at something like the DEEP GRAMMAR level of the human race, but GETS EXPRESSED variously on the superficial language level.

Fashion and clothing would be another example of this. All clothing needs to fit the human anatomy, which is universal—but fashion varies widely and wildly.

But not infinitely. Peoples in cold climes need warm clothing.

Speaking of “fashions,” relativism seems more plausible than it is because relativism was the dominant paradigm in the social sciences in the 20th century. See above re: Margaret Mead.

Such intellectual fashions shift over time. It has RECENTLY been the fashion but not TYPICALLY

So moral relativism is a bad moral theory.

Cultural differences do not entail it, and besides, these are far less numerous and less serious than they seem. If you look for differences, you’ll find them. But if you look for universals, you’ll find THEM.

Here are some:

A final note. Rachels makes an extremely strong that moral relativism is FALSE as a comprehensive moral theory.

It has some things, however, that we shouldn’t lose sight of, viz.

Namely, just because there ARE objective moral truths, there also ARE customs and practices that are culturally relative, just like language is.

“How to greet someone politely” may vary, but “being polite” does not.

Being aware that we need to SORT OUT what is wrong or mistaken from what is merely a cultural difference should make us attentive to other cultures. One should UNDERSTAND before JUDGING.

That doesn’t mean “not judging.”

finis lectura.

Any questions?