It is a question that I personally have had a very strong opinion about for some time now, is morality, one of the pillars on which human civilization is built, absolute or are is it, like art and food, relative to the individual? Although there have been many argument for the idea behind relativism, certain weaknesses in the theory have ultimately caused to reject the idea entirely as unpractical, unrealistic, and actually dangerous to society.
Moral relativism is, by definition, the belief that it is absolutely true that nothing is absolutely true. This blatant contradiction undermines every argument, every idea and theory, that the relativist puts forward, because they can not answerer the question, is their theory true? Try it, whenever somone tells you morals and truth are relative, ask them if that is true. If relativism is true, then its false. If its false, then its false, and so no matter how one answerer's the question they will disprove their theory altogether.
But it is not this contradiction that worries me the most about relativism, its the fact that a relativist can not, under and conditions, make a judgment on another persons or cultures actions. Relativism comes in two forms, personal relativism, the idea that morality is different for each man, and cultural relativism, the idea that morality is different with each culture. Both have one crucial flaw, you can not judge anything. A true relativist, one who thinks very strongly in this belief, would not be able to comment on the slaughter of Jews duringWWII by Hitler, or the violations of human rights being committed in places like Sudan, Saudi Arabia, or by the Taliban when they ruled Afghanistan.
Recently in Iran a woman was gang raped, and then when the government found out she was arrested and nearly put to death for "allowing" herself to be defiled. The cultural relivest can not say that their action were morally wrong, since they believe what is moral for an American is different for what a Saudi believes is moral.
There has to be an underlining moral code that is the same for all societies and cultures no matter their history, religious beliefs, or geographical location. Curtain things simply can not be done. Now what is that underlining morality? Theory's abound, such as Aristotle's Virtue Ethics, or Emmanuel Kant's Deontology. So what do I think is moral? That topic will be discused in future posts.
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6 comments:
Hey Jonathan,
I was just reading about moral relativism last night. For sure, it's not a sustainable position. You find it a lot in New Age religions, but they're whacked for the most part, anyway.
Atheists believe in a non-relative morality, but only because they haven't followed the implications of their belief far enough. If they did, they would actually come to a-morality. But they don't, so for now, even the unbeliever recognizes the need for a moral code that applies to all people.
Ed
PS, you should set your blog settings to allow anonymous posts if you want to increase traffic.
you should set your blog settings to allow anonymous posts if you want to increase traffic.
But if you allow anonymous posts, you set yourself up for lots of trolls and advertisements and hackers. I recommend you leave it like this. Then no anomymouss can make up multiple names and seem like more than one person. I get plenty of traffic on my blog. I recommend you install a sitemeter and you can see how many people are actually reading. If they want to comment bad enough, they can just set up a basic blog profile with a name.
I will read more and comment later.
naw, i have a bunch of friends i invited to see my blog and i know a lot of them are too lazy to set up an account. unless somthing bad happens, i think i'll let people post anonymously.
Here's a question: do we really have a choice in the matter? The history of moral philosophy is littered with discarded hypotheses. And not all of these hypotheses have been discarded because they didn't explain the facts - many have been discarded simply because they left a bad taste in somebody's mouth. So for all we know, we've already found the "truth" - it's just that we didn't like it, and so we threw it away ;-)
Anyhoo, there are a lot of extremes to look at here: moral relativism, moral absolutism - more "isms" than you can shake a stick at. But here's another question: how often has it been the case that the "truth" lies at some extreme? Very often, it's in some gray area in between.
Now let's play the analogy game. In terms of physiology, which is the "truth" - physiological absolutism or physiological relativism? The answer? Neither! Human beings as a species are predisposed to have a nose, a mouth, ten fingers, walk upright, have a humongous brain, and so on. However, no two human beings are physiologically identical (not even "identical" twins!). So the "truth" lies somewhere between physiological absolutism and physiological relativism.
So then why should we expect that one or the other of the moral "isms" has to be all there is to the "truth". Why wouldn't the truth be something gray - something along the lines that human beings as a species are predisposed toward certain moral values yet the exact way that those human moral values are manifest in any human individual is unique?
Not that this is anything near a fully thought-out hypothesis, but it does have some interesting properties. First, even while you can't say anything absolute (drawing from the analogy, not every human individual is going to have ten fingers), neither is rampant relativism going to be the case (again with the analogy, you're not going to find a human with a hundred fingers). And given that the exact way that the human moral values are manifest in any human individual is unique, we can predict that the exact way that the human moral values are manifest in any human community will be unique. And is that not the case?
Just thinkin' out loud ;-)
Good comment, although I would have liked to know who I’m addressing (a fake name would be good) but I digress. Don’t get me wrong, absolutism is dangerous too, who gets to decide the moral code? Unless there’s a good reason behind absolutism (like Kants) it’s just a toss up. Now, in philosophy it’s really impossible to know the "truth." although I do believe there is one, we as humans can not possibly know what it is, and so we can, in fact, take our pick as long as that theory is backed up by observations and facts. What makes Kant's ideas more true then Hobbs? Well, nothing really, neither can be proven, but Kant is more widely accepted because he has a more "fell good" idea, while Hobbs's makes you want to kill yourself.
>>while Hobbs's makes you want to kill yourself.
:-D
Just call me Mr. Chicken ... it's a pseudonym based on an old movie ("The Ghost and Mr. Chicken") that works on many levels: I like Don Knotts; it shows my age (it's an old movie); it shows my maturity (it's a slapstick comedy); I'm a chicken about coming out of the closet; and a ghost is the reason I'm in the closet.
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