Ethics moral relativism | Lecture notes Ethics

Moral Relativism (With a Focus on Moral Subjectivism)

Moral relativism is a meta-ethical theory which asserts that morality is relative on the subject, whether the

subject refers to society or the individual. Morality as ultimately dependent on the individual is the claim of

moral subjectivism while morality being ultimately dependent on society is called moral

conventionalism. As the term relative implies, moral relativism states that the nature of morality which

include moral principles, laws and prohibitions, is relative to either the perspective of the individual or the

society of which the individual is a part. To make this clear, think of two people who have different tastes on

music. One loves rap music while the other does not find anything aesthetically appealing to it. Now, it

seems futile for these two to debate the beauty of rap music because it’s the kind of issue where two

people can disagree and yet still be reasonable to hold each of their separate views to be true and even

granting that the other person is justified in holding his. This is a disagreement of taste, which is the same

when people disagree about foods, movies or TV shows. I know some people who are obsessed with Star

Wars while I don’t find anything appealing with it. This does not mean that I am right and they are wrong. In

this case, we are both justified to hold our different views. We just have different tastes of what good movie

is supposed to be. What makes a movie good is relative to the person watching it.

The moral relativist claims just the same, but applying this relativity to morals. Just as people legitimately

disagree about what TV shows are worth watching because people have different tastes, people disagree

about what actions count as right or wrong because people (and societies) have different needs, desires,

goals and temperament.

Moral Subjectivism

Why think that morality is dependent on the individual? There is some appeal to the notion that morality,

our ideas of right and wrong, depends on the person talking. After all, it’s not uncommon to hear people

saying, “it’s wrong for you but not for me,” implying that the nature of right and wrong depends on the

caprice of any individual, and so we cannot impose our own moral opinions to others. We want to question

the truthfulness of this proposition but it seems that it’s not easy how we should proceed. This difficulty

leads some people to conclude that there really is no objective moral fact that we can all know or discern

but it depends solely on the individual. The moral subjectivist may as well say that morality is in the eye of

the beholder. What may be wrong for you may be ok for me – end of discussion. The following arguments

below are usually given in support of this theory.

a) Argument from Moral Disagreements – The moral sphere is one aspect of human life where issues

do not seem possible to have a final verdict. People disagree about many moral issues. Some people

think that the use of contraceptives is morally justified, others think it’s not. Many people think that

death penalty is tantamount to murder even if the killing is done by the state while others think that it

can be morally justified. We can go on and on and it seems we won’t find an ethical issue where people

have unanimously agreed about its rightness or wrongness. There always seem to have people on

both opposing sides of the pole. One striking insight about it is that moral disagreements are not like

disagreements about everyday matters, like factual or scientific issues. People can disagree whether

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Moral Relativism (With a Focus on Moral Subjectivism) Moral relativism is a meta-ethical theory which asserts that morality is relative on the subject, whether the subject refers to society or the individual. Morality as ultimately dependent on the individual is the claim of moral subjectivism while morality being ultimately dependent on society is called moral conventionalism. As the term relative implies, moral relativism states that the nature of morality which include moral principles, laws and prohibitions, is relative to either the perspective of the individual or the society of which the individual is a part. To make this clear, think of two people who have different tastes on music. One loves rap music while the other does not find anything aesthetically appealing to it. Now, it seems futile for these two to debate the beauty of rap music because it’s the kind of issue where two people can disagree and yet still be reasonable to hold each of their separate views to be true and even granting that the other person is justified in holding his. This is a disagreement of taste , which is the same when people disagree about foods, movies or TV shows. I know some people who are obsessed with Star Wars while I don’t find anything appealing with it. This does not mean that I am right and they are wrong. In this case, we are both justified to hold our different views. We just have different tastes of what good movie is supposed to be. What makes a movie good is relative to the person watching it. The moral relativist claims just the same, but applying this relativity to morals. Just as people legitimately disagree about what TV shows are worth watching because people have different tastes, people disagree about what actions count as right or wrong because people (and societies) have different needs, desires, goals and temperament. Moral Subjectivism Why think that morality is dependent on the individual? There is some appeal to the notion that morality, our ideas of right and wrong, depends on the person talking. After all, it’s not uncommon to hear people saying, “it’s wrong for you but not for me,” implying that the nature of right and wrong depends on the caprice of any individual, and so we cannot impose our own moral opinions to others. We want to question the truthfulness of this proposition but it seems that it’s not easy how we should proceed. This difficulty leads some people to conclude that there really is no objective moral fact that we can all know or discern but it depends solely on the individual. The moral subjectivist may as well say that morality is in the eye of the beholder. What may be wrong for you may be ok for me – end of discussion. The following arguments below are usually given in support of this theory. a) Argument from Moral Disagreements – The moral sphere is one aspect of human life where issues do not seem possible to have a final verdict. People disagree about many moral issues. Some people think that the use of contraceptives is morally justified, others think it’s not. Many people think that death penalty is tantamount to murder even if the killing is done by the state while others think that it can be morally justified. We can go on and on and it seems we won’t find an ethical issue where people have unanimously agreed about its rightness or wrongness. There always seem to have people on both opposing sides of the pole. One striking insight about it is that moral disagreements are not like disagreements about everyday matters, like factual or scientific issues. People can disagree whether

politician A will run for mayor this coming election. However this disagreement can easily be resolved by looking at the facts. If politician A already expressed his desire to run or has filed his candidacy, then that settles the issue. Factual disagreements are resolved by simply looking at and cross-checking the facts. However, many disagreements in morality do not seem to work that way. Facts may enlighten a moral issue but they don’t necessarily adjudicate what makes moral or immoral. Because of these seemingly intractable disagreements in morality, moral relativists use such disagreements to argue that morality is relative to the individual. Man is the measure of all things, Pythagoras has said, and that includes morality, according to the moral subjectivist. b) Argument from Queerness – Although most people wouldn’t find anything weird about the nature of right and wrong, some philosophers disagree.^1 This disagreement will be clear upon deeper examination. Unlike empirical facts, moral facts if there are such things do not seem to be capable of being empirically observed. Anyone can perceive trees, tables, cellular phones and shoes. Nobody serious enough would doubt the existence of such things (except the absolute skeptic who is being inconsistent anyway). But it seems that rightness and wrongness do not seem to exist in that same way. We don’t perceive the wrongness or rightness in the same way that our five senses perceive material objects in our universe. Without God to be the transcendent immaterial ground, objective moral facts would be queer to exist in a purely material world such as ours. Indeed, how can a purely naturalistic world give rise to objective values such as right and wrong? John Mackie, who is the major proponent of this argument, is known to be an ardent and vocal atheist. Since there is no God in Mackie’s view, morality is indeed queer, and thus no more objective as our subjective desires. It therefore comes as no surprise that as the title of his book suggests: we don’t discover morality but rather invent it. c) Argument from the Relativity of Truth – The last one is inspired by the postmodern slogan that relies on the relativity of truth. The postmodern idea is that there is no such thing as an objective truth. All truth is relative, and that includes moral truths. Friedrich Nietzsche, one of the postmodern fathers, defended this kind of view about truth. He is famous for saying that there is no truth, only interpretation. The fact that people can have different, even opposing, interpretations of the same document, book, principle or statement seem to strengthen the plausibility that truth, indeed, is relative. It is relative to the person who is doing the interpreting. Take the Bible for example. Why are there so many sects within Christianity? One reason is that people diverge as to how the Bible should be interpreted. People disagree about the correct way of interpreting Bible’s books or passages. Protestants and Catholics even disagree about what books should be included or removed from the Canon (the term for the official books that should be included in the Bible.) The moral relativist will use this fact among many others as a proof that there is no objective truth, only interpretations. Indeed, if there is an objective truth about morality, it should have been discovered by now so that people no longer has to argue about the morality of death penalty, contraceptives, pornography or capitalism. Thus, if there is no objective truth, then it follows that there is also no such thing as objective morality. And if morality is not objective, then it is likely to be subjective. (^1) J. L. Mackie, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (Penguin Books, 1977).

Imagine how these three people would be flabbergasted by such a claim. Indeed, disagreement about X does nothing to prove the nonexistence of X. There are disagreements in law, sciences and policymaking. In fact, in every field of inquiry, as long as there are two separate minds, it is bound to have disagreeing views about it. This is not to deny the difficult task of resolving moral disagreements. This is simply to prove that disagreements about morality do not necessarily lead to one affirming that there is no objective morality and that moral subjectivism is true. Response to the Argument from Queerness : How about the seemingly weird nature of moral facts, as observed by Mackie? We agree with Mackie that we do not see moral facts as if they are physical objects existing in space and time. We affirm their existence but their nature is that they are immaterial and is thus not part of the spatiotemporal universe. We may even agree with Mackie that it is hard to comprehend the actual objective existence of such facts if they are not amenable to the senses. But does this imply that they are not true or nonexistent? Hardly. In fact, if we can find some things that we believe to be true, then we have already defanged Mackie’s argument. In fact, there are good candidates for similar entities, and they would be numbers. Think about it: they exist in such a way that they are independent of human opinions. There is already one universe, one solar system, one earth, on which we live that existed billions of years before the first homo sapiens came on the scene. Although some may claim that mathematics is just an invention of the human mind, this idea is hard to fathom. We don’t invent numbers the way that humans have invented cellular phones, helmets and refrigerators. Inventors can change, improve and modify their inventions to suit different need and desires. We can’t suddenly make 2 + 2 equal to 5 just because we want it to be that way. No amount of willpower will change these basic rules of mathematics. The nature of numbers is such that they are universal and objective but nevertheless real. We can think of morality in much the same way. Just because we don’t empirically see the “rightness” in charity or the “wrongness” in oppression doesn’t follow that the rightness and wrongness of these acts aren’t real. Response to the Argument from the Relativity of Truth : Finally, how should we respond to the moral subjectivist who uses the relativity of truth to argue for the relativity of morality? In one simple way: by using his claim to argue against him. For those who assert that there is no objective truth, you should simply ask them: is that objectively true? The question puts the arguer in an uncomfortable dilemma. If he answers yes, then that defeats his claim that there is no objective truth since he is claiming that the statement “there is no objective truth” is objectively true. If he answers no, then we have no reason to believe his claim since it is found to be not objectively true. Either way, the option is unacceptable. The same can be leveled against the claim that truth is relative. We can simply ask: is that a relative truth? Again, the same dilemma and unacceptable consequences apply. With regards to Nietzsche’s claim about everything being interpretation and not truth, then we can respectfully ask the German philosopher: is that claim true or is it just your interpretation of truth? Such postmodern claims about truth are commonly known to be self- defeating statements , or if you want a more technical term, self-referentially incoherent propositions. In other words, they are statements that can’t live up to the standard that those statements itself set. It is like someone saying “ Hindi ko kayang magsalita ng Tagalog, ” or “My brother is an only child.”

Ethics moral relativism, Lecture notes of Ethics

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