The following article can be summarized by one
impossible-to-refute conclusion
when you examine the arguments: Moral
relativism is no different
than moral nihilism.
That is where things really get interesting, which the
article only suggests and
does not really explore in any serious way. For nihilism
only can result in
self-destruction, and destruction of society, hence
destruction of community
that sustains us all as individuals. But what are valid
grounds for "true morality"?
What you cannot say -qua philosophy- is that the Bible
gives us such morality,
or the Sutras, or the Gathas, or any other sacred text.
NOT because the
morality in the Bible, et. al., is false but because
it is not explained.
To claim that God said X or Z is moral is not an
explanation, merely
an assertion which, even if it is true, does not tell us
why God
regards these principles as true / moral / Good.
Without a convincing explanation for morality we are left
with inscrutable
morality or an inscrutable God, in any case, morality -for
us mere mortals-
built upon guesswork, or opinion derived from belief. And
belief by itself
passes absolutely no philosophical truth test.
My view is that -while there are some ambiguities and
while there are historical
changes in some moral standards recorded in its pages-
the Bible exemplifies
a rather large collection of moral truths. Many are also
found elsewhere, but
that is exactly what you'd expect if Romans 1: 19
- 20 is true, namely:
..."what
may be known about God is plain to them, because God has
made it
plain before their eyes; indeed, God
himself has disclosed it to them.
His invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine
nature—have been visible
ever since the world began, to the
eye of reason..."
But why are these things true? What
justifies "true" moral principles?
Whatever our answers may be, moral
truths have objective value, otherwise
they could not be seen by the eye of
reason.
Which is to say, here is a call -by
the Apostle Paul- to philosophy in the
service of truth. Romans 1 says that
you can learn the truths of moral judgement,
it is open to you to do so. Not
everyone will do so, of course, but you can,
whomever "you" are.
This is not a template problem,
simply plug in a few principles and out comes
an answer that just so happens to
agree with church doctrine.
Here is a rough guide as Paul understood the problem:
(1) ...be grown up in your thinking. 1 Corinthians 14: 20
(2) Look facts in the face. 2 Corinthians 10: 7
(3) ...we have no power to act against truth, but only for
it. 2 Corinthians 13: 5
(4) ...throw off falsehood; speak the truth to one
another... Ephesians 4: 25
(5) Let no-one deceive you with shallow arguments.
Ephesians 5: 6
(6) I tell you this to save you from being talked into
error
by specious arguments...Colossians 2: 4
(7) Do not stifle inspiration, and do not despise prophetic
utterances,
but bring them all to the test and then keep what is good
in them
and avoid the bad of whatever kind. 1 Thessalonians 5:
19-22
Its all rather simple -not easy, simple. It also is
difficult like
few other problems in life.
The moral relativists make one valid point and that is
where the complexities arise:
Not all moral systems agree about all things;
in some cases there are major
discrepancies. How, then, do we come to understand the
grounds for morality
in such a way that we can convince others that there is a
system of morality
that is universal and objectively Good ?
Billy
------------------------------------------------------------
Philosophy Now
July / August 2013
Moral Relativism Is Unintelligible
Julien Beillard argues
that it makes no sense to say that morality is relatively
true.
The diversity of beliefs and ways of life is a striking
fact about our species. What Mormons find right and
reasonable may be abhorrent to Marxists or Maoris. The
Aztecs practiced human sacrifice for reasons we find totally
unconvincing, and no doubt future people may be similarly
perplexed or repulsed by some of our practices. For such
reasons, some conclude that there is no objective truth
about morality. They say moral disagreement is best
explained by the idea that there are many different and
incompatible relative moral truths, which are in some way
determined by the beliefs of a given society; and that this
is the only kind of moral truth there is. So for the Aztecs
it was true that human sacrifice is morally permissible,
although it is false for us. Generally then, a moral
statement M is relatively true provided that it is believed
by the members of a society S. (The same basic idea may be
developed somewhat differently. Some relativists may say,
for example, that M is relatively true provided it is
implied by the standards of S, regardless of whether members
of S actually believe it. I will ignore these details
because they make no difference to the point I’m going to
make.)
In this article I will discuss this argument from moral
disagreement and present what I think is the most serious
problem for moral relativism: that we cannot understand what
it could mean for moral truths to be relative. And since we
have no idea what it could mean, moral relativism cannot be
a good explanation of the fact of deep and enduring moral
disagreement – nor can moral relativism be supported by any
other kind of reasoning. So if moral disagreement is
evidence against the objectivity of moral truth, it can only
be evidence for moral nihilism: the idea that there are no
moral truths.
Self-Defeat?
The argument for moral relativism from moral diversity is
not especially convincing as it stands. If the mere fact
that people or groups disagree over some idea were enough to
show that that idea has no objective truth value, there
would be no objective truth about the age of the universe or
the causes of autism. Hoping to ward off that
counter-argument, relativists usually claim that these other
disagreements are unlike moral disagreements in some
relevant way. For instance, writing in this magazine (in Issue
82), Jesse Prinz claimed that scientific disagreements
can be settled by better observations or measurements, and
that when presented with the same body of evidence or
reasons, scientists come to agree, but the same cannot be
said of thinkers operating with different moral codes.
Even if we grant this distinction, however, it is still
doubtful that moral disagreement is a good reason for
accepting moral relativism. After all, there is deep and
apparently irresolvable disagreements in philosophy as well
as morality. For instance, some philosophers think mental
states such as pain or desire are just physical states;
others deny this, and yet both camps are familiar with the
evidence and reasons taken to support the opposing point of
view. Should we say, then, that there is no objective truth
about how mental states are related to the physical world?
That seems deeply implausible. For that matter, many
philosophers deny the moral relativist’s claim that moral
truth is relative to what a given society believes. Does it
follow that there is only relative truth and no objective
truth about moral relativism itself – that moral relativism
is true relative to the outlook of Jesse Prinz, say, and
anti-relativism no less true relative to mine?
I suspect that few moral relativists would be willing to
accept this ‘higher’ kind of relativism. They think that
even though many benighted philosophers disagree with them,
moral truth just is relative to a given society –
that it is an objective fact about reality that there are no
objective moral facts but merely relative ones. But this
would be a distressingly unstable position, if relativists
believe their relativism on the basis of an argument that
depends on the principle that if there is a certain kind of
disagreement over some topic T, there is no objective truth
about T. If that principle is true, the fact that there is
such disagreement about their relativist conclusion implies
that that conclusion is itself not objectively true, but
only relatively so. So if this relativist’s argument is
good, then by his own standards he should not believe its
conclusion is objectively true; or if he is entitled to
believe its conclusion, it follows that the argument is not
good.
Need it be self-defeating to hold that moral truth is
relative, and that that truth about moral truth is itself
merely relatively true too? Happily, we do not need to
consider this question with much care, since I think the
core problem with moral relativism is not that it is false,
implausible or self-defeating, but simply that it is
unintelligible. I mean by this that there is no intelligible
concept of truth that can be used to frame the thesis that
moral truth is relative to the standards or beliefs of a
given society.
Truth & Belief
Let me try to clarify this objection by introducing some
truisms about truth. First, a statement is true only if it
represents things as they really are. The statement that I’m
wearing blue socks is true only if I really am wearing
socks, and they really are blue.
The same general principle surely holds for moral
statements. Suppose I say that suicide is immoral, yet that
in objective reality there is no such thing as
moral wrongness. That is, suppose that nothing that anyone
does really is morally wrong, although some actions seem
wrong to us. Then my assertion of immorality is simply
false, for it attributes to certain acts a property that
nothing has. It is like an assertion that my socks were made
by Santa’s niece. Nothing has the property of being made by
Santa’s neice, and any statement that represents my socks as
having it is therefore false.
Those attracted to moral relativism might object that I am
simply presupposing an objectivist concept of truth: a
concept that relates what is said or thought about the world
to the way that the world really is, independent of these
thoughts. What they have in mind instead is a different
concept of truth – one that does not involve any such
relation between subjective points of view or
representations and something independent of those points of
view.
I admit that I am presupposing an objectivist conception of
truth, but what’s the alternative? Do we have any concept of
truth that does not involve that kind of relation?
To be sure, people sometimes say that a statement is true
for one person but not another – meaning that the statement
seemstrue to the first person but does not seem
true to the second. But just as seeming gold is not a kind
of gold, seeming truth is not a kind of truth. What is meant
by this way of speaking (if anything), is simply belief.
To say that it is true for some children that Santa Claus
lives in the North Pole, if that means merely that to some
children it seems true that he does, is really just a way of
saying that they believe it. But believing doesn’t make it
so. Similarly, if moral relativism is just the claim that
what seems true of morality to some people (what they
believe about morality) seems false to others, this is true
but philosophically trivial, and consistent with objectivism
about moral truth. It is also worth noting that, interpreted
in this trivial way, moral relativism could not be supported
by the argument from disagreement. The gist of that argument
was that moral relativism is a good explanation of the moral
disagreements we observe. Yet the claim that some moral
statements seem true to some people and false to
others merely restates the fact of moral
disagreement that is supposedly explained by relativism, it
cannot explain that fact. (Perhaps some things are
self-explanatory, but not moral disagreement!)
So there is the familiar kind of truth dependent on how
reality is apart from people’s beliefs or perceptions, and a
bogus kind that is nothing more than belief. The
relativist’s theory of moral truth explicitly denies that
moral statements are ever true (or false) in the familiar
sense; but if it is interpreted in the second way,
relativism collapses into absurdity or triviality. The
relativist needs a third kind of truth, midway between the
familiar and the bogus: not just an appearance of
truth, but not a truth that depends on objective
reality. But there is no such thing. At least, I am
unable to imagine what this special kind of truth would be,
and relativists are strangely silent on this core issue.
No Third Way
Remember that moral relativism has two ingredients: there
is the denial of any objective moral truth, and the
assertion of some other kind of moral truth. Suppose that
moral disagreement does raise doubts about the objective
truth of any moral code. Does it follow that moral codes are
true in some other sense? No, for perhaps it means that no
moral statements are true in any sense. Perhaps
people disagree here because they have been acculturated in
different moral cultures, but all the moral beliefs or
standards of all cultures are simply false. So the argument
from disagreement might be an argument for moral nihilism
rather than for moral relativism.
How do relativists hope to establish their positive thesis,
that moral statements are sometimes true without being
objectively true? I am not aware of any compelling arguments
for that idea. On the contrary, relativists tend instead to
argue in great detail for the negative thesis, that morality
is not objectively true, as if that alone were sufficient
for their relativistic conclusion. Thus Prinz says that
“moral judgments are based on emotions”, that “reason cannot
tell us which values to adopt”, and that even if there is
such a thing as human nature, that would be of no use, since
the mere fact that we have a certain nature leaves it an
open question whether what is natural is morally good. Let
us grant all of this, and grant for the sake of argument
that it does raise a real doubt about the objective truth of
moral beliefs. In the absence of any account of the special
kind of truth that is supposed to lie somewhere between mere
belief and accurate representation of objective reality, why
then should we think of moral judgments as truths of any
kind? Why not simply say that all moral codes are false? It
would seem reasonable for a philosopher who thinks of moral
reasoning in this way to view moral beliefs in the same way
that atheists view religious ones – as false.
I suspect the reason few philosophers have been willing to
draw this nihilistic conclusion is simply that, like most
people, they have some strongly-held moral beliefs of their
own. They think that it is morally wrong to rape children,
for example, and so they do not want to say that that belief
is false. For how could they continue to believe
it, while also believing that what they believe is not true?
This unhappy compromise is not tenable. If there is no objective
moral truth, there can’t be some other kind of moral truth.
© Julien Beillard 2013
Julien Beillard teaches philosophy at Ryerson
University, Ontario.
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