moral relativism

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Our Morality: A Defense of Moral Objectivism
After our recent ‘Death of Morality’ issue, Mitchell Silver replies to the amoralists.

Philosophers who aspire to describe reality without resort to myth, too often remain in thrall to the myth of absolute neutrality. Myths are not without their proper uses, and belief in absolute neutrality can be a useful, even an indispensable premise in the practices of science, jurisprudence, sports refereeing, and a host of other activities in which we want to discourage corrupting biases.

Absolute neutrality? In regard to conflicting goods? Okay, what might that amount to pertaining to an issue like abortion? How can one be neutral given that a pregnant woman is either permitted to have an abortion or she is forced to give birth? The whole point of Roe v. Wade was to get as close to that as possible.

Same with gun control. Citizens are either permitted to own bazookas and artillery pieces and landmines and chemical weapons or they are not. Absolute neutrality there?

In fact, it is only when a community embraces one or another rendition of democracy and the rule of law that moderation, negotiation and compromise take us in the general vicinity of neutrality.

Thus...

Still, absolute neutrality is a myth, one memorably formulated by Thomas Nagel as ‘the view from nowhere’. There is no ‘view from nowhere’, and any philosophical practice which pretends to occupy that mythical perspective sows confusion.

"The View From Nowhere is a philosophical exploration of these perspectives: the subjective and the objective. It is Nagel's firm belief that both perspectives are real and that the truth about our world can only be gained through an understanding of how these two perspectives coexist in all that we think and do." Cambridge University Press

Yes, in regard to conflicting goods, there are objective facts embedded in the either/or world that are applicable to all of us. And then there are the subjective reactions we have to those facts that, in my view, seem beyond the reach of philosophers and ethicists and political scientists.

And all I can do is to prompt the moral objectivists/realists among us to bring their theoretical assessments to a particular set of circumstances. There we can examine any possible differences between having a view from nowhere and having a view from somewhere...historically, culturally, existentially.

In this article I will describe and defend my kind of moral viewpoint (not my specific viewpoint). The label I will use for this kind of viewpoint is ‘moral objectivism’, because this creates a stark contrast with ‘moral subjectivism’ and ‘moral relativism’ – the views that no coherent morality is better than any other coherent morality, which along with ‘moral nihilism’ – the denial of any morality – present the most philosophically popular moral perspectives that are not of my kind.

Again, from my frame of mind, moral nihilism does not reject coherent morality so much as prompt those who champion one or another One True Path To Enlightenment to demonstrate why their own sets of facts and assumptions must prevail. Ever and always making the distinction between what we can know logically about abortion as a medical procedure and abortion as a moral conflagration.

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Our Morality: A Defense of Moral Objectivism
After our recent ‘Death of Morality’ issue, Mitchell Silver replies to the amoralists.

Moral objectivism, as I use the term, is the view that a single set of principles determines the permissibility of any action, and the correctness of any judgment regarding an action’s permissibility.

And, of course, all I can do is to ask those who believe that this is the case, to bring their own assessment down to Earth and, given a particular moral conflagration of note, to note how, pertaining to their own interactions with others involving conflicting value judgments, they go about demonstrating to them why all rational and virtuous men and women are obligated to think [and to behave] as they do.

Does this view deserve the label ‘moral objectivism?’ I think it does.

As a "view"? Sure, if that view is sustained up in the philosophical clouds that pertain almost entirely to an exchange of theoretical assessments.

Although it doesn’t claim that moral principles exist independent of the people who hold them, or that moral properties such as justice exist independently of moral principles, it forthrightly states that some actions are right and some are wrong, regardless of the judgments others may make about them.

Okay, for those here who concur with this, cite particular examples given your own interactions with others down through the years. Pluck a headline from "the news" and note what you construe to be an assessment "within a community" that is able to be demonstrated to reflect objective morality.

Also, is the author making a distinction between objective morality within a community as opposed to universal morality applicable to all communities?

In making that claim, I am in conflict with the relativists and nihilists, both of whom assert that moral objectivism is poorly grounded compared to alternative metaethics. (A metaethic is a view about the nature of morality. It is not a particular moral view.)

Perhaps someone here who shares the author's conclusions might be willing to explore them with me given a context of their own choosing.

As for the nature of morality itself, there have been hundreds and hundreds of God and No God spiritual and secular paths said to encompass that.

But! it really, really is your own, isn't it?!!

These philosophers maintain that moral objectivism requires that we can only validate an action’s moral status or a judgment’s moral correctness by resorting to some beyond-human authority – some moral reality external to people which serves as the source of whatever set of principles a moral objectivist believes determines moral values and correctness. These relativists and nihilists claim that objectivism needs something like God, but they disbelieve there is anything like God, so they conclude that moral objectivism requires something which does not exist.

Over and again: I am not one of them.

First of all, there may well be a God. And even if there is not a God, the God, I have no way myself of demonstrating that objective morality is beyond the reach of philosophers or scientists. All I can do is to ask of those who do believe moral objectivism is the real deal to come down out of the theoretical clouds and to note how in regard to actual sets of behaviors in their own community they go about demonstrating objective morality.

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Our Morality: A Defense of Moral Objectivism
After our recent ‘Death of Morality’ issue, Mitchell Silver replies to the amoralists.

I share the relativist/nihilist rejection of any form of supernaturalism. I do not believe in God, or in any other external authority that grounds moral objectivism. Indeed, I do not think morality can be grounded in any external source.

Okay, so right off the bat the author has to acknowledge that he has no way in which to connect the dots between moral commandments and immortality and salvation. Instead, as with other secular equivalents, he must remain content knowing that while there is no everlasting reward for doing the right thing on this side of the grave, he can still sustain the satisfaction of choosing perfection merely in assuming that everything he does choose to do "here and now" reflects the most rational frame of mind mere mortals are able to acquire. And if hundreds and hundreds of others argue the same thing? Well, that's their problem. There can only be One True Path to Enlightenment, and that revolves solely around "one of us".

Yet I am a moral objectivist, and I think there is a good chance you are too. In what follows I do not defend the content of my moral beliefs, nor make any presumptions about the content of yours. I do, however presume that many of you take the content your moral beliefs as seriously as I do mine.

Indeed, and over the years I have come upon philosophers who, while seeming to reject God and religion, are able to convince themselves that objective morality is still within reach. In other words, that in a No God world, one can still avoid becoming "fractured and fragmented" in regard to moral and political value judgments. That's the part where I invite them to examine my own moral philosophy in my signature threads [from ILP] and note why my frame of mind is not applicable to their own.

On the other hand, there is no way I am willing to avoid the "content" of their own moral philosophy. Why? Because that's the part "I" root existentially in dasein out in a particular world understood in a particular way.

After all, who among so many of these folks...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_r ... traditions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_p ... ideologies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_s ... philosophy

...don't take their own content seriously?

I will seek to persuade you that moral objectivism is at least as rational, as well-grounded, and as consistent with reality, as any alternative metaethic. The fundamental error of relativist and nihilist arguments against objectivism is the implicit claim that morality can be judged from nowhere.

Judged from nowhere? In fact, my own "rooted existentially in dasein" set of assumptions here starts with the assumptions revolving around this:

If you were born and raised in a Chinese village in 500 BC, or in a 10th century Viking community or in a 19th century Yanomami village or in a 20th century city in the Soviet Union or in a 21st century American city, how might your value judgments be different?

Unless, of course, I am misunderstanding his own set of assumptions. And that's always possible given how very, very different our own personal experiences, relationships and access to information and knowledge might have been over the years.

But then that's precisely what the moral objectivists, in my view, fail to take into account. That many of these, at times, hopelessly conflicting One True Paths to moral enlightenment are still around.

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Our Morality: A Defense of Moral Objectivism
After our recent ‘Death of Morality’ issue, Mitchell Silver replies to the amoralists.

The nature of motivation is the province of psychologists, who study it empirically. However, without stirring from our armchairs, we can safely say that people are sometimes motivated by rules that they have accepted, such as ‘move chess bishops only along the diagonals’, or ‘floss daily’. Acceptance of a rule can, in part, constitute motives for actions.

And what do these sorts of rules share in common? The fact that they revolve largely around objective truths that are applicable to everyone. The bishop can only move diagonally in a game of chess. And if you don't brush your teeth and floss daily you can come to endure all manner of dental debacles.

On the other hand, you can choose not to play chess and you can choose to trade your real teeth in for false teeth. The point being that in either case there are objective truths pertaining to chess and teeth that very, very few of us will squabble regarding.

After all, what are the objective truths applicable to all of us in regard to conflicting goods that are of most interest to you?

Not only can rules motivate actions, they also influence judgments about the correctness of actions. The rule about chess bishops underlies my judgment that it is incorrect to move a bishop along the horizontal. While there are no precise criteria for whether or not a person has accepted a rule, or for measuring the degree of acceptance, ‘acceptance’ implies that the rule has some motivational force and influence on judgments. It would be nonsensical to say, “Silver accepts the rule forbidding moving bishops horizontally, although he is not in the least inclined to follow the rule, nor does he see anything at all incorrect about moving bishops horizontally.”

Same thing basically. And in the either/or world there are rules of this sort regarding all sports and all health concerns. Sure, you may choose not to follow the rules. And, as a result, there will be good and bad consequences for yourself and for others involved.

But what is crucial from my frame of mind is the extent to which communication breaks down far, far, far less frequently in regard to rules that are basically in sync with the material world around us. And in exploring the arguments of those who do come into conflict with others in the is/ought world. Why are the communication breakdowns much, much, much more frequent there?

So, where does the author go?

Among the rules that can motivate actions and determine judgments are those that classify all possible actions as either permissible or impermissible. I call such rules ‘categorical permissibility rules’ (henceforth, simply ‘permissibility rules’). Common examples of permissibility rules include: it is always impermissible to act in a way that will not increase overall happiness or reduce overall suffering (John Stuart Mill promoted that one); it is always impermissible to treat someone merely as a means (a favorite of Immanuel Kant’s); never do to others that which is hateful to you (the Talmudic version of a commonplace in religious ethics); always obey whatever the priest tells you God has commanded (another commonplace in religious traditions); and, never act against self-interest (Ayn Rand). Less common, but equally possible permissibility rules include: never run for a bus (Mel Brooks); and, never act against Mitchell Silver’s interests (no one, alas). There are an endless number of possible permissibility rules.

Straight up into the "general description intellectual clouds" where advocates of various "metaethical" -- metaphysical? -- "schools of philosophy" can do battle "theoretically" regarding the optimal -- or even the only? -- "permissibility rules".

And, again, all I can do is to ask those here who do subscribe to the author's assessment so far to note how his conclusions are reflected in their own interactions with others in which there are clashes over "the right thing to do".