Who’s To Say?
Posted: Sat Jun 03, 2023 9:44 am
Michael-John Turp asks if anyone has the authority to establish moral truth.
https://philosophynow.org/issues/156/Whos_To_Say
https://philosophynow.org/issues/156/Whos_To_Say
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The answer to this is very simple and easy.Philosophy Now wrote: ↑Sat Jun 03, 2023 9:44 am Michael-John Turp asks if anyone has the authority to establish moral truth.
https://philosophynow.org/issues/156/Whos_To_Say
See how SIMPLE and EASY it was to WORK OUT and FIND 'the answer'.Gary Childress wrote: ↑Sun Jun 04, 2023 1:24 pm It seems like a reasonably sensible essay from a rhetorical standpoint. It has its own problems as does almost everything that comes out of our mouths or keyboards, but such is life I suppose. I guess none of us can be an absolute authority on anything any more than we can live forever. If there is an absolute moral authority, maybe it's God (if there is a God).
Something along the lines of, "ask not what your country can do for you...ask what you can do for your country"? Fascism?Socrates famously got himself into trouble by persistently questioning authority. He irritated his fellow citizens so much that he ended up on trial. Eventually he accepted his sentence of execution by drinking hemlock rather than evading the law by fleeing to an easy exile.
On the other hand, for the moral objectivists among us, suspicions revolve more around those who, after morality is carefully [sometimes even patiently] explained to them objectively, still refuse to accept it. They insist instead that their own moral convictions are the One True Path. And then those like me who suggest that, in the absence of God, there is no such authoritative path.While few philosophers are as courageous (or as rash?) as Socrates, we generally remain similarly suspicious of appeals to authority.
Still, among most philosophers, there is a general belief that if we think "situations" through long enough we can at least come reasonably close to the most objective value judgments there might be. After all, not all moral objectivists are of the "fulminating fanatic", "my way or the highway" sort. Just as all moral relativists are not of the "fractured and fragmented" sort.We worry that too many self-proclaimed authorities are purveyors of self-serving puffery and nonsense. We like to prod, probe and question received wisdom. We ask for reasons, evidence, and argument. Arguments should be weighed on their merits not their origins.
Well, it depends on why they say it. If, for example, they point out that those deemed to be bad people are deemed to be good people by others...or that those who deem some ideas to be bad are confronted by others who deem them to be good...what then?Bad people can have good ideas, and good people can have bad ideas. In my experience, the authority-doubting question ‘Who’s to say?’ is especially popular among moral relativists.
And does anyone have the authority to ask such questions?Philosophy Now wrote: ↑Sat Jun 03, 2023 9:44 am Michael-John Turp asks if anyone has the authority to establish moral truth.
https://philosophynow.org/issues/156/Whos_To_Say
On the other hand [as we all know] political prejudices underpin -- or undermine -- that authority time and again. Or Christians form the majority. And then the part where crony capitalism seeps in and, well, "money talks".In some contexts, it makes sense to answer this question positively and suppose that there is someone with the authority to ‘say’, that is, to dictate the truth. For example, a Supreme Court might have the authority to say whether some law is constitutional.
Prosaically indeed. More to the point [mine] parents have the authority to indoctrinate -- lovingly indoctrinate -- their children to believe in all manner of ofttimes conflicting value judgments in any particular community.More prosaically, parents get to say that bedtime is at 8 o’clock. In these cases, a decision is made by an appropriate authority.
Of course, over and again that's my point too. We can speculate philosophically about free will and God and morality, but it seems that it can never go beyond that. The particular "personal opinions" that we have "here and now". Religion and morality rooted existentially in dasein from my frame of mind and free will embedded in "the gap" between all that we think we know about it and all that would need to be known about it going back to a definitive understanding of existence itself. And in Rummy's Rule:But philosophical questions are unlike this. We do not get to decide, for example, whether we have free will or whether God exists. In any case, there are no relevant authorities to whom we could delegate such decisions. I have wonderful philosophical colleagues, many of whom I suspect to be better-informed, smarter, and more virtuous than me. Sadly, I have no colleagues with the authority to decide whether for example the mind is identical to the brain.
And then those like Paul Stearns come along with their antidote: "the foundations of morality...do not change". As though when traveling to these diverse cultures and finding yourself compelled to accept behavioral prescriptions and proscriptions regarding these and many other moral conflicts, at least you can be comforted in the knowledge that they too accept that "rules of behavior" are necessary.Moral relativists often start from the factual observation that different cultures endorse different customs, different laws, and different moral rules. There are evident cultural differences with respect to issues such as slavery, capital punishment, same-sex relationships, and alcohol use.
Perhaps. Perhaps. Perhaps.Someone familiar with these differences naturally starts to wonder who, if anyone, is right. And who’s to say? It would be unwise to assume a priori that we are right. Perhaps, then, nobody is right. Perhaps then we should be sceptical of the very idea of moral truth. Perhaps there is no sensible talk of right and wrong in matters of morality. Some prefer vanilla ice-cream. Others prefer raspberry ice-cream. The Spartans preferred selective infanticide. Us, not so much.
How can the difference not be crystal clear? How can the capacity of the scientific community to establish that the Earth is in fact an irregular ellipsoid not be rationally differentiated from the philosophical community's capacity to establish what, morally, an abortion is? For one thing the Earth is always what it is. Whereas the circumstances revolving around particular abortions can vary considerably. We all live on the Earth together. But in regard to abortions each of us embodies our own uniquely personal situation. Both men and women inhabit Earth together. But only women can get pregnant.Relatively Speaking
Perhaps you believe that the Earth is round. Following an unfortunate tumble down a YouTube rabbit hole, I believe that the Earth is flat. As a simple matter of logic, it seems there are three possibilities: you have a false belief, I have a false belief, or we both have false beliefs (okay, okay, so strictly speaking, the Earth is an irregular ellipsoid). Similarly, in cases of a moral disagreement, it might seem that either I’m right, you’re right, or neither of us is right.
Okay, let's shift from a specific monster to "monsters" as construed politically by liberals and conservatives. Again, is it possible for philosophers and ethicists and political scientists to pin down what and who the monsters are such that whichever direction we are facing or in however manner we see them we can know if in fact they are monsters? In regard to an issue like abortion. Are those who perform or who have abortions the moral "monsters" here? Or are those who force pregnant women to give birth the moral "monsters"? Is the rapist the moral "monster" or are the authorities who force a woman made pregnant by the rapist to give birth the moral "monsters" as well?Relativists, however, appeal to cases that don’t follow this pattern. Let’s say that you believe there is a monster on the right, whereas I believe that the same monster is on the left. In this case, it is possible that we both have true beliefs. Perhaps we are facing each other, gazing into one another’s eyes, looking for courage and reassurance. Or perhaps the monster has moved while we’ve been speaking. In these cases it turns out that the sentence “The monster is on the left” is strictly speaking neither true nor false: it is incomplete until a frame of reference is specified – for example, “The monster is on my left, right now.”
Ingenious suggestion? For some of us, there is nothing ingenious about it at all. It simply reflects the assumptions that in a No God world any and all human behaviors can be rationalized. Why? Because once theological fonts are eliminated, there is no equivalent of Divine Commandments able to be provided from either the scientific or the philosophical communities.This is also the model relativists propose for moral truth: they say that ‘X is morally right’ is incomplete in the same sort of way as ‘X is on the left’ is. For instance, say that the Dothraki [in Game of Thrones] hold that slavery is morally permissible, and the Westerosi hold, to the apparent contrary, that slavery is morally impermissible. It looks like only one group (at most) can be right. But the relativist’s ingenious suggestion is that both Dothraki and Westerosi can be right relative to their respective cultures: slavery is morally permissible to the Dothraki and morally impermissible to the Westerosi.
There you go. Slavery as as manifestation of might makes right. Slavery as a manifestation of right makes might.On the one hand, this model of morality seems less judgy and more tolerant. On the other hand, it means that the moral status of slavery doesn’t directly depend on facts concerning, say, human wellbeing, equality, dignity and autonomy. Rather, the morality or otherwise of slavery depends on the attitudes of a relevant authority, that is, the prevailing cultural attitudes among the Dothraki and Westerosi.
Or, simply put, this frame of mind in and of itself in regard to slavery presumes that there actually is a way to get it morally right. And, sure, there may well be. Let's hear the deontological argument establishing this.This is, to put it mildly, a surprising conclusion. The obvious worry is that prevailing cultural attitudes sometimes fail to withstand reflective scrutiny. Simply put, it seems like every culture (and individual) gets some things wrong morally.
Then this part: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_r ... traditionsThere is an instructive comparison here with the theist’s idea that moral law requires a Law-Giver. According to ‘divine command theory’, an action is morally right if it’s in accordance with God’s commands.
Of course, that's what many of the secular Isms focus in on. The belief that in a No God world there are in fact ways for mere mortals to command each other...deontologically, ideologically, by way of biological imperatives. It's just that as with the theological schools, the secular schools abound as well in sprouting many differing and conflicting paths:I’m on Socrates’ side, though, when he asks what reasons the gods have to command certain actions. This leads to the so-called ‘Euthyphro dilemma’, from Plato’s dialogue of that name: If there are independent reasons favouring an action as good, then we can appeal directly to those reasons, so why bring in God? On the contrary, without independent reasons for something being good, God’s commands would seem arbitrary.
Exactly: within a religious framework. Or within a particular cultural framework.Of course, a theist such as St Augustine might appeal to God’s good character as itself the ultimate standard of goodness, and say that in this way goodness resides in or comes from God. So in this way the buck stops with our Creator. This makes sense within a religious framework. An appeal to cultural authority among secular moral relativists is, however, far more puzzling. Why think that the buck of moral justification stops with prevailing cultural norms? What could give cultures a God-like authority to determine moral truth?
In that case, what's the difference for all practical purposes? God meet the prevailing cultural attitudes. A different authority. Except that with God it doesn't end on this side of the grave. If you embody a particular divine command theory "here and now" then "there and then" you attain immortality and salvation.The relativist’s question ‘Who’s to say?’ presupposes a cultural authority akin to divine command theory. Moreover, the logic of their argument implies a clear answer to our question – namely, prevailing cultural attitudes.
Okay, but there are options here as well. You can become a hedonist, or an epicurean, or a libertine, or a nihilist, or a stoic, or a solipsist, or a sociopath. Or someone who detaches him or herself from social interactions completely. A recluse.Despite this, many relativists are actively suspicious of the idea that there is any privileged position of authority with respect to moral truth.
Here that can manifest itself more or less in a "might makes right" or a "right makes might" social, political and economic framework. The important factor being that aside from what is believed about morality in any given community, what really counts in the end is who has the actual political power to enforce one or another rendition of "the rules of behavior".For example, they often echo the postmodernist Michel Foucault’s insight that claims to moral knowledge can be used as instruments to seize and maintain power. And they are clearly right about that. Indeed, there’s a long and dreadful history of the powerful imposing their way of life on the weak and vulnerable in the name of their moral truth. Conquerors often have moral gurus by their side, helping to smother dissent. They can be all too sincere; and full of passionate intensity to boot.