On Moral Relativism

Well, I am not going to write for a terribly long time on this topic, but I do want to put down a few things that have been rattling around in my brain for quite some time.  I also know that I have visited this topic before, but given the nature of many peoples' views on morality, it seems worth addressing again.

For the first point, many people believe they are moral relativists when they are actually not.  How can I make this assertion?  It is actually quite simple.  To truly be a moral relativist, one must not make a value judgement on any moral code adopted by any society - in a given context, majority rules is "right".  That means that the dominant moral view in a society is "good" and any minority view is "evil".  While many people can accept not judging other cultures, it is very difficult to label a particular thing (which you find reprehensible) as good.

By way of example, imagine a society that values men over women.  Women are second class citizens, forced to cover themselves at all times, are convicted of a crime if they are raped, etc.  Obviously, this is not an imaginary society; there are parts of the world that have this, now.  However, while some people might still cling to the idea that these cultures are legitimate expressions of a set of values, all but the most strident of moral relativists will be very hesitant to call these actions/values "good".  It is even more difficult to say that the person resisting this dominant culture is "evil".

A true moral relativist would have to take be able to look at a case where, say, for example, a 13 year old girl is shot on a school bus because she is vocal about educational rights for young girls, and make certain conclusions.  One - because the dominant cultural view is that women should not be educated, the young woman is performing an "evil" act by trying to change the culture, two - the person who shot her might actually have to be considered to be doing "good" because he was preserving moral order (relatively speaking, of course), and three - her continued attempts to reform the system after the attempt on her life would be similarly "evil".

It is very difficult to actually get someone who clings to the ideology of moral relativism to accept these as the inevitable conclusions of their philosophy, but they are the correct conclusions.  Of course, moral relativism has more issues, which I will attempt to elucidate below:

• If the morals are based on the dominant feeling/opinion in a culture or society, how is this determined?  Is a simple majority sufficient?  If, in a population of 101, if 51 people believe one thing is right and 50 believe it is wrong, according to relativism, the 51 are right.  What then happens if one person changes his/her mind?  Can the morality change day to day or even moment to moment?
• Most philosophers reject individual relativism, but then how many people does it take to define a moral structure?  And how many people make a society or culture?  Can a subculture hold different values that a primary culture?  And are those values then right and good within the subculture, even if they are evil in the primary culture?
• If several different groups form one culture, or one culture is made up of several subcultures, what is actually right and wrong?  Can things then be simultaneously right and wrong, if a person is a part of two (or more) "cultures"?  Since the family is ultimately the basis of human society (a point which may be open to argument, I will admit), can each family decide its own moral code?  If that is the case, and a family is started with a man and a woman, if they cannot achieve consensus on values, then what is right and what is wrong?
• What if one culture has the dominant view that conquest is good, and another holds the opposite view?  If the first culture conquers the second, is that act good or evil?  Which cultural norm prevails?  What if the two cultures have the same populations and there is no clear majority view?
• What, if anything, is the limiting size of a culture?  Is there a "human" culture, that could then dictate right and wrong on a planetary scale based on the majority belief of most humans?  If not, why not?

I could go on, but I do not feel the need to right now.  Most philosophers argue that individual relativism is untenable (I agree).  The reason should be fairly obvious - whatever I decide to do is the right and good course of action.  It cannot be otherwise.  If I make a choice, and I decide morality, then it is impossible for anything I do to be evil (unless I do something I do not want to do, but if I do it, then, at least on some level, I made wanted to - even if the choice was forced by onerous consequences of choosing the alternative; I wanted the choice more than the alternatives, so it was still the "good" choice).  Of course, this is completely ridiculous, but I believe that for moral relativism to be possible, then individual relativism must be viable as well, as it is the views of individuals that make up the cultural norms - how can individuals create morality in one circumstance, but not another?

Moreover, back to my original point, most people who cling to relativism seem to have a staunch belief in its validity.  For want of a better term, they believe that non-judgement is good.  But we then come against the crux of the issue - why is not judging other moral structures "good"?  Since it is all relative, isn't the idea of moral relativism subject to its own strictures?  That is, it can only be right if enough people believe in it.  If enough people do not believe in it, then they have to be, by their own definition, engaged in something morally wrong.

Of course, there is a flaw in my assumption - that is that the relativist believes that their opinion is "good".  A true moral relativist would probably not have this baggage (though I could still argue otherwise, and I will in a later post).  What I think is the case is that most people who claim moral relativism actually have a moral absolute, they just do not realize it.

They have a belief in the value of freedom and liberty - liberty of thought and of choice.  They feel bad for trying to force their perspective on someone else - not because of the value of the other's moral code, but because they believe it is "wrong" to impose one morality over another - it is "evil" to remove freedom.  But of course, this is an absolute statement.  One cannot have moral relativism and simultaneously hold this moral absolute.  A true relativist would have to recognize that their own beliefs on relativism would have to be relative, and that if a dominant culture emerged that believed in moral absolutism, then moral relativism would be wrong both by the dominant cultures absolutist beliefs and by the relativist beliefs as well.

I think that most people cling to moral relativism because it seems easy and comfortable - freedom is important, and relativism gives an excuse to value freedom without much baggage of the difficulty of making moral judgements.  In addition, they misunderstand the idea of moral absolutism as meaning there are no shades of gray - I would refute this hypothesis: just because there may be things are right or wrong does not mean that some may be more right or less wrong.  All moral reasoning is more sophisticated than that.  Lying may be wrong, and saving someones life may be right, so how does one assess lying to save a person's life.  Even if you believe in absolute rightness or wrongness, these nuances are not eliminated.  The problem is that moral absolutism has become (wrongly) connected with religious zeal and/or fanaticism - the two are not identical, but I would think that a lot of the cultural disposition to opposing of judgements is in opposition to the perceived judgementalism of the religious zealot.

Coming down to brass tacks, I believe that moral relativism is a vacuous and slip-shod philosophy that attempts to cover up people's own insecurity with the two actual options - either there is an existing morality that is (to some greater or lesser extent) absolute, or that morality is simply a fabrication and there is no actuality in the ideas of "good" and "evil".  Moral relativists seek to avoid the nihilism of the latter choice but end up with a fatuous and ridiculous philosophy that ultimately makes no sense.   

Right vs. Good?

Yesterday, subergoober texted me and mentioned that he wanted to ask me some questions about doing what is right vs. doing what is good, so I want to briefly address some of this.  I don't know his particular question, but I do have some thoughts on this issue in general.  Once I talk to him, I will probably have more to write.

My first thought is that the question, on its face, is something of a misstatement.  I would say that right and good are self-referential (they are not necessarily synonymous, but they are closely related).  I would say that the right thing to do is a good act, and good acts are the right thing to do - they are terms which inform and define one another; as I said, very close to synonymous.

A much more interesting question, however, and I think that this is what supergoober may have intended with his question is "good vs. necessary".  Of course, implicit in this question is the concept of the "necessary evil", an idea that I have used in previous arguments/justifications for certain things, but one which, of late, I have come to feel is quite weak and can be used as a justification for almost anything.  As a result, I do not believe that the idea of "necessary evil" is a tenable position to defend.

However, there are many necessary acts that are morally neutral, and, in fact, some acts that are "evil" are less evil or even morally neutral given context.  In fact, much of morality is not about the actual act, but about the context of the ramifications and of the intent behind the act.

For example, many religions view sex outside of marriage as wrong.  In fact, there is a lot, generally, of interest in sexual ethics.  The actual sexual act is not the moral concern (even at the heart of the Catholic religious teaching - I am Catholic, by the way - the essence of the teaching is not actually about the sex act), rather the impact it has on the people involved.  Sex can be morally good, morally neutral, or morally evil (in my opinion).  When it serves to enhance the relationship between two loving individuals, when it deepens the relationship, when it is mutually expressive of love and it brings those two people closer in their relationship, then it is a moral good.  When it is simply two consenting individuals meeting for mutual physical gratification of a need or perceived need, it is morally neutral (though I would argue that this situation is extremely rare - people do not come in to sexual encounters with equal power, with well-identified and conveyed intentions, etc.).  When it sex is solely for one of the partner's personal gratification with no care to the other person, or when it is done to establish control or power over another, or when it is done to demean another is when it is morally evil.

(Side note - this is not to say that a committed, loving couple cannot engage in behavior that would appear demeaning to others when viewed out of context; rather, if the behavior serves to strengthen the loving relationship, it is appropriate and good)

If an act becomes necessary (for example, if the act is compelled) - it ceases to have moral implications, in effect becoming morally neutral.  For example, if I were to tell you that if you don't steal a loaf of bread, I will kill your wife, you would have little option but to steal the bread (a lesser evil than the taking of a life) or somehow stop me by restraining, injuring, or even killing me (again, done in the service of preserving a life). 

You may have noted that I remarked that one thing was "less evil" than another.  While I do believe that there is an absolute morality (that is, there are things that are unequivocally right or wrong), but that does not preclude gradations.  It is entirely possible for things to be more or less right or wrong under this structure.  Most people erroneously believe that belief in an absolute morality precludes gradation; it does not.  Stating that there is a right answer does not mean that there aren't lesser right answers, better wrong answers, and completely wrong answers.

In a non-moral sense that allows for visualization of this, consider the equation

x² = 9.  The correct answer to this equation is positive or negative 3.  A slightly less correct answer would be positive and negative 3 (a subtle set distinction in math).  Answering 3 is partially correct, answering 4.5 is kind of wrong (dividing instead of taking the square root, but still applying algebra), answering 0 is patently wrong (just a guess, but still in the realm of mathematics), answering "tomato" is about as wrong as you can get.  

Just because there is a right answer does not preclude gradation (the essence of partial credit in a classroom).  

As far as I am concerned, morality is essentially based on the impact on the lives, feelings, and spirits of people (basically how it impacts people emotionally, intellectually, and physically).  I have not fully thought this out yet, but the worse impact you have on a person (or persons, including yourself) the more evil it is.  Obviously, this culminates with taking a life or lives (though I am sure I could potentially conceive of a way to come up with something more evil without taking a life).  Some people would argue that I am missing out when I do not specifically address the world, or the environment, etc., but I would argue that there is a moral obligation to uphold the environment to be able to allow other people the positive experience of beauty, as well as to be able to live in a healthy, life-affirming, and positive way.

Again, this seems to be somewhat relativistic in that I base it on the impact on human beings; however, I believe that there is an absolute positive or negative impact on people whether they realize it or not.  Take, for example, a person who routinely engages in meaningless sex with strangers for physical gratification.  I would argue that this person may be satisfying a physical need, but may be damaging themselves and their partners emotionally.  If the acts serve only to make them more base and less "fully human" (that is fully expressed as an intellectual, physical, emotional, and spiritual being) then they are doing something evil - both to the other people involved and to themself.  There is a moral obligation to any human being, including yourself.  

More forthcoming later...  

I Am Back, One More Time

 So here I am, one more time.  I think this time I will be able to maintain a presence a bit longer than the last foray onto the internet, as I have been laid up because of a car accident.  No martial arts, going out, or really doing much of anything except going to teach and coming home to read and watch crappy TV.

So, hopefully, I will find enough things to write about, that I will continue forward with this.

The first topic I want to address came from a conversation with Supergoober.  He was mentioning some things about cultural relativism that both he and his girlfriend had been speculating about.  In many ways, she ascribes to some form of cultural relativism - because there are so many different expressions of morality across cultures, it is difficult to imagine that there is one possible right answer to moral questions.

I do not agree with this perspective.  I do believe that there could be (and is) an absolute morality.  Whether it is actually possible to know this absolute morality is debatable (and I would argue that it is likely that the absolute morality is unknowable), but just because cultures exist that have different interpretations of morality is not sufficient evidence that there is no moral absolute.

A brief aside - I teach math, and suppose I assign a problem, x² + 7x – 18 = 0.  I don't even want to tell you the number of ways that I have seen a problem like this done incorrectly.  Am I therefore to assume that there are that many ways of doing the problem, and that there is no actual correct answer. 

Of course, most people will agree, even if they don't know how to do it, that there is a correct answer (or in this case, answers).  There are lots of ways of getting a problem wrong, and the more complex the problem, the more possible wrong ways of getting it wrong. 

This is called "Descriptive Relativism".  Just because we can describe a lot of ways that cultures have defined morality does not mean that there is actually more than one "right" way.  Descriptive relativism does not preclude an absolute morality.

Of course, descriptive relativism does not preclude cultural relativism either.  There are a number of other issues that I have with cultural relativism, but the description above was just to establish that it is possible for descriptive relativism and absolute morality to exist in the same realm.

There are aspects of cultural relativism that defy common sense, and others that defy logic.  I should probably address these two topics separately, but in all likelihood I will not.  I am writing things as they come to me, so I will probably end up mixing the two, as that is the way I think. 

But as a brief aside, we might contemplate, "What about individual relativism?"  Most philosophers simply state that individual relativism is an untenable premise.  If every individual can construct their own morality, then there is no possibility of anyone ever being wrong.  Since each person decides their own morality, ever action they take is right, and if they later regret it, it is simply a matter of their personal morality has changed.  The reason I will actually look at individual relativism is because it contributes to cultural relativism.  If cultural relativism is correct, individual relativism must (at least in part) be valid.  

The reason I contend this is that cultures are made of individuals.  A culture can only establish a morality based on the opinions of the individuals in that culture, therefore, individuals actually determine the morality of a culture.

While this may seem overly simplistic, I think that it is a very important fact - if the culture determines its own morality, then the individual members of that culture must be participants in the creation of the morality.  That means that for cultural relativism to exist, individual relativism must also exist.  

More on this later...  

I am getting a little tired.