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.