Friday, January 02, 2009

Hush Hush Relativism

If one has a good moral theory, it seems that it should be pronounced. Taught to others. Publicized. Moral precepts should be teachable. This seems obvious.

Cultural or subjective relativism claims that there are no universal, trans- subject or culture moral principles. That what is ethically right for one subject or culture, might not be for another. Likewise, what is wrong for one subject or culture, might not be for another.

But, ask any relativist you know whether s/he thinks genocide, rape, pedophillia, etc., is wrong, immoral, bad, you'll no doubt here something like: "Well, I think it is." Or, "Well, our culture says it is."

Besides the many, many problems for any form of ethical relativism, I'd like to raise another I recently thought of.

Given the truth of ethical relativism, it seems highly probable that other subjects or cultures would use its truth to justify what you or your culture takes to be immoral.

This isn't speculative either. Take Bundy:

Then I learned that all moral judgments are “value judgments,” that all value judgments are subjective, and that none can be proved to be either ‘right’ or ‘wrong.’ I even read somewhere that the Chief Justice of the United States had written that the American Constitution expressed nothing more than collective value judgments. Believe it or not, I figured it out for myself – what apparently the Chief Justice couldn’t figure out for himself – that if the rationality of one value judgment was zero, multiplying it by millions would not make it one whit more rational. Nor is there any ‘reason’ to obey the law for anyone, like myself, who has the boldness and daring – the strength of character – to throw off its shackles…. I discovered that to become truly free, truly unfettered, I had to become truly uninhibited. And I quickly discovered that the greatest obstacle to my freedom, the greatest block and limitation to it, consists in the insupportable ‘value judgment’ that I was bound to respect the rights of others. I asked myself, who were these ‘others’? Other human beings, with human rights? Why is it more wrong to kill a human animal than any other animal, a pig or a sheep or a steer? Is your life more to you than a high’s life to a hog? Why should I be willing to sacrifice my pleasure more for the one than for the other? Surely you would not, in this age of scientific enlightenment, declare that God or nature has marked some pleasures as ‘moral’ or ‘good’ and others as ‘immoral’ or ‘bad’? In any case, let me assure you, my dear young lady, that there is absolutely no comparison between the pleasure I might take in eating ham and the pleasure I anticipate in raping and murdering you. That is the honest conclusion to which my education has led me – after the most conscientious examination of my spontaneous and uninhibited self. Louis P. Pojman The Moral Life: An Introductory Reader in Ethics and Literature (Oxford University Press: 2003).


Or take another example from history. Nazi war criminals defended themselves by claiming that they were just following orders given by their culture and legal system. In response, Robert Jackson, chief counsel for the U.S. at the trials responded by saying that: "there is a 'law beyond the law' of any individual nation, permanent values which transcend any particular society."

It seems, then, that, for some, the truth of ethical relativism, for them, will serve as an excuse for them to do things that you, another relativist, thinks is wrong.

Thus, your teaching relativism may lead to people commiting crimes that you take to be highly immoral. That seems highly counter intuitive a result for an ethical theory to produce. Usually we think teaching ethical principles will have the opposite effect. People will be "better" (according to our created standard of better).

Thus it may better to not teach relativism but to teach some kind of ethical absolutism or ethical objectivism where the ethical principles that are absolute or objective transcend subject and culture instead.

The relativist might respond that that would be lying and s/he (or the culture) believes lying to be wrong. But why not allow lying in this instance? Most do not believe it would be wrong to lie to the Nazi at your door step, so what is so wrong about lying about what ethical theory is correct, especially when people might use it to justify henious acts that you take to be highly immoral? Wouldn't it be worth it in this instance to lie?

Another response might be: But teaching relativism is needed because we need tolerance, tolerance among people and cultures would make them less likely to commit genocides, exercise racism, etc. So, teaching relativism will, hopefully, lead to a lessening of genocides &c. Thus my ethical theory will promote what I take to be morally right.

But here the relativist imposes her morality on others. The relativist believes she is right and others are wrong. She is saying with this claim that: what I or my culture thinks is right for us, is right for everyone. Just because the relativist thinks we should be tolerant, doesn't mean another relativist won't use that to his advantage, claiming he doesn't need to be tolerant.

These people could commit what the relativist takes to be highly immoral atrocities. There would be more ground to convince the person or others that he is wrong by claiming a (limited) tolerance is an objective ethical principle, not made true by subjects or cultures beliefs. So, the tolerance principle would still get taught.

Since most ethical relativists will think it is okay to lie in instances where telling the truth could have very disasterous consequences, then it wouldn't violate immoral instances of lying. To tell the truth would, actually, be immoral.

It seems to me that many relativists should think it immoral to teach relativism.

30 comments:

  1. Moral relativism has been co-opted by the absolutists as a sort of strawman, much like the concept of "macroevolution". There is no such thing as macroevolution, you see, only microevolution applied over millions of years, but its fun to put scientists on the spot by tossing the word macroevolution at them and making them defend it when they don't even hold that position.

    Same goes for "moral relativism" which absolutists critique using nothing but word salad while social Darwinism quietly takes over the mainstream discourse in the same way evolution inexorably displaced creationism. A more accurate name for equilibrium morality is moral naturalism: evolutionary game-theory applied to ethics.

    Rather than interpreting morality as the result of negotiations between members of a large group of free moral agents, moral naturalism sees morality as an emergent phenomenon arising as an unintended side-effect of the interaction of those agents in smaller groups.

    In other words, morality is not to solve a single problem but a number of recurring problems, in the same manner that natural selection adjusts populations of organisms for changing environmental conditions.

    This puts moral facts in a class with natural facts about the world, which contradicts the assertion of divine command theory that morality is defined by the arbitrary revelation of God.

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  2. Michelle Renee: "In other words, morality is not to solve a single problem but a number of recurring problems, in the same manner that natural selection adjusts populations of organisms for changing environmental conditions."

    Ok. Moral naturalism must be occurring in the European Union then whereby Islamic absolutists via higher birthrates and immigration are adjusting the population to change the environmental conditions conducive to the eventual acceptance (compulsion?) of divine command theory via Sharia law.

    Hooray for "moral naturalism" and its embrace of Islamic values and morals!

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  3. When Adam and Eve were in the garden and God told them not to eat the fruit, were they entitled to break his command because it was only the "arbitrary revelation of God"?

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  4. Michelle,

    i) I don't quite get your rant on relativism. I even cited Bundy as advocating it. And, there are plenty of scholarly books on the matter. So, I don't quite get your point here.

    ii) You simply describe Ethical Naturalism and make some postmillennial prognostications about it. You offered nothing. Don't bother commenting in my comboxes if you just trying to get off "talking points."

    iii) You also comment on a naive DCT, hardly any sophisticated advocate claims morality is by "arbitrary fiat." So, don't slander facts in my combox. Future posts will be deleted as I don't have the time to play games with someone wanting to show off their Phi 101 chops.

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  5. Mark Pendray said: When Adam and Eve were in the garden and God told them not to eat the fruit, were they entitled to break his command because it was only the "arbitrary revelation of God"?

    They were not entitled, but neither did they understand it was wrong. That understanding came with eating the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. We do not ascribe sin to moral agents who do not understand what they are doing. Babies do not sin, and neither do the mentally incapacitated.

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  6. Hmm...last three paragraphs of Renee's comment seems to be copy-pasted from here:

    http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Moral-naturalism

    I do believe it's good manners to cite your sources, unless this is moral naturalism at work. :P

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  7. That's good, Daniel. I wrote the original article on Wikipedia about moral naturalism (under the user name Endomion) and your link is a snapshot of that early work before Wikipedia editors mangled the article beyond recognition and eventually pointed it another article. Please don't assume the worse in people.

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  8. Ooh, I did not know. My apologies. Who would've thought? =)

    Well, I'll cite your cited source on your original article:

    http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/game-ethics/

    There we go. :)

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  9. Additional notes:

    Sorry, the link above was the external link you gave in your original article. You cited Anthony Flew.

    My thoughts on moral naturalism: it provides explanation but not justification. The search for something that does justice to the latter continues...

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  10. "We do not ascribe sin to moral agents who do not understand what they are doing"

    So they weren't sinning when they ate the fruit?

    Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who was a pattern of the one to come

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  11. Michelle Renee: "We do not ascribe sin to moral agents who do not understand what they are doing."

    Are you an active lesbian moral agent who understands what she is doing when she is engaging in unmarital same-sex behavior?

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  12. Michelle,

    When Romans 2 informs us that all people have the moral law written on their hearts, is that one of the parts of the Bible that is wrong? How do you know?

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  13. My thoughts on moral naturalism: it provides explanation but not justification. The search for something that does justice to the latter continues...

    Free market capitalism is economic naturalism. The identification of capitalism with naturalism is an explanation. The justification is in the fact that most nations in the world have embraced it and it has generated trillions in wealth. In the past, people have judged capitalism to be unfair and have attempted to justify central planning but these economies (USSR, Maoist China, North Korea) have failed. The divine command theory of ethics equates to "central planning" in the field of morality. Even with a three-thousand year old plan consisting of 613 control points, human society will always complexify beyond the ability of that plan to handle it. How does God's law, for instance, address a case where poor countries duplicate important drugs to save thousands of people without playing patent royalties to Big Pharmaceuticals?

    So they weren't sinning when they ate the fruit?

    They were sinning when they ate the fruit because eating it was against the commandment of God, and sin is the transgression of commandments. But they were not morally culpable because they did not have the awareness that sinning was evil until the moment they ate the fruit.

    When Romans 2 informs us that all people have the moral law written on their hearts, is that one of the parts of the Bible that is wrong? How do you know?

    What does it mean to have the moral law written in your heart? It means you have innate knowledge of good and evil. Adam and Eve were not ashamed of their nakedness at creation, and they did not hide their nakedness from God until they ate the fruit. It is immoral to go naked in public. Obviously the moral law was written on their heart only at the instant they ate the fruit. And it is only in retrospect that they knew (with eyes open at last) that eating the fruit was wrong. Before that instant, they only had God's information that eating the fruit was dangerous, as if it were a warning on the side of a pack of cigarettes. They didn't know what the word consequences meant until that point.

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  14. "Are you an active lesbian moral agent who understands what she is doing when she is engaging in unmarital same-sex behavior?"

    May I assume through your silence that the answer is YES?

    MR: "But they were not morally culpable because they did not have the awareness that sinning was evil until the moment they ate the fruit."

    They were morally culpable because they were aware that they were disobeying God's explicit commandment.

    MR: "It is immoral to go naked in public."

    Absolutely says the "moral naturalist" who is unaware of how she is self-refuting.

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  15. They were morally culpable because they were aware that they were disobeying God's explicit commandment.

    Yes, they were aware that they were disobeying God, but they didn't know disobeying God was wrong. That is knowledge which only comes when your eyes are open and you know the difference between good and evil.

    Hebrews 5:14 But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.

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  16. MR: "Yes, they were aware that they were disobeying God, but they didn't know disobeying God was wrong."

    Nice try, but wrong nonetheless.

    They did know this from Genesis 2: 17 "but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die."

    and reaffirmed in Genesis 3:2-3 "The woman said to the serpent, "From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat;

    but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, 'You shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die.'"

    Sorry MR, but Adam and Eve were definitely morally culpable.

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  17. "The woman said to the serpent, "From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat; but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, 'You shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die.'"

    Sorry MR, but Adam and Eve were definitely morally culpable.


    Eve was relaying pure information to the serpent in that passage, not restating a moral imperative, and she could not be morally culpable in any event because the information wasn't even correct. She did eat from it and she did not die as promised "in the day that thou eatest thereof". Adam ate it and didn't die until 930 years later, probably from causes related to extreme age.

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  18. Dear MR,

    Because of your silence I clicked over to your blog. Yes, you're a lesbian.

    Truth-in-Love compels me to share the following passages (which you may already be aware of, and yet still reject, but I don't know that).

    (1) John 3:16

    (2) Romans 1:18-32

    18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.
    21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.

    24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another.25 They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.

    26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones.27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.

    28 Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. 29 They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; 31 they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 32 Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.

    (3) Revelations 21:7-8

    "7 He who overcomes will inherit all this, and I will be his God and he will be my son. 8 But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death."

    (4) 1 Corinthias 6:9-11

    "9 Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders 10 nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God."

    P.S. I'm a terrible sinner too. And I desperately need Jesus' shed blood for my sins too.

    Pax.

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  19. MR: "Eve was relaying pure information to the serpent in that passage, not restating a moral imperative, and she could not be morally culpable in any event because the information wasn't even correct. She did eat from it and she did not die as promised "in the day that thou eatest thereof"."

    (1) "because the information wasn't even correct"

    You're calling God a liar.

    (2) Death, in this context of the Genesis passages, was obviously not immediate physical death.

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  20. Death, in this context of the Genesis passages, was obviously not immediate physical death.

    If death in the Genesis passages does not refer to "immediate physical death" then we are faced with two alternatives:

    1. Non-immediate physical death

    2. Immediate spiritual death.

    Let us examine the first position, that Adam's death 930 years after eating the Fruit was the direct (albeit delayed) result of eating it. That means Adam was created immortal, and eating the Fruit caused God to remove his immortality as a punishment. But this punishment doesn't appear in Scripture. God only curses the ground to make it difficult for the man to bear fruit, and in parallel he curses the woman to make it difficult for her to bear fruit. God says Adam has become able to discern good and evil, and he bars the way for him to eat of the Tree of Life, which would result in him acquiring the immortality he was not created to have. In this scenario, God is a liar when he said the fruit would result in his death, because Adam was doomed to die from his creation (else why the necessity for a Tree of Life to stave this death off?).

    The only scenario which makes sense is that God was speaking of the death of the life of grace which Adam and Eve enjoyed from the moment of their creation.

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  21. I'll pass the baton over to Paul Manata to explicate about the various death scenarios. But the main point stands, and for which your assertion is refuted, namely that Adam and Eve were morally culpable for their disobedience.

    Can I assume that you're a non-celibate lesbian? If so, do you consider yourself a follower of Christ? Do you think your lesbian behavior is a sin that you need to repent of?

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  22. Michelle,

    Why did God punish Adam and Eve if they didn't know they had done wrong?

    What about in Numbers when a man is stoned for violating God's Sabbath regulations:

    "Numbers 15:32-36 While the Israelites were in the desert, a man was found gathering wood on the Sabbath day. Those who found him gathering wood brought him to Moses and Aaron and the whole assembly, and they kept him in custody, because it was not clear what should be done to him. Then the LORD said to Moses, “The man must die. The whole assembly must stone him outside the camp.” So the assembly took him outside the camp and stoned him to death, as the LORD commanded Moses."

    This was a divine command.

    Another example is when God commanded Noah to build the Ark. There was a moral imperative for him to obey, and if he hadn't then he would have died in the flood.

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  23. MICHELLE RENEE SAID:

    “Yes, they were aware that they were disobeying God, but they didn't know disobeying God was wrong. That is knowledge which only comes when your eyes are open and you know the difference between good and evil.”

    “Eve was relaying pure information to the serpent in that passage, not restating a moral imperative, and she could not be morally culpable in any event because the information wasn't even correct. She did eat from it and she did not die as promised "in the day that thou eatest thereof". Adam ate it and didn't die until 930 years later, probably from causes related to extreme age.”

    You are committing some basic exegetical blunders because you evidently don’t bother to consult the standard exegetical literature. For example, Victor Hamilton, in his commentary on Genesis (vol. 1), deals with both these issues.

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  24. What about in Numbers when a man is stoned for violating God's Sabbath regulations:

    This was a divine command.


    The people already knew working on the Sabbath was wrong, but the "infallible" moral code did not provide the penalty for violating it. God had to append the penalty to the Law with a verbal tweak. And over time the bible evolved such that there was no penalty for working on the Sabbath at all: Col.2:16 Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days:

    Another example is when God commanded Noah to build the Ark. There was a moral imperative for him to obey, and if he hadn't then he would have died in the flood.

    Noah inherited the knowledge of good and evil from Adam and Eve, so he was culpable for obeying God's commands.

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  25. "Noah inherited the knowledge of good and evil from Adam and Eve, so he was culpable for obeying God's commands"

    You're confusing me. I thought you rejected divine command theory. What's wrong with disobeying an arbitrary command?

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  26. Michelle, I can't help but notice that you have been posting long and rambling comments in other threads, but you haven't explained your blatantly contradictory comments in this one. Arguing with you is frustrating because you don't really answer my questions, or mantain any consistent position.

    1) Do you or do you not believe that humans are obliged to obey at least some of God's commands?
    2) If Adam was not culpable for his 'sin', then why was he punished?

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  27. Do you or do you not believe that humans are obliged to obey at least some of God's commands?

    Humans are obliged to obey the moral commandments but not the ceremonial commandments. The moral commandments are those which are valid in all times and places. It is always wrong to kill. But the Sabbath commandment is time specific, it forbids labor on Saturday while allowing it on Sunday. So it is ceremonial and was "nailed to the cross" per Colossians 2:14.

    If Adam was not culpable for his 'sin', then why was he punished?

    He wasn't punished, just as a father who gambles away his life savings isn't punished. The loss of sanctifying grace for himself and for all his offspring was the mere consequence of his sin, without regard to punishment.

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  28. "In other words, morality is not to solve a single problem but a number of recurring problems, in the same manner that natural selection adjusts populations of organisms for changing environmental conditions.

    This puts moral facts in a class with natural facts about the world, which contradicts the assertion of divine command theory that morality is defined by the arbitrary revelation of God."

    Explain this, please.

    There's already been an atheist on here who was pretending to be a Christian and making all kinds of inconsistent arguments.

    How on the one hand can you attack the idea that "morality is defined by the arbitrary revelation of God." while at the same time saying we should obey "God's moral commands"?

    Here's a video about lesbianism which I found instructive:
    http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ed9RLxRKEl4

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  29. There's already been an atheist on here who was pretending to be a Christian and making all kinds of inconsistent arguments. How on the one hand can you attack the idea that "morality is defined by the arbitrary revelation of God." while at the same time saying we should obey "God's moral commands"?

    Okay, I think I know what is happening. I am a woman whose faith is at an extremely low ebb. When I was younger I was extremely involved in an Evangelical Free Church and I knew the scriptures inside out and backwards. But I'm a lesbian. About the only connection I still have with Christianity is my knowledge of the scriptures, which I keep polished by entering into discussions with this or that group online. So if I say something like "humans are obliged to obey the moral commandments" this is true for Christians and it is true for me in a very small way because of that tentative window I still have on faith. But I have an alternative "fall back" ethical theory which is a kind of Social Darwinism, where things are right or wrong depending on how they impacted the tribe while it was in competition with other tribes. And this must be the end of this discussion because this is a Paul Manata commbox and he said I'm banned from using his commboxes for a week. This message might disappear before you see it.

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  30. Ok, I see. I think you should be more open about where you're coming from though.

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