Gabriel Ray L.

Luzano Philo 113

2010 58585 September 27, 2013
Should Moral Relativism be Natural?
What is moral relativism?
Moral relativism is a very old view about moral judgments from all the way back to 5
th

century Greece and had made a resurgence in popularity during the 19
th
and 20
th
centuries and
has spread from moral philosophy to other fields such as psychology and anthropology (Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP); Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (IEP)). Moral
relativism is the theory that all moral truths are relative to a culture at some point in time, such
that what is right and wrong in that culture at that time is the same as what the majority of people
in that culture believe is right and wrong, respectively, at that time. It should be made clear that
moral relativism is not moral subjectivism (radicalization of moral relativism, moral truth is
relative to a person at some point at time rather than to a culture); not moral skepticism (the view
that we cant know any moral truths although it doesnt deny that they may exist; and moral
nihilism (morality is a fiction) (Roche 2010).
There are many different forms of moral relativism but the most common is the empirical
position and the metaethical position. The empirical position is usually: Descriptive Moral
Relativism (DMR) as a matter of empirical fact, there are deep and widespread moral
disagreements across different societies and these disagreements are much more significant that
whatever agreements there may be. The metaehical position is usually: Metaethical Moral
Relativism (MMR) the truth or falsity of moral judgments, or their justification, is not absolute
or universal, but is relative to the traditions, convictions, or practices of a group of persons
(SEP). Moral relativism, according to Appiahs book, is the view that what is good depends on
who you are (or in what culture or when you live). For if moral sentences are expressions of
attitudes and not of beliefs, then which moral beliefs you assent to will depend on what attitudes
you (or your community) happen to have (Appiah 2003, 192). He combines the empirical,
DMR and the metaethical, MMR positions of moral relativism into one that says that the truth
value of moral sentences ultimately depends on what you or your society accept it to be.
A good example of this position is transcribed from an interview in Fishkins book. It
introduces the interviewee Sam who is a nineteen-year-old Yale undergraduate who says that
there is no ultimate justification or ultimate value in any one system of ethics. The value that
some people place on good and the value that other people place on good can be in contradiction
to one another, and there is no ultimate or absolute arbiter between the two (Fishkin 1984, 37).
And that about summarizes what moral relativism is about, there are no absolutes when it comes
to moral judgments but one cannot simply decide for himself what moral judgments truth values
are.
Arguments for moral relativism
Some of the most notable arguments that support relativism are the argument from
cultural diversity, untenability of moral objectivism, cognitive relativism, and moral relativism
promotes tolerance. The argument from cultural diversity suggests that different cultures have
different sets of moral values and no moral values are held throughout all cultures, what is
morally right and wrong is relative to culture. The untenability of moral objectivism suggests
that moral objectivism has been discredited meaning that there is no such thing as an objective
truth that proves the validity of moral claims. The cognitive realism argument states that the truth
value of any judgment is relative to some particular standpoint, if so, no standpoint is privileged
over all the others. Truth is not a property that sentences possess in virtue of their
correspondence to an independent reality. We call a sentence true when it coheres with the rest
of our beliefs, perceptions, values, and assumptions or in other words, when it is rationally
acceptable. The argument from tolerance states that people should be tolerant of the different
values of different cultures and the best way to do so is by using moral relativism therefore
making the value of moral actions relative to cultures. (IEP; Roche)
Why moral relativism should be natural
I start by quoting what was said by Joseph Margolis man is the measure if the
world has no fixed structure, and if human knowledge is itself an achievement of some kind
within that same world, then what could possibly provide the basis for supposing that, under
real-world conditions, human truth-claims can be adequately managed, distributively and once
and for all, in terms of the uniquely strong bivalent values true and false that are supposed to
obtain? What reason do we ever have for supposing that there are discernable criteria
timelessly suitable, under the terms of the argument for matching truth-claims to truth and
falsity tout court, or for reliably approximating to them? (Margolis 1991, 4).
Although he uses a psychological approach to the topic of ethics and moral judgments, I
believe Hales conclusion is capable of partly explaining why relativism should be natural. He
states that I have argued that there is no means of justifying one fundamental theory over
another, as all such justifications are ultimately grounded in root intuitions that diverge at the
base. The upshot is that either we should be skeptics about moral truths or relativists. Either there
is no reason to think that morality has anything more to do with reality than ghosts and witches,
or moral propositions can be true, just not uniquely true. If we reject skepticism, how shall we
advocate non-arbitrarily for any particular moral theory? The answer cannot be a normative one;
that is, arguments that attempt to show that following one moral theory is likelier to lead to right
action, or that the maxims and principles of one theory are more probably true, are doomed to
failure What remains is the pragmatic endorsement of a moral theory. The judgment of which
moral theory we ought to prefer must also be made on the basis of pragmatic, not normative,
reasons. To offer normative reasons for selecting a moral system is to land us right back in the
problem of intractable moral debates bogged down in the construction of ever more abstract and
bizarre cases and counterexamples (Hales 2009, 446). On the psychological level, the best way
to have a moral theory is to have one that is accepted as the most pragmatic, the most practically
applicable theory for the community that wants to share such beliefs.
Fishkin also gives us some arguments that would apply to the task of accepting that a
subjective moral view, such moral relativism, should come naturally. The first one is the quest
for foundations there is no ultimate justification or ultimate value in any one system of ethics
and that the value that some people place on good and the value that other people place on good
can be in contradiction with each other because precisely that there is no absolute arbiter
between the two. The second is confronting moral complexity the world is full of complexities
thus making it virtually impossible to create a system of rules that would apply as rigid laws on
ethics. The third argument is inevitable indeterminacies there is no telling what sort of
situations with different conditions will come up so that a system of principles to govern morals
would be too large and impractical for use. The fourth argument is the demands of the
conscience basically, all moral decisions must agree to the conscience of the moral agent for
the agent to accept it. (Fishkin 1984, 45-81).
I believe that we have missed one possible interpretation for moral relativism. We have
analyzed it in different ways but I believe that moral relativism is not similar to Utilitarianism or
Kantianism. I would view just about all moral and ethical views as part of moral relativism
because they are also accepted by choice. When we are born there is no automatic moral attitude
within us, we instead learn to view actions and moral judgments from our community. Thus our
view of moral values change as we mature, even choosing to become a utilitarian or a Kantian or
an emotivist or a consequentialist is a form of accepting a view that you have chosen to accept as
the moral viewpoint that would apply to the world you live in. Moral relativism is natural not in
the sense of a moral view, it is natural as a theory that pertains to how we form our moral views.
What we hold as our moral view is our choice depending on what we learn in society, our moral
views change over time, none of the views among those possible choices come naturally but
choosing the view to accept is definitely natural.






References:
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2008. Moral Relativism.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-relativism/
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Moral Relativism.
http://www.iep.utm.edu/moral-re/
Roche, Andrew. 2010. Two Arguments for Moral Relativism.
https://sites.google.com/a/centre.edu/philosophy/ethics-political-
theory/twoargumentsformoralrelativism
Appiah, Kwame Anthony. 2003. Thinking it Through: An Introduction to Contemporary
Philosophy. Oxford University Press, Inc.
Fishkin, James S. 1984. Beyond Subjective Morality: Ethical Reasoning and Political
Philosophy. Yale University Press.
Margolis, Joseph. 1991. The Truth About Relativism. Basil Blackwell, Inc.
Hales, Steven D. 2009. Moral Relativism and Evolutionary Psychology. Synthese 166
(2): 431-447. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40271150