Moral Relativism: Good, bad...etc?

[Ben Kenobi]

I'm arguing for generic relativism (the idea that no assertion is absolutely true - including that one).

Which is why it's impossible to be a moral relativist.

We are all absolutists, it just matters the degree to which we are.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker


It's rather absurd to argue that nothing can be known, I agree.

How could you possibly agree with me? You have no idea what I'm talking about. You don't even know what your talking about. Hell no one knows, except you seem to be pre-occupied with communicating without language, and I don't really know if you ever connected that to anything relevent.

[Kidlicious]

This is the absolute worst debate that I've seen here. There is no real support here for moral relativism that I can see, which is interesting, because most of the people participating in the debate claim to be moral relativists, but I see a lot of debating about whether axioms are assumptions and crap like that that seems so abstract to be completely meaningless, but then I can't really bare to follow the arguments because no one seems to care to connect any of it, or the debate got so boring that they did and I (probably most people) stopped reading.

Sorry I'm so critical tonight, well most always, but it's just an observation.

[BeBMan]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker

Originally posted by BeBro
Relativism has its merits to refute intolerant, dogmatic positions. But it fails (which was even admitted in this thread) completely when it comes to the justification of moral standards or norms, because then you have to go through a decision-making process where you have to find reasons for specific positions. But then you cannot think all possible positions are equally valid.

That's like saying a microwave is good for cooking things, but fails when you are trying to fly to a different city. It's a nonsensical statement. Relativism isn't a morality; it is not a failure of relativism that it does not provide moral statements, any more than it's a failure of mathematics that it does not provide moral statements.

That was actually what I'm saying, nice that you aree And of course I can say "it fails" in the sense of that it would not be useful to argue with relativism to establish a moral norm.

[Ramo]

Axioms aren't the same as assumptions.

Not true. Axioms are any assumptions about a system, particularly about abstract systems (i.e. logic).

[Whaleboy]

I'm arguing for generic relativism (the idea that no assertion is absolutely true - including that one). The idea is that one needs at least one axiom (the definition of logical validity - noncontradiction) to prove any assertion. Kuci is making an argument that this axiom doesn't need to be established, though he's never shown why.

I too. Relativism is a concept that can manifest itself in various concepts, cognitive/epistemological, moral, social, cultural etc, so if you accept relativism at a fundamental level you have to accept it in the rest of those contexts... as I do.

And yes, Kuci is relying upon assumptions... whereas the rest of us are attempting to show that relativism holds generally he's merely talking in the moral context. However, I don't think there is a discrete distinction between moral relativism and cognitive relativism (considering that the other contexts are more artificial anyway) so it seems odd to talk about one and not the other.

Don't you think an assertion can be absolutely true in certain situations?

Not absolutely inductively true (in qualitative terms), the Hume gap and uncertainty principle sees to it. However, for all intents and purposes, yes... in context. For example, in a court you have the judge, plaintiff and defendent. Judge starts out being objective... so independent to the context of accused vs. accuser. Listens to the weight of evidence and then comes to a conclusion.... that accused is not guilty. That is true for the court... the judge has thrown his lot with the defendent. Afterwards, they all go down to the pub where the judge is just as subjective as the other two, and the verdict has no (for the sake of the example) contextual validity. The key thing is context or dimension as I have said all along (otherwise relativism would make it impossible for us to come to consistent decisions).

There's one valuable thing that I learned in my college philosophy course. No matter how good you think your argument is, some one can always philisophically show that it's wrong. Of course, someone will come along and do the same thing to that argument, and so on, and so on ..... Philosophy isn't really good for getting to the bottom of things, but it can be fun I guess.

Well yes that's fine... to me philosophy is an art, and debate can either be comparison between "pieces" in the aesthetic sense, or a sport whereby the use of superior reasoning wins the day and the philosophical position ideally gives you no advantage (though of course, some people may be more subjectively prone to certain assumptions than others). We're not trying to establish relativism as an objective truth anyway, we're simply showing that it holds.

You missed my point - I wasn't assuming objective free will. I was labeling altruistic anything that derives its self-interestedness (for lack of a better word) completely from the perceived benefit to others (where benefit, of course, is defined by the actor).

For the third time I see no need to get into this and I'm not going to pedantically argue and split hairs in a d1ck size contest with a 14 year old . If you want to start a thread on it then shoot

All moral systems are absolute moral systems.

WTF?? So you can't have a moral system that accepts its subjectivity? So if you had a subjectivist with his own emotive morality, that would still be absolute? Subjective morality can exist, since it doesn't require the categorical imperative, merely the hypothetical imperative.

It's rather absurd to argue that nothing can be known, I agree.

Descartes, meditations #1. It most certainly is not absurd. However, you would have to switch from your mount of moral relativism to cognitive in order to debate this point further.

Any moral statement is dogmatic, according to you, unless it assumes that it can't be of any value.

Not at all.... since moral statements are only necessarily valid for the person who makes them it holds that if the speaker realises that then there is no intrinsic absurdity to his statement.

Of course, one can certainly state "I believe such-and-such", just as one can say "I think chocolate ice cream tastes better".

The statement "I believe" is simply descriptive... hence descriptive morality or emotivism. In context it is of course morality, though I would imagine we need to define the term...

NOUN: Inflected forms: pl. mo·ral·i·ties
1. The quality of being in accord with standards of right or good conduct. 2. A system of ideas of right and wrong conduct: religious morality; Christian morality. 3. Virtuous conduct. 4. A rule or lesson in moral conduct.
(from American Heritage Dictionary... I prefer the Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy definition but I can't be arsed to type it all out).

At least you're not like Imran, who derives a moral conclusion from his moral relativism, i.e. that nothing matters.

That doesn't look like a moral conclusion, that looks like an existential conclusion, which is very easy to deduce from relativism.

Do you believe that it is wrong for someone to steal?

If I may answer for him.... No it's not wrong, but it's not part of my emotive state so my morality forbids it in most cases.

Which is why it's impossible to be a moral relativist.

We are all absolutists, it just matters the degree to which we are.

How so? Explain the mechanism for that.

This is the absolute worst debate that I've seen here. There is no real support here for moral relativism that I can see, which is interesting, because most of the people participating in the debate claim to be moral relativists, but I see a lot of debating about whether axioms are assumptions and crap like that that seems so abstract to be completely meaningless, but then I can't really bare to follow the arguments because no one seems to care to connect any of it, or the debate got so boring that they did and I (probably most people) stopped reading.

Well that's rich you've hardly even touched on anything I've said, and without wanting to sound presumptious but suffice that it is the opinion of people that I debate this subject with that I do actually know what I'm talking about .

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
Kuci:

Do you believe that it is wrong for someone to steal?

Do I believe that it is deducible a priori that such an action is wrong? No.

Do I believe that one can detect that it is wrong somehow? No.

Do I believe it is an absolute truth that it is wrong? No.

Do I believe it is personally wrong to steal? Yes.

Do I believe I ought to act to prevent others from violating the parts of my personally morality that have to do with not harming others? Yes.

Just as I can consistently like chocolate ice cream and yet claim that preference is subjective, I can consistently hold certain morals and still claim that they are subjective.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Ramo

Axioms aren't the same as assumptions.

Not true. Axioms are any assumptions about a system, particularly about abstract systems (i.e. logic).

Yes, well, I don't need any assumptions to do logic. I only need your axioms to write down my thoughts (i.e. transfer them to symbols).

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Whaleboy
WTF?? So you can't have a moral system that accepts its subjectivity? So if you had a subjectivist with his own emotive morality, that would still be absolute? Subjective morality can exist, since it doesn't require the categorical imperative, merely the hypothetical imperative.

A moral system is necessarily absolute. A subjective morality is not a moral system, it's merely the composition of one's mind.

[Cruddy]

Originally posted by Boshko

That morals cannot be based on some transcendental "truth" more or less.

Hmm... as most morals in fact ARE based on some sort of transcendental truth, I think the idea ignores reality...

But hey, if people want to declare a universal cull of sacred cows... well, it won't be me putting a burning cross on their lawn.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Cruddy
Hmm... as most morals in fact ARE based on some sort of transcendental truth, I think the idea ignores reality...

He meant they can't do that and be logically valid

[loinburger]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
Yes, well, I don't need any assumptions to do logic.

Which logic doesn't require any axioms/assumptions?

[Whaleboy]

A moral system is necessarily absolute. A subjective morality is not a moral system, it's merely the composition of one's mind.

Then we are operating on different definitions and you should state accordingly. I take morality to be a belief in what is "right" and "wrong", so to speak.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Whaleboy
Well that's rich you've hardly even touched on anything I've said, and without wanting to sound presumptious but suffice that it is the opinion of people that I debate this subject with that I do actually know what I'm talking about .

The question is whether you believe what you are saying, or are you just bull****ting. It seemed obvious to me that you were just bull****ting, and you didn't really expect anyone to believe what you were saying. The same goes for Ramo. I think the purpose, however, is to convince people of your opinion. If they think you bull****, then you aren't going to be successfull. There are people here at poly that I'm sure they really believe what they are saying. That's important.

[Ned]

Whaleboy, correct me if I'm wrong, but the "moral relativist" would seek to determine whether the taking of a possession of one person by another was immoral by first determining the context of the taking. For example, in a system where private property is thought of as theft from the common weal, then to the extent the person who possess the object claimed he "owned" it and could with justice deny access to the object by others under some sort of laws of property, that person was in fact acting against the common interests of his fellow citizens. One could then justify removing the object from the possession of the one who claimed to own it as a moral act because the taking supported the underlying philosophy of the system in which the taking took place.