Does "dictatorship of relativism" exist?

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Ramo
Because that's a definition.

I don't think so.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Agathon

Is this bad?

Only if force or rhetoric are better ways of persuading people than reason.

They're certainly a lot less work.

[Ramo]

I don't think so.

Doesn't matter what you think, that's how it is.

[Whaleboy]

But relativism doesn't yield tolerance either. Under moral relativism "tolerance" becomes just another one of the relative values.

Bollocks. You know just as well as I do that relativism is contextual (Wittgenstein context, not Platonic context). That one is a moral relativist needn't mean that one is a political relativist, since the first is more abstract where as the second context biases one's choices according to each situation. For your criticism to work, "not moral (-1)" and "moral (+1)" (for example) would both equate and be relative to an invalid "moral = 0 (tolerance)", which is something of a modal fallacy.

And relativism is not a licentious invitation to hedonism and anarchy: that requires a kind of solipsism that relativism itself doesn't allow if you accept your own free will as being of relative validity to others.

Incidentally, this leads nicely to existential libertarianism which is what the Catholics truly have such a problem with; what with the tolerance for gay people, abortions, women and, well, just tolerance in general.

[Kidlicious]

Maybe you define "absolute" that way, but I don't think most people do.

[Whaleboy]

Kid: How would you define absolute, just for the sake of argument?

The danger of this debate, and the new pope's decree (or decry), is that people view these things as a pick 'n mix. "Don't be a relativist because it will make you miserable", or "don't be a relativist because it makes our simplistic world view fall to pieces". Not good enough. If logic separates the wheat from the chaff, then choose the position that is more logically sound. To think it's intellectually honest to choose a "cuter" position over a "truer" (sic) position is preposterous and undermines the very nature of rational discussion.

Are we to let transient faith and it's consequent spurious assumptions pollute and thus degenerate a rational consideration? I should hope not.

[Whaleboy]

About libertarianism.... many religious people have such a problem with it because as well as allowing for sexual liberalism, womens rights, minority rights and moral progress, it also means that atheism is perfectly acceptable. This renders the "moral theist" to dust, so the best the Christians would be able to do is cry;
"waaa waaa waaa, they're not swallowing our bull****!".

Libertarianism and relativism are the enemies of anyone who would seek to use the obvious pretence of "morality" to exact oppression and power over people. Ordinarilly this would be just academic masturbation but there are 30 million dead Africans to think about here.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Whaleboy
Kid: How would you define absolute, just for the sake of argument?

In the given context I define it as being perfectly moral. There are perfectly moral acts, just like there are perfectly immoral acts.

The danger of this debate, and the new pope's decree (or decry), is that people view these things as a pick 'n mix. "Don't be a relativist because it will make you miserable", or "don't be a relativist because it makes our simplistic world view fall to pieces". Not good enough. If logic separates the wheat from the chaff, then choose the position that is more logically sound. To think it's intellectually honest to choose a "cuter" position over a "truer" (sic) position is preposterous and undermines the very nature of rational discussion.

Are we to let transient faith and it's consequent spurious assumptions pollute and thus degenerate a rational consideration? I should hope not.

To me absolutism is not the opposite of moral relativism.

[Kidlicious]

Ramo,

If you insist on that definition then there's no room for argument, but it doesn't make your theory make any sense, because you haven't left any room for debate.

[cinch]

Originally posted by Dracon II
Relativism is a postmodern dead-end....

That's dangerously close to an overly-narrow interpretation of 'postmodern.'

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Agathon
Anyway, if moral rules are subject to scepticism, then so are mathematical ones.

Only if you're an idiot. Mathematics is just a group of formal logics. It doesn't claim any truth beyond "our axioms imply -"

[Whaleboy]

In the given context I define it as being perfectly moral. There are perfectly moral acts, just like there are perfectly immoral acts.

Care to name a hypothetical example of one of these moral acts, that presumably are universal.

To me absolutism is not the opposite of moral relativism.

As BS as that is, my point you answered was not addressed specifically to you, it was a general observation. Absolutism is by definition the opposite of moral relativism unless you want to say that something is absolute in context, which is self-defeating because of the hot -> hottest problem.

If you insist on that definition then there's no room for argument, but it doesn't make your theory make any sense, because you haven't left any room for debate.

There's no room for debate on 2+2 = 4, but that makes perfect sense does it not?

That's dangerously close to an overly-narrow interpretation of 'postmodern.'

And relativism

Only if you're an idiot. Mathematics is just a group of formal logics. It doesn't claim any truth beyond "our axioms imply -"

Technically Kuci is correct... if mathematics describes the properties of logic (an abstraction in itself admittedly but more an emergent one than morality) (stop me when I'm in danger of sounding like an essentialist), whereas absolute morality seeks to be a product of that logic, not a property of it.

[Ben Kenobi]

To me absolutism is not the opposite of moral relativism.

Uh, I am an absolutist, and I would say they are opposites.

[grumbler]

I have a problem with the discussion of "correct" morality, because it is a tautology.

A given stage of moral reasoning is either more, or less, effective in resolving increasingly complex moral dilemmas. Even the most advanced moral reasoning we know of fails at some point.

I think we can talk, in the abstract, about "more effective" moral reasoning with some success. What is interesting about effective moral reasoning is that studies have shown that the more effective the moral reasoning, the more intrinsically motivated it is, and the more universal it is. In other words, the more humans decide to make their own moral judgments (and reject those of "moral authorities") the more complex the dilemma they can resolve, and the more they reason like others who have rejected external moral authority.

The research implies a convergence of moral reasoning among those sufficiently advanced, but that remains unprovable and likely will forever remain so, since one has to be of the highly advanced moral reasoning level to recognize it for what it is

[Az]

A given stage of moral reasoning is either more, or less, effective in resolving increasingly complex moral dilemmas. Even the most advanced moral reasoning we know of fails at some point.

mine doesn't.