promethean wrote:Thanks for your input Spinozasgalt and I think your point makes a clear distinction that is helpful.
Spinozasgalt wrote:promethean wrote:Thanks for your response Mr. Samsa - super thought provoking which is what I'm looking for.
Mr.Samsa wrote:@
[color=#CC0000][b][color=#CC0000][b][color=#CC0000][b][color=#CC0000][b]promethean:[/b][/color][/b][/color][/b][/color][/b][/color] Spinozagalt has already effectively corrected your misconceptions of "objective morality" and why it's erroneous to believe that we can only accept moral objectivism or moral relativism, as if there were no other ethical possibilities. And, as he correctly points out,
even if atheists were forced into a position of moral relativism, this does not mean he cannot criticise other moral systems and suggest that his way is better than others.
There is detail we could go into here that I'm not sure its worth the bother, but briefly: By definition moral relativism means there is no scale by which competing moral codes can be compared. Thus the atheist cannot criticise another moral system if he is a relativist. If he is going to criticise, he must establish the scale by which the two moral systems are compared - that scale must be objective in order to create a meaningful comparison, and in that case the scale becomes the objective moral code and the atheist is no longer a relativist.
Actually, I think there is an exclusion here that looks pretty important. Where you say "there is no scale by which competing moral codes can be compared", you're not getting the relativist right. The relativist will typically hold to the additional "there is no scale by which competing moral codes can be compared
that is external to the particular moral code in question".
Surely you can see that there is a gaping hole in the relativist position you have just outlined. If the relativist admits that there is no
external scale that can be used to compare competing moral theories, but there are
internal scales then you can see that the act of comparison is totally meaningless.
I don't think so. It makes the comparison relative just as we'd expect on moral relativism, because the act of comparison is, as you seem to acknowledge, morally-loaded and hence dedicated to relativism. To illustrate how the relativist could fill this out, it might do to relativise ethics to culture in the following example.
Say we have one culture that considers something immoral and another that does not. Say further that within the first culture it is morally permissible or even a moral good to criticise other cultures, or persons of those cultures, for acts one's own culture deem immoral. The first culture can then criticise the second just on the basis that the second culture does not live up to the standards of the first. Now we may from the first culture understand that, due to the situatedness of persons in the second culture, our criticism (properly explained) does not act as a binding imperative for the people of the second culture to adopt our views, but then that may not have been why we made the criticism.
Perhaps there's some way to argue that by stating our moral views we implicitly recommend them, but why should that trouble the relativist? He or she can happily admit this, but elaborate that while all "moralizing" is recommending, only when persons are properly located in relation to the specific cutlure (or whatever else we relativise to) will the recommendation actually fulfill the bindingness criteria.
So I fail to see where the gaping hole is. It still looks like you're begging the question here, by starting from the view that these comparisons/criticisms come apart just how the objectivist thinks they do.
promethean wrote:It's analogous to two people measuring a block of wood with different scaled rulers and one concluding that it is 50cm long and the other claims it is 60cm long. Unless a statement can be made about which ruler is the "correct scale" then the length of the wood remains relative. If there is no such thing as a 'correct scale' (as the relativist claims) then there is no point going on harping that the lump of wood is 50cm long.
I'm not sure why this point is so difficult to grasp. If you applied the same notion to Science it would get shot down in flames in no time. The only reason Science works is because there is an objective experiential reality that we can examine and we have an agreed methodology of Science.
I'm not sure how I'm supposed to take your analogy. Presumably you think there's a "correct scale" in that instance (what is it?
), but then many moral relativists are objectivists in other areas, too. Your analogy presents one level of disagreement that you seem to recommend I take as trivial, but does the relativist's treatment of disagreement really take place substantially at this level? How do the two resolve their disagreement in your analogy? It's hard to even tell what's relativised to what in the context provided.
promethean wrote:If there is no external scale - then there is no scale of any value. A serial killer has a different scale to you and
you have no justification for saying your internal scale is any better than his. As soon as you start appealing to something like saying - 'hang on mister serial killer - killing people isn't good because we value human life so let’s talk about this and both agree that killing is wrong. As soon as you say that you are appealing to an external scale (value for human life) - if you don't think that external scale is objectively true then the serial killer has only to disagree with you and his position is equally valid as your own.
Actually, relativism when pluralist as we've been describing it, thereafter has multiple scales of value.
You're taking an extreme example here, and I can understand why, but it's not really clear that your example is possible in any halfway decent moral relativism. For starters, the relativist doesn't have to relativise to individual subjects (and avoids a number of problems by steering clear [possibly even a collapse into non-cognitivism]), but it's also not clear that your serial killer is feasible under moral relativism in another way. The relativist takes something like moral justification or moral truth to be relativised: so as far as first-order issues, the relativist may not have the resources to bind agents rationally to some course of action unless those agents are situated in key circumstances; however, the relativist could also hold that there are second-order (metaethical) constraints on just what sort of thing can be moral -David Wong has been exploring just this kind of defence. If the relativist can do this then your example will be defanged.
But your example suffers from other faults arising from lack of clarity. It's not clear how we're to understand moral motivation here, or how binding it is. Neither is it clear whether your serial killer character is the old
amoralist, in which case the objection becomes much less forceful against the relativist. And, pretending that the relativist is really having a conversation with a serial killer situated in this strange way and that may prove formative for the latter, it's hard to see what the objection amounts to. The relativist can't motivate the serial killer to stop killing? It's not clear that any moral view can, unless the serial killer's reasoning works in the way required to respond to the relevant moral facts. The relativist can't object to his continued killing? Of course she can, because she judges from her own morality, not his. The relativist has to admit that the killer's morality is equally "valid"? Hard to see what this means or what it entails, but you can always clear it up for me.
promethean wrote:A previous post appealed to utilitarianism. Is it objectively true that we should try and optimise the greatest good for the greatest number? If it is objectively true then you're no longer a relativist - if it is not objectively true then I can respond - I think it would be better to simply kill everyone (there would be no more human suffering then) - and you have no logical foundation to oppose me.
I don't think this is a good objection at all. Why? Because you acknowledge that the relativist has no defeater for your claim, but only because you already take it as binding in the relevant way. So what? The relativist has no defeater of the sort you want because nothing has the bindingness you attribute to moral objectivism and
this includes your own statement that we should kill everyone. In that case, whatever grounds you have for taking that view can be chiselled away at with just the tools available to the relativist.
promethean wrote:Even if you say a relativist can compare different moral codes on the grounds of whether or not they are internally logically consistent all you are doing is appealing to 'internal logical consistency' as the objectively true scale by which moralities should be compared - at which point you are no longer a relativist.
Not really. As I said, it could be relativism all the way down, and hence there won't be the problem. But even if it's not, so long as the moral relativist is an objectivist in other areas, he or she can probably apply theoretical reasoning here. The kind of evaluation here could be epistemic, rather than of the moral kind. Deep issues need resolving to know either way.
You seem to be committing yourself to something else here though. If "internal logical consistency" is a
moral evaluation, I wonder whether you're endorsing the view that certain "laws" relatated to epistemology are in a way dependent on God.
promethean wrote:And once you start believing in objective moral values you have to ask where do they come from? When you ask where do they come from it opens up a big can of worms that takes us away from materialism, and I believe begins to take us towards theism.
We'll see. I'm waiting for the substance of your moral argument.
by 
I actually wrote out a post about it, sighed and thought, "Fuck it, I'll just let it go this time".
