the morality of any act is situational. killing another human- war= hero ,
your home town=murderer which is more immoral?
Saying morality is situational is like saying the solution to equations depend on the numbers you use. Morality is about situations.
You’re possibly misusing the term ‘relative’ here. Yes, morality is situational, but no, this doesn’t make it “Relative”
your immoral uncle is still your relative
-Imp
Morality is both situational AND relative. Well, actually, MOST moralities are situational, but not all. Some people would say that to take a life, under ANY circumstance, is wrong. But most agree that it is acceptable under some (usually very extreme) circumstances.
To say that morality is relative is to say that there is no one correct moral system, but rather that different people sometimes believe different things, and that there’s no right or wrong about it.
Now, I hate to sound like one of those overly-fluffy people who believe that you can’t judge anyone and that everyone is the same on the inside - but the fact is, morality is relative. There is no cosmic signpost that says “murder is wrong”. There is no morality field or morality particle that physicists can measure, and say “ah ha! Rape is wrong after all - it’s written right here on this particle!” Really, all we have to go on is the fact that many common morals are written into us genetically and culturally. But there are some cultures, and some other species, that don’t share our common moral codes, and they’re not wrong in a universal sense - just wrong to us. It’s still ok to judge them - after all, you have to live by some system, and it’s not unreasonable or objectively wrong to criticize someone using that system - but you can’t reasonably argue that they are cosmically wrong.
moral relativism is great… except its bunk.
Consider the following.
Your daughter or wife, or son, or husband, etc, etc, is kidnapped, tortured, raped, and killed in an extremely painful manner.
Is there any situation where this is right, or even justified? Nope.
cheers,
gemty
Gemty, I don’t think you’re using quite the correct definition of moral relativism.
You’re right that almost everyone on earth agrees that your family shouldn’t be tortured. But presumably the person who tortured them had fun doing it, right?
Remember, moral relativism is about the difference between whether morality is a human invention, or whether morality is as much a part of the universe as electrons and gravity.
There’s never been a single science experiement or good philosophy argument that suggested that morality is part of our universe. Most likely, it’s something particular to being human.
I hate onions, but I know that that’s my opinion, and not a truth about the universe. I’ve never tasted dog poop, but I assume I’d hate it. In fact, I assume that just about everyone in the world would hate the taste of dog poop. Does that mean that dog poop has a bad taste OBJECTIVELY? That some day scientists will discover the “dog poop tastes bad” particle? Of course not - and no more so with morality.
Morality for humans is a lot like tasting dog poop - almost everyone agrees on it, so it’s sometimes hard to realize that it’s just a matter of opinion.
-Tristan
The debate is whether or not there are any universal moral truths or absolutes, ie, whether or not there are universally applicable standards upon which to base moral decisions. The debate is not about whether or not there are morality particles, or whether or not we can objectively demonstrate morality.
I never claimed that there is a moral-i-tron that is present in moral people.
You’ll get no argument from me that morality is a human construction. That, however, does not preclude the possibility that there could be universal moral truths within that construction.
However, what remains to be answered is my question whether or not there is any situation in which it could be demonstrated to be morally right to rape, torture and kill a four year old girl.
If you can defend this action and show a case where it would be morally justifiable then I will relinquish the claim that there are certain things which are universally, and absolutely morally wrong.
However, and just to make it a bit easier for you if you care to try, arguments appealing to the enjoyment of the attacker, or attempts to justify it based on an attacker’s pathological state of mind will not establish moral justification.
cheers,
gemty
It seems to me that even if there were an objective moral truth, or universal standards, there would still be willful humans violating those standards, since every one of us has at one point done something we knew was wrong.
It also seems to me that a universal moral standard would likely be something that a person would have to learn- like math, or history. As with anything else that needs to be learned, a person can be ignorant, or learn incorrectly. So, we would find people (perhaps whole communities or cultures of people) with differing, incorrect moral ideas.
I don’t know if there is objective moral truth or not, but it seems to me the fact of cultural and individual differences cannot count as evidence one way or the other, right? Does claiming “There is a universal moral truth” obligate us to the idea that all or even many people follow it?
You’re quite right, the claim that there are moral absolutes does not mean that many people will necessarily follow them - people have many reasons not to be moral. Ignorance, greed, error, and willful disobedience. (Some of course are culpable, others less so.)
I agree that moral standards must be learned. They are not automatically intuitively obvious. And certainly, we do see that people develop different senses of what is moral and what is immoral - everyone thinks that their own way is best. I’m not claiming however that since there are things which are universally wrong, and thus absolute, that we are any more prone to doing things which are right, or that that absolute somehow helps us be more moral.
I guess what it really boils down to for me is that there are some actions which to my mind are wrong regardless of the number of people who might be in favour of them, or the context in which they arise.
To me a short list is rape, abuse, and other gross violations of personal physical integrity.
I just cannot see how we could possibly think of a situation where we could develop a sound moral defense for these things.
From this it follows for me that there are at least some moral absolutes which contravenes the relativist claim that there are no absolutes.
Of course, these moral absolutes are not a catch all, and do not apply to every moral question we can consider, just to some types of behaviour. I’m not saying that all moral issues are covered by absolutes and that context is not important, just that there are some actions which are universally morally wrong.
Gemty:
Regarding moral relativism, you ask me to demonstrate a situation in which raping and killing a young girl could ever be justified.
- I may never be able to give such a situation to YOUR satisfaction. That, of course, is exactly why you gave that particular scenario. But it doesn’t matter. Morality isn’t relative to you - your morals are pretty fixed, and probably won’t change any time soon. The point is not whether raping and killing the girl can ever be right to you, but whether it can ever be right to ANYONE.
And the answer is “yes”. Whoever rapes and kills a 4-year old girl certainly knows that what he is doing is illegal, and considered wrong - but does he actually think that it’s wrong himself? It’s hard to say, but I’m sure there’s been SOME raping and murdering asshole in history who has thought he was performing an acceptable act.
When you ask me to morally defend this action, you are asking me to make you believe that it’s acceptable. That is entirely beside the point of moral relativism.
Everything that we can consider objective in any extent, has to either be a priori (like math), or else has to be empirical, and thus measurable in a scientifically satisfactory way. No one has ever used any instrumentation to measure objective morality. The only reasons any of us have to believe in objective morality is that we believe in our morals very strongly, and many others believe in the same morals. That doesn’t make it true.
There are tribes of humans who are cannibals. They don’t believe that what they’re doing is wrong; they’re just living the way they know how. It’s a normal part of their lives. What argument can you possibly give that they are objectively wrong, and we are objectively right?
Lets see here.
I would say that there is a fundamental set of moral rules…
But I would also say that those moral set of rules can be bent and broken relative to some situation.
I think morality is pretty much related to and understood in terms of context. When something is taken out of context, whether deliberately or not, you have no moral basis for accepting what it means.
It’s nice that you guys believe in a universal morality… but what are your reasons for it?
I haven’t heard any good arguments so far for believing in this universal morality. Do you have any?
If you don’t have good, precise reasons for believing it - or if you find the reasons you do have aren’t correct - you might want to rethink that belief.
Twiffy,
you’re quite right, I can’t offer an argument that cannibalistic tribes are objectively wrong for eating humans, but I don’t think I claimed that it was objectively wrong.
You said that the fact that an individual person assigns a value to a moral proposition does not matter:
But, if morality isn’t relative to me, then it isn’t relative to the person who thinks rape was a right thing to do either.
And if it isn’t relative to me, and isn’t relative to him, then exactly who is it relative to?
cheers,
gemty
That’s a misleading analogy - most objectivists would not hold that the nature of moral objects are anything similar to either electrons or the force of gravity.
Wrong. Wrong. And WRONG. Morality is not relative or conditional. It is a personal choice made. Something is moral or immoral because I CHOOSE it to be - for me. It has nothing to do with anyone but me. Anything less is insanity. If it is all relative, if everything is “situational ethics” then there is nothing not allowed and morality becomes a meaningless word. Morality is saying, “I won’t go there.” That we fail ourselves is understood, but that is a personal failure. It isn’t because it is relative or conditional…
Sorry brother tenative,
But in the larger scope, morality is relative … especially to culture.
In the west, we abhor sexuality between the parent in the child, in the Middle East, it is a non-issue.
In the west, we abhor wife beaters … in the Middle East, it is part of standard living, and upheld by society.
Morality, generally defined, is built off of socio-ethnic stigmas, which objectively makes it relative. Unless the thread is going to be redefined as “Individual Morality as relative”, you are speaking of your personal morality, which is particular to you … not everyone.
Not to mention the fact that morality can be further regarded as relative, because it changes with time, which means it is not absolute in any fashion.
Gemty:
Morality isn’t relative to individuals - everyone has their own moral code, even if it changes with time. Morality is relative ACROSS individuals, because different people have DIFFERENT moral codes. Since there isn’t a good argument for there being a universally right morality, that indicates that “Moral Relativism” is the best thing to believe.
Obw:
Moral objects? What would those be? My point is this: every true proposition about our universe is either a priori (can be deduced from logic alone), or a posteriori (requires observation for deduction). There clearly is no good a priori argument for objective morality. What observations could possibly give a good argument for objective morality?
tentative:
Yes, morality is a personal choice made. That’s what we mean by saying that morality is relative. “Moral relativism” does NOT mean that any action is morally permissible. It means that some people find the action permissible, others don’t, and that’s great for them but there’s no objective or scientific way to say one of those personal choices is better than the other.
Mastriani:
You’re right!
Mas and Tristan,
OK. I don’t want to get into semantics, but I use the moral in a very narrow sense. “Relative” (social morality) make’s it difficult for the vast majority to separate themselves from any discourse of what could or should be a social direction. What I call ‘social engineering’ allows discourse. When it becomes morality, discourse almost always turns into diatribe. Mas has seen me climb into the pulpit now and again… 