Refuting the argument for cultural relativism used to hold back progress in Ethics.
“Let us put the ideas of our mind, just as we put things of the laboratory, to the test of experience.
In this way we have a method for making facts part of our lives.” – John Locke
“Truth makes all things plain.” - William Shakespeare
Progress in ethics would be a coherent and reliable ethical theory.
Consider this: Each of our local planets has a different and distinct orbit; but what they have in common is that they all travel around the Sun. In the same way, each person has his own individuality but what we all have in common is that we seek value. We would like things to be better, we want a quality life.
{As Aristotle put it, everyone aim for the good.} Even Al Capone was confident he was pursuing the good.
Each culture is unique; but not every American, for example, is thoroughly socialized into the American culture - if one could even definitely specify what that culture is.
Hence, for purposes of Ethics it is advisable to focus on the level of the individual rather than on ‘culture.’ The latter is a very vague concept indeed, and is the province of Sociology and Anthropology rather than moral philosophy. And, as others have pointed out, cultural relativism fails because it does not follow its own implications all the way to its logical conclusion in moral nihilism.
In fact, “Ethics” may be defined as a perspective:
Ethics arises when live, conscious individuals are viewed as having value. and they are Intrinsically-valued [I-valued.]
How much value does a conscious individual have? Well, far far more than a number on paper has. A person, in general, is worth more than a thing. Numbers can be erased. Things can be discarded and junked. A human being has, when I-valued, by stipulation and by observation, an uncountable amount of value - due to the fact that each property of the individual itself has as many properties as there are integers to count them:[size=50] one could, theoretically, list properties of properties, one for each of the decimal fractions in that number-series.[/size] And value is a function of meaning, of sets of descriptors. Each property-name listed adds meaning to the over all description of that individual, to which one is giving attention. To find all that meaning we concentrate on the individual item or person, giving it or him our full attention. We comprehend it as a gestalt.
In the process of such valuation, the valuer and what he is valuing form a continuum. This (Intrinsic value) is the realm of emphasis, of deep feeling, of empathy, of compassion.
This is the realm of ethics. Ethics is about adding value to the situation. This - Intrinsically valuing - when focused on a person, or a group, is what defines what I call “Ethics.” It’s a discipline. It has its theoretical aspects and its applied aspects: theory and practice. The entire history of ethical ideas, the history of moral philosophy relevant to ethics, leads up to the new paradigm, to the coherent Ethical Theory now under construction, cited in the links mentioned in my earlier threads.
R. S. Hartman (1910-1973) basing his work largely on ideas from G. E. Moore (1873-1958) determined good as the axiom of a science – value-science (formal axiology.)This is meta-ethics.
Hartman’s breakthrough was to define good and other values as subsets of the set of a thing’s properties. The dimensions, Intrinsic, Extrinsic, and Systemic values were determined as cardinalities of these sets. {I, E, and S correlate with the ontological entities Singulars, Particulars (i.e., Categories or classifications), and Universals.} And Ethics is now defined and explained as Intrinsically valuing persons.
Meta-ethics is independent of specific cultures which people happen to have formed in the history of human evolution. It transcends them. Just as Logic and Math can be taught, objectively, all over the globe, so too can Formal Axiology. It proceeds by defining terms and by spinning out the implications of one, or a few, fertile concepts… the axioms of the system.
Those who accept and appreciate the uncountably-high value (the limitless value) of the conscious individual are then okay with caring and sharing. They are then ethical.
They then are mindful …especially of The Central Question of Life – of which I spoke in earlier threads here. They tend to make a habit of complying with it.
What does it mean for ethics that a person has limitless value, specifically? Clearly we shouldn’t murder them capriciously. But most (hard) ethical questions don’t have to do with anybody dying. Does a person having limitless value mean we aren’t allowed to put them in prison, or that we* have to provide them with healthcare, housing, groceries, entertainment, sex, etc? Humans want all sorts of things, that providing for them could fall under the label of ‘caring and sharing’, but who gets what and how much and from whom is going to have more to it than that.
Also, I think there are good moral arguments for caring for some people more than others. If I spend all my money on feeding starving people in China, and as a consequence my son starves, that is not a morally good or neutral, it’s an evil act. So it seems to me there is a sense of relatedness, where individuals may have equal value, but it is objectively good to base decisions on what (subjective?) value I place on them.
It’s ironic that you speak about moving away from culture and sociology, but you need a mechanism for appreciating individual relations, not just a general statement about the value of humans as humans, in order to do that.
It’s also worth pointing out as an aside that (sadly) sociologists are much more likely to be making declarations on how people ought to live their lives that get read/listened to than a moral philosopher.
One final note- if humans have limitless value (and other stuff doesn’t) you have an inevitable consequence that it is right and good to obliterate the environment to provide humans with stuff they want or need. If all conscious creatures have limitless value, than the world is just moral madness, and there’s no way to avoid participating in horrendous evils constantly.
Where ‘we’ can be read as ‘strangers with no obligation towards this person beyond being a fellow human’.
As to your point about giving your son top priority, I discussed that issue already in the 6th paragraph of my thread “The Hierarchy of Moral Considerations” in which I ranked the three major academic schools of Ethics. Modern Virtue Theory cam out on top, with the highest ranking: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=179235&p=2315018#p2315018
To arrive at this conclusion I argued, using the basic dimensions of value derived in the system of Formal Axiology, S, E, and I as tools of analysis. It turned out that VT correlated most closely with I-value, which by its measure as most richly-meaningful when applied, is at the top of the Existential Logical Hierarchy of Value. This formula I > E > S is clarified and explained in the early chapters on “What is Value?” and "“Are there Dimensions of Value?” You will find them in the references listed below in the signature where links for further details are offered as the concepts are clarified. You may find you agree with those who claimed the writing is clear and easy to read.
Also google: Katz - ETHICS: A College Course - an earlier manuscript which goes into even more-extensive details. Most of the first 20 pages are for advanced placement graduate students in Philosophy but the rest of it is quite comprehensible by anyone interested in the field.
and study especially “The Beautiful Simplicity of Ethical Concepts” viewtopic.php?f=1&t=179140
and see the profound consequences that follow from the definition of Ethics. A further postulate is adopteded and referenced in the literature below.
You write: “ou need a mechanism for appreciating individual relations…” and I am confident you will find that in the sections on Social Ethics in the papers essayed in the links below. Have you read yet A Unified Theory of Ethics. That cool document has anticipated many of your concerns. Check it out.
You ask some good questions. It is obvious you are morally sensitive.
By the way, with regard to the first sentence above, I was struck by the incongruity of what you say here with the set-up in your new thread “An Exploration in What we Value” where the thought-experiment meant to clarify the concept “immorality” is indeed about a life that is threatened by death - namely: blow-up a planet to save a life. I agree with your first sentence quoted here in re ‘most ethical questions’.
A person having uncountably-high value does NOT mean we aren’t allowed to isolate them from society during the time they (ideally) are being rehabilitated, or given some kind of therapy for a serious violation they have committed.
And we don’t have to provide folks with entertainment, sex, etc., although healthcare, groceries, and housing may not be such a bad idea once the community evolves to such a stage, one where (because we care so much) such necessities are mass-produced on such a scale that they are relatively ‘inexpensive’. Why wold this be done? At that point in time they would be widely considered as human rights.
In the USA, healthcare is reaching that status now …or will have in a few more years …if all goes well. Some day such care will consist primarily as efficient education in how to be healthy. The health plans will acquaint people not only with the ingredients of health but also with the specific steps of self-development that can get you there. The rest will be up to the students to make a free choice - if they want to live that way, viz., if they I-value Health.
Yes, it is true that the social scientists are listened to more than the ethicists; that is likely because they employ some method, have been around longer and thus have built a reputation, have better publicity in the media - p.r. people; and because Ethics has not been a rigorous discipline up til now. But check out the new paradigm for ethics offered in the links in the signature below to see if “this could be the start of something big.”
Yes live, conscious humans beings are highly valuable when evaluated that way, AND SO ARE THINGS. Recall I spoke of items being I-valued in my first post of this thread. The ‘item’ could be anything! Intrinsic valuation (a process) is very similar to what Husserl spoke of as Intentionality. See his phenomenology.
So, to use your words, other stuff may have such value too. I never said otherwise.
Thanks again for thinking so deeply about ethical topics. I would invite you to join in the project of developing an ethics theory with more-precisely-defined terms than we see at present in most ethical discussions. [size=85] If interested, just send me a private message.[/size]
From your opening statement on cultural relativism, it seems to me that you have a specific agenda to dismiss ethical precepts, as developed in other cultures, that are in conflict with your own assertion of what ‘should’ be the case.
Everything I’ve read from other posts you’ve made that you’ve linked to seems to lack any specific reasoning other than, “Because.” It also tends to require that everyone hold exactly the same values as you assert in order for it to be viable; that seems to be unsustainable.
Aside from the flawed perspective of humans having infinite value, I’ll pull just one illustrative example of this by contrasting American and Japanese cultures.
Ethics is intrinsically about what society as a whole considers ‘right’.
Within American culture, the individual is valued very highly. A great deal of capitalistic mores have to do with the idea that, if every individual always works towards maximizing their own self-benefit, that will create the greatest improvement to the whole. As such, in a conflict between individual value and social value, individual value will tend to trump.
Within Japanese culture, the society is valued very highly. The individual is always secondary. In a choice between what is best for the self vs what is best for the ‘whole’ (the family, the team, the company, the country, etc), the individual is expected to acquiesce to the whole if it’s deemed that the gain for the whole is more than the gain for the individual.
These differences emerge due to the way the different cultures have developed. Interestingly, within game theory we can see these exact two conflicts arise (ie: there are often two Nash equilibrium: one that favors the individual, one that favors the whole). It’s pretty much impossible to reach the Nash equilibrium favoring the ‘whole’ within a society that favors the individual. (Also note that additional equilibrium emerge when there’s a power imbalance among the participating parties. It is usually those new equilibrium that ethics is intended to mitigate against.)
These are fairly fundamental differences in the basis of how ethics are applied within these societies (though one could argue about which drove which – ethics driving culture, or culture driving ethics). These differences mean that there will be certain ethical points that simply cannot be reconciled between the two.
It’s also important to note that ‘compromise’ is actually not a valid approach in this case, assuming it’s heavily tied to Nash equilibrium. One cannot reach a stable state without being committed to one path or the other; a compromised version must necessarily degenerate back to one of the original equilibrium.
Based on your prime assertion of infinite value of the human individual, it must necessarily coalesce into an ethics structure similar to the American ethics structure. Your assertion that cultural relativism is “holding back” the progress on ethics implies that a separate, but fully valid, ethical system is somehow interfering with your ability to present your ‘universal’ system that can supplant other ethical systems.
This sounds like you’re using the term “cultural relativism” when your meaning is more “moral relativism”.
So overall, I question the validity of your assertion regarding cultural relativism.
That doesn’t really sound like a definition.
Personally, I’d define “ethics” as: A (common to all participants) rule system to prevent natural Nash equilibrium within social interactions from deviating to other equilibrium when the balance of power among the participants is not relatively equal.
As there will be a culturally-biased preference for certain natural equilibrium, the ethical model supporting that culture will tend to try to enforce that where possible. The rules cannot be designed without knowing which equilibrium is the target.
Hegel would certainly agree with this, and so did Wagner, and the Nazi movement bought into it. However, I cannot agree, and hold that it is a dangerous doctrine to value the State higher than the Individual. I’ll have more to say about this below.
That is true. The implications of it are not understood by many in Western culture; hence it is not put into practice. Many are treated poorly today. The awareness has not fully penetrated yet.
This used to be true when Hari Kari was a common practice. Due to a temporary American occupation and the Western cultural influence that resulted, many Japanese now know better, and will admit that life is of higher quality now than under the Samurai, and the Kamikazi attitude.
The best example was set by some Amerindian tribes […Dorothy Lee, the Antrhopologist, wrote about this - specifically focusing on the Dakota - in her paper “Autonomy and Community” which I reprinted in one of my published books, SCIENCES OF MAN AND SOCIAL ETHICS, (Branden Press, 1969), Ch. 3, pp. 66-84.] These tribes fostered a blend of both the value of individual autonomy simultaneously with devotion to the tribe. This was not done at the expense of individuality - the expression of which the new paradigm for Ethics, which I propose, encourages and endorses.
In the same way, currently, a positive Peace Corp experience does not subtract from a participant’s patriotism as an American.
It is good that you are adept in Game Theory. It has some useful, and ethically-relevant applications. A number of years back, between 2005 and 2006, a group of economists at M.I.T. along with one from the U. of Mass. at Amherst, doing cross-cultural experiments with actual games based on the theory, and providing the players with some actual cash, showed that people - in various cultures across the globe - when material reward is involved, will be more cooperative than selfish. They published a book describing the entire set of experiments.
When you equate the value of a human with “his replaceability” you are reducing ethics to Economics; a misplaced reductionism. I agree with Alan Donagan who has argued at some length that “murder is wrong just because a human being is valuable.” Also, slavery, abuse, cruelty, child labor, voter suppression, dictatorship, etc., are morally-wrong whether a certain culture acknowledges it or not. [size=85] The early Dobu had to evolve to the nice people they are today, for back then no one could trust anyone else and life was unbearable.[/size]
I detect a perception gap: What I call "cultural relativism’ you call ‘moral relativism.’ As long as we are both aware of that we may be able to find common ground and reach an understanding.
I’ll stand by that. An entire department of knowledge, offering reliable information, arises from that perspective, and it has seemed reasonable to many of the researchers in the field to name that discipline Ethics.
It is though: it defines a field of knowledge. Intrinsically-valuing individuals yields the new (yet very old) department of value inquiry which is now know as “Ethics,” also “Axiogenics,” and by other titles.
Obviously I can’t concur with this since I define it a different way, as an application of I-Value. I believe, and would argue, that ethics is relevant and very-desirable when the balance of power is equal. Yes, it does generate Principles, which folks are free to ignore, as many do at present. They don’t recognize what is in their own self-interest, likely due to a failure in their education. {As an illustration: For many years of my life I didn’t appreciate the value of brush and flossing my teeth, even though a dentist, when I was rather immature, did mention to me something about it. My education in healthcare was not efficient, and was not effective.}
In another of my threads, as you may recall, I explained the distinction between being efficient, and being effective.
Rearranging the post a bit to better structure my thoughts. Sorry for the length.
But again, it’s not a definition. “Ethics arises…” indicates when one can look and expect to see ethics in practice. It says nothing about what ethics is. It’s like saying, “A tree arises when a seed is planted and grows to full form.” It tells you absolutely nothing about what a tree is (except something that grows from a seed).
This is a complicated bit to both wrap my head around and describe, so forgive me if this comes off as a bit disjointed. Feel free to break down the validity of my arguments, as I have not spent a great deal of time ensuring full rigorousness. Plus, my viewpoints are largely derived from a background in mathematics; I have a much weaker grounding in philosophy.
I’m going to try to work through some definitions.
Morals: A framework defining what is ‘right’ and ‘wrong’.
Ethics: Societal rules to enforce an accepted morality within a specific situation. EG: Journalistic ethics.
Moral structures will evolve based on need and circumstance, and different cultures will develop different needs at different points in time. Therefore, inevitably, multiple moral structures will arise.
A ‘universal’ moral structure would be an attempt to reconcile the naturally-evolved moral structures that have come into existence, and trying to include ‘necessary’ truths, and make ‘contingent’ truths based on some underlying necessity, etc., to make it all self-consistent and complete.
A ‘universal’ ethical system would be social guidelines that are designed to adhere to the universal moral structure; a complete rule set that allows you to always act in a moral way.
However, Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem shows that there cannot be a single, absolute, self-consistent rule system. This applies to both the moral structure and the ethical rules.
Further, there are multiple, completely valid ‘end goals’ that can drive the construction of a moral structure (eg: individual vs group). This is largely a restatement of Godel’s theorem, but in a more frank and divisive way. It’s not merely an issue of a few exceptions, but large, irreconcilable differences at fundamental levels.
To a large degree, those divisions can be seen as emergent based on differences in valuation. EG: Which is more important, the self or the group?
thinkdr’s universal ethics is thus ultimately based on defining a single, universal valuation system. If everyone accepts that valuation system, then everything else follows. The problem is thinking that differences in valuation are merely a matter of ‘education’. That is, if you don’t agree with the universal system, you’re merely misguided, and need to be taught the ‘truth’ (reeducation camps ahoy). It doesn’t accept that there can be multiple truths (or perhaps: multiple, irreconcilable assertions, none of which can be proven absolutely true or false), and because of that, multiple, completely valid but potentially conflicting moral structures and/or ethical rulesets that can arise.
Note that this does not imply a lack of ‘objective’ moral truths, only that those truths can be used in different ways to develop very different systems. Thus, cultural relativism (an internally consistent and ‘true’ ethical structure) is a thing that does not inherently imply moral relativism (that the truth of each moral/ethical structure cannot be defined, and thus all are technically acceptable).
Another note: It seems you might be defining ethics as the means of defining that underlying valuation system, rather than the application of a moral system. In that case, you’re looking at things from the exact opposite end as I am. But, as I said, you never really define exactly what you’re talking about, so it’s difficult to properly discuss.
Yet another note: I can see where one could say that ethics is assessing a valuation system. For example, journalistic ethics asserts that dissemination of the truth to the public has higher value than (some) personal privacy, reputation, etc., so that assessment of relative value in itself would be what defines its ethical behavior. On the other hand, an intelligence agency would consider dissemination of the truth to the public as a very low value, and ethical behavior within the agency would be predicated on how well you can keep a secret.
If ethics is considered a valuation system, it pretty much must be purely situational, and that destroys the idea that there could be a single, universal ethical valuation system. One could perhaps argue that the above dichotomy is nothing but assessing the same argument over different individual bits of data; after all, the reporter will keep his contacts secret, and the agency may publicize some information for general safety. However even then it just changes the window on where ‘relativity’ comes into play; it still wouldn’t be possible to have a universal valuation.
I can see, though, where the valuation and the implementation can seem to flip back and forth in terms of which is the actual ‘ethics’.
Ehh. It’s not that it’s not true anymore, it’s that the difference is not as extreme as it used to be. American influence has certainly increased the perceived value of the individual, however on the whole, the group is still more valuable than the individual.
Also, it’s not like these are describing absolutes, in that there is no individual value in Japan and no group value in the US. Strong patriotism, “I’d die for my country!” assertions in the US are putting the group above the individual, for example, yet the tendency overall is still strongly individualistic. I’m just describing the larger trend of the overall culture.
In addition, the ‘group’ is not necessarily the ‘state’ (this goes back to what you said regarding the Nazis). The group can be your family, your classmates, your coworkers, your teammates, and so forth. One can expand it all the way up to the state level, but even that’s an artificial stopping point; it can expand further to encompass the entire world. Stopping it at the state level (or any other level where your or your group’s actions impact more than just your group) would be considered a gaming exploit, in that you suddenly transition from one moral model to another [IE: state (individual) is not as important as the world (group) >> state (individual) is more important than the world (group).]
Also, in my personal interpretation of how this model becomes valid, is that the group (including you) gains more overall from an action than you would from a different action that doesn’t benefit the group, even though you’d gain more personally from the more selfish action. A ‘sacrificial’ action (where you lose in order for the group to gain) would be an exception to the general model, and is not what I’m talking about.
That sounds like a distinction between ethics and morality. “Murder is wrong” is a moral statement. “Don’t kill” is an ethical rule that corresponds to a commonly agree-upon moral assertion.
‘Good’ ethics should have two properties: it should correspond well to a morality; and that morality that it corresponds to should be well constructed.
Note that the moral structure that it corresponds to does not necessarily have to be the single morality that any specific individual would have, if you have to accommodate individuals from multiple cultural backgrounds. However the morality should be generally agreed on by the community that is following those ethical strictures, or they won’t bother following them.
Not economics; math. It’s not economic replacement, it’s mathematical equivalence (in the same sense that your I-value is mathematically equivalent to the value of the thing it describes).
In order to even discuss these things in the abstract, you have to abstract out the target entity itself (the human, in this case). The replaceability would be the composition of all the underlying details of the human in question. Calling it “replaceability” is also shorthand for me (as I don’t have a formal system with terminology, here), since it would include all potentiality as well, and when I refer to replaceability it’s to refer to the combination of extant and potential value.
After more consideration, I agree with you that the power factor shouldn’t matter in defining ethical behavior. The power factor is what drives laws that are meant to prevent an imbalance of power from throwing things out of whack. If one behaves ethically, then the power factor would never matter.
As noted in the first sentence of your last paragraph, I’m glad to see we agree on that, at least. …Very encouraging. We found common ground.
I just came upon a discussion that I would recommend as ‘must reading’ for anyone with an interest in understanding ethics. It is a transcript of a conversation between Sam Harris and Paul Bloom. Read over this text, a link to which you will find below, and it will get you thinking – about vital topics, and serious questions with which to grapple. Harris, of course, over-values Consequentialism, and fails to acknowledge the values in Virtue Theory and in Deontology, overlooks their good ideas and the positive contributions those schools of thought can make. My theory synthesizes and integrates all three, but as you know, gives a higher emphasis on Modern VT, and while recognizing the benefits of systemic-thinking, places it at the lower end of th hierarchy of values.
Check out this Harris blog. Don’t miss it Click HERE;
Have you read yet A Unified Theory of Ethics. 
That cool document has anticipated many of your concerns. 
Click HERE;