Moral Relativism

Actually the US has the most citizens incarcerated as a percentage of the population as compared to _ANY_ other nation in the world. Jar’s reply not withstanding I think it is possible to look at the morality of a society to some degree. For example, it could be argued that the German society from 1937 to 1945 was less moral than ours because they had a much higher rate of government sponsored murder. It would all depend on which metric you want to use to measure your morality.If we look at modern US society we could argue that we are less moral than say Netherlands because they don’t incarcerate non violent drug users and we do. But once again it all depends on your metric. If your system of morality says that drug use is bad and all drug users should be shot in the street then you would say that the Netherlands is less moral that the US and the US is less moral than Malaysia. Morality is relative.Or getting back to Shraf’s question about government spending we could ask if it is moral for our society to spend more money on incarcerating people than it does on educating them? Can you apply some sort of moral absolute to this question. Is there an absolute moral ratio of spending which is good and all others are of varying degrees of bad? Once again morality is relative. I think this is a fair metric for judging morality.

And how do you measure a "just war"? Can you specify one and explain how, in terms of your absolute morality, it was just? And suppose someone is engaged in one of these "just wars" is all killing OK? If civilians get killed as a result of faulty intelligence who is morally responsible? The person who dropped the bomb, the one who provided the intelligence, the one who ordered the attack, or the one who started the war? And if you kill many civilians in a "just war" does it become unjust?

Love the CS Lewis quote. I think he may be generalizing because of his strong Christian influences when he says the following:

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But the standard that measures two things is something different from either. You are, in fact, comparing them both with some Real Morality, admitting that there is such a thing as a real Right, independent of what people think, and that some people's ideas get nearer to that real Right than others...

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It is my opinion that he is correct in his first statement that in order to measure something you need something to compare to, hence my statements about having a metric. I think that his second sentence is problematic in that moral standards are always dependent on the situation. If a real Right exists it is unclear to me that he or anyone knows what it is.Allow me to offer an example using one of the most controversial moral issues which seems to pervade the United States: sex. There seems to be some moral standard in the US that dictates that nipples are an immoral thing to see. This is clear from the hysteria which surrounded JJ’s wardrobe malfunction at the Super Bowl. What is not clear is why this moral standard needs to be in place. There are cultures where people go around wearing very little clothing and they don’t seem to be adversely affected by it. Once again you run into relative morality. Or perhaps what CS Lewis is saying is that those things which are relative aren’t truly moral issues?As far as establishing a moral code of that which increases happiness I think this is inherently flawed as is shown by your examples. I think that the morality proposed by shrafinator is a good starting point: And we can look at the homosexual marriage example you gave. Having homosexual marriage illegal infringes on the rights of al the homosexuals who want to get married (I would say that this harms them). Having homosexual marriage legal would make some people uncomfortable because they believe that it is a sin. This however in no way infringes on ANY of their rights or their ability to live their life as they want so I would say there is little harm done in that situation. Since my metric is reducing harm and helping people, having homosexual marriage illegal while heterosexual marriage is legal is immoral. This is not related to how many people are made happy by the idea.If you can propose some system of absolutes which is devoid of ambiguity I am dying to hear of it.

GN,Sorry about the delayed reply. I've been extra busy at work because I had to leave town for 5 days.Back to your questions. Some people have already addressed some of these issues quite well so I will be brief.

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In it the main character, for no discernable reason, shoots a stranger to death. Was this right or wrong?

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I think the key word in this example is "discernable". Just because the observer did not know the motives of the main character does not make it murder.

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While at first this seems like a good alternative to "whatever makes the most people happy," I believe it is essentially the same. For example, it would make it ok under this morality to kill a rich man and take all his money and give it to a bunch of poor people. Only one man was harmed, but hundreds of poor were helped.

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I don't see it as the same. The happiness of the individuals involved is not at issue, harm reduction is. In your example it could be argued that the murder of one man is far more harmful than the good that is done by distributing his money to poor people. In fact our society has laws that address similar situations that reflect the enlightened self-interest of the people making laws. If you say it is OK to kill someone to divide their goods who is to say that one day you will not be the one whose goods are being divided?

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The idea of a "Real right" that exists is inherent in every one of us, in the way that we think about things. This "Real Right" is a moral absolute - it is not morally relative to a given culture.

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I agree that there is a sense of right in every one of us, we often call it a conscience. However, I think that with extremely few exceptions, there is no moral absolute. All actions are within a context and even our judicial system understood this at one time. The judge had discretion to impose a sentence based on the situation: relative morality. Same crime, different situation, different morals.