A critique of moral relativism

Since the issue of moral relativity has been brought up on several threads it might be about time to have a thread dedicated to it.As a disclaimer, it was about 10 years ago since I took a course on ethics at university, and it wasn't massively in depth so the information I present here can mostly be found on wikipedia with a little memory thrown in for good measure.

What is moral relativism, anyway?

principle sourceThere are differing concepts which can all be called moral relativism. They all share the central idea that morality can vary, that there can be different moral answers depending on time, society and individuals.Descriptive relativism is essentially that. It simply points out that there is a diversity of moral judgement across time, societies and individuals - as such there is no objective moral truth.Meta-ethical relativism suggests that since there is no objective standard by which to assess the truth of a moral proposition, right and wrong can only be judged against the standards of the society or individual preference. Slavery is wrong relative to our standards, but it is right relative to the standards of some villages in 17th Century Africa. Cultural relativism is just where morality is judged relative to the culture within which the moral question arises.Individual relativism is as above only from the individual's point of view (does he find his own actions right or wrong).Normative relativism makes statements about what should be morally right. An example of normative relativism is that a person should not judge the morality of another culture using the moral standards of his own.

Problems and their solutions

The first problem with moral relativism is straight forward: one cannot apply it to determine a moral course of action. i.e., there is no such thing as applied relativism. One can apply relativism in a sense, but I'm not sure on its validity. Take the example of 'would you kill one man to save 10 others?' Applying relativism might lead us thus: 'killing a man is wrong in my culture and not saving 10 men is considered less wrong unless we are in a self defence situation. We aren't in the latter so I should let them die according to my culture. what about me? What do I think? Hmm, my personal morality conflicts with societies, perhaps I should seek to change the laws of society to make it illegal to not save lives if doing so is not dangerous.' It isn't a system that can provide answers which are objectively true - but obviously the point of relativism.Another issue to tackle is normative relativism which leads to a principle of non-interference. The solution to this problem is less easy, and involves proposing an exception clause: that is to say - interference between cultures is acceptable if their morality conflict.
Applied relativism can't be used here; there is no way to use relativism to determine if any given conflict warrants intervention.

Moral relativism and bestiality

Finally - the issue that has come up so many times. Let us look at relativism and how it might make a decision on bestiality baring in mind what was said above.If a society exists which performs a monthly ritual of sex with dogs, what is moral relativism's response to that? We cannot say it is morally wrong without giving a reference point. It is right relative to its own standards of right and wrong relative to mine. On the other hand we can make a judgement on the practice of bestiality ourselves by using applied ethics of another variety.

Summary

The most important thing about moral relativity is that it cannot really be used to determine if a certain act is definitely moral or immoral. Other moral systems need to be used if one wishes to engage in applied ethics to reach a single answer. All moral relativity can conclude is 'according to his society, or to himself, or to whatever, he was morally correct.' or 'according to himself he was engaging in a moral crusade to change society, but the rest of his society considered his actions entirely immoral'.The biggest fundamental flaw in criticising moral relativism is found here. One cannot criticise it for not being able to make a definite moral judgement because that is the whole point of it! Something is only moral relative to some non-objective standard and can be immoral relative to some other non-objective standard. If you need to make a definite moral one needs to examine other methods of applied ethics.A person who is a moral relativist is not somebody who applies relative ethics to a moral problem or to decide one single moral course of action. A moral relativist is someone who does not believe there is more than one way to structure a society and thus determine its morals. They are someone who accepts there are differing methods of applied ethics and concludes that there is no way to determine the truth of any of them. Moral relativity can be used to show a culture that is engaging in an act which is immoral relative to its own claimed system of applied ethics (slavery can be shown to be immoral in the US by pointing to the Bill of Rights as the conclusions of the applied ethics of the culture).The contrast is moral absolutism, which rejects there are multiple valid ways of regulating the interaction of people and that there exists somewhere one and only one perfect system of regulation, only one moral code that has any validity whatsoever.If promoted I'd think 'Faith and belief' or 'Comparative religions' are the most relevant places. Another place for this kind of discussion might simply be 'The Coffee House'. I'll let someone else make that call thoughIf anyone can put forward a more rounded case for applied relativism, I'd be happy to hear it.

Thread copied to the A critique of moral relativism thread in the Social Issues and Creation/Evolution forum, this copy of the thread has been closed.