Hi Everyone,

This is from the Disturbing Trend thread in the Lounge that Jamie posted.

I find this topic endlessly interesting so I decided to post my response in here as well. Hopefully you guys will let me know what you think about this topic!

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**sigh**

This is gonna be long...

I've seen a great migration of people toward moral nihilism, or even worse, relativism.

and relativism is moral and epistemological cowardice.

**enter the relativist**

Well, despite the fact that I usually tend to agree with Jamie and Menzo, I'm going to have to vehemently disagree in this case. I am a relativist in all things, not just morality but it's certainly a big one. Personally, to me, anything less than relativism strikes me as intellectual laziness and quite probably closed-minded, judgmentalism.

I can imagine very few things I think have an absolute right or wrong, and even the ones I can imagine I'm more tempted to ascribe to a lack of imagination on my part rather than an actual always right or wrong thing.

Don't get me wrong though, I think a certain action can most definitely be right or wrong in a certain situation, it's just it all depends on the situation and not the action. For example Robbie (whose post I agree with the most thus far) said:

if the situation were a potential nuclear meltdown that would incinerate millions of people and the only way to stop that from happening would be to send a group of nuclear scientists (all who are about to have the worlds first stable fusion reaction) to their doom to fix the problem, I would do it.

And I would definitely agree with him. The action - sending the scientists to their certain death - isn't what makes the scenario right or wrong; it's the reason and the consequence, and in general other things inherent to the situation. Sending someone to their certain demise is usually wrong; however, in this instance I would say that it's right. Thus sending someone to their certain death isn't always wrong (only usually).

If someone would care to argue that sending them to their certain death is wrong, then that's fine and that's your prerogative, but the way I would look at it they're going to be dead either way, so why not save the rest of humanity? Indeed, I would gamely go along with this reasoning if I were one of the scientists myself.

One could argue then that really this does embody a great deal of utilitarianism and indeed I cannot really fault that approach insomuch as it manages to actually be a moral code. However, to me, it would be an incomplete moral code. Also, IMO, the moral codes described above all reduce to either a relativist frame of reference or an absolutist frame of reference, at least in general.

To me relativism is infinitely appealing because for the most part I reject the concrete and embrace the abstract. Thus, science and facts (facts devoid of a story that is), are usually not things with which I want to occupy my mind. Occasionally, actually usually, I'll find a scientific fact fascinating, and I'll be glad I've learned it, but I'd never want to devote much of my intellectual time to them. Instead I prefer to ponder more abstract matters, to examine complex social/situational/contextual interactions and to speculate on their eventual consequences. In school I always more than adequate at the sciences and maths, but they largely disinterested me; it's always been the humanities, especially the social sciences that captivate me.

Anyway, philosophically I find much of Kant, Nietzsch, Russell, and the rest of the gang to be utterly fascinating and to hold a great deal of merit. Though I don't necessary think they're "right", but then my whole concept of what is "right" (not morally, but in general), is pretty...well relative. To me two people who hold seemingly mutually exclusive views can be simultaneously and equally correct. Indeed:

Divine Command=it's right because God said so

Pros: Really clear, stated plainly

Cons: Differs by religion, makes all moral decisions arbitrary because there's no reason other than God said so

while I consider myself a very spiritually person and to a large extent religious even (I'm a Christian), my view point on the world's religions (which I sat down and hashed out when I was about 12 or so) is that due to God's omnipotence/omniscience/general "omni" nature pretty much all religions can be equally and simultaneously correct, as long as they hold moral merit and the practitioner firmly believes them. And I'm not exactly saying that's just with regards to general ethics and morality (and thus God/the gods would ultimately say "Well, you were a little bit off, but that's okay), I actually mean their right insofar as they have their own facts. In other words, in simple terms, my belief is that God can be the Christian trinity prototype AND the Jewish God, and the Wiccan Spirts, and...well you get the point. However, I don't think that means that I could just randomly decide to be a Jew or a Hindu, or a Muslim. I think Christianity is the correct religion for me, and thus may indeed be the only correct religion with regards to me. I think converting can be "right", but only if you're convinced your previous religion was lacking something (or had something bad) that the new religion makes up for, and only if you sincerely believe the new religion is the "correct" one (which I would qualify "from your current frame of reference").

Anyway, Divine Command would never work for me, because I've always rejected religion as a grounds for deciding what's right and wrong. I think religion might play into the decision, it might be a good idea to look to the Bible or the Torah or any other religious document, but I think it's a huge mistake to pluck something out of these documents and say "ahh, you see, it's right in here! That's how we'll know". I think it's always a massive mistake to not take the context and culture of the times into consideration. YES, I agree that eating shellfish was wrong in the time of the ancient Jews, but it's no longer wrong in today's society. God had a reason for saying it was wrong back then (in this case I would theorize it had to do with sanitation and the likelihood of getting sick, but that's just my guess), but that doesn't mean the same thing is still wrong. I think morality should always be under constant review.

Thus, I similarly disagree with the concept of mandatory sentencing. I think crimes are never identical so neither should the sentencing be. For example some assaults might warrant three years in prison, but some might warrant considerable more, and some might warrant considerably less, and I realize that generally the goal is just to set a minimum sentence and that this generally applies to repeat offenders, but I think even that is too constraining. IMO, the judges AND juries should have almost full discretion and the important thing is to choose competent judges and juries (and I know that often times they suck, but IMO we're trying to fix the wrong thing with mandatory sentencing).

As for:

Deontology=it's right because the agent acted according to two principles (I'm going with the Kantian version, even though he's a gigantic dufus in my opinion): first, the person acted according to a maxim which they could will as being a universal law, and second, the person acted on the basis of respecting a person as a rational agent, and not just a means to an end.

This is far too scientific and impersonal to ever be something that would hold much appeal to me directly. As I've said I have enough trouble believing that there are universal laws in general, and certainly not with regards to principles or morality.

As yet another tangent, I do very much believe in basic laws from a simplistic point of view. 1+1=2 in the most general, simplest terms, but really 1 and 2 are abstract concepts and can exist as sub or super groups of anything else. Thus I would agree that a stapler and a pair of scissors are two objects, and I wouldn't dispute that fact, but it would lack the intellectual significance necessary to know much about the situation and people involved (which to me is much more important).

For example maybe you need a stapler, a pair of scissors, and a tape dispenser. In which case, to me, it's fine to say 1+1=-1, because you're lacking one of the things you need. Obviously mathematically one is supposed to set the equation up more like 1 (a needed object) + 1 (another needed object) - 3 (how many objects you need) = -1 (how many objects you're short). And of course math is useful in this way, and it's perfectly correct to look at it that way. But it's impersonal and doesn't get at the major issue with enough passion. The point is you have these two objects, but you're lacking a third, and if everything hinges on having the third object then 1 + 1 will always equal -1 (one object short on what you need).

And that's sorta how I think about all scientific and mathematical facts. They make sense to me, I won't dispute them, but I'll always seek to make them slaves of whatever applicable value they have on the situation at hand, and I think they have little independent value on their own (actually I think any form of knowledge is always valuable in its own right, but I'm operating under two different concepts and definitions for "value" at the same time...which I can do because I'm comfortable breaking the normal scientific AND rhetorical (as well as "duh") rules that say a concept or thing can only have one meaning or definition at any given time).

Similarly I can comfortably state that light gray is white and dark blue is black if, for whatever reason, I'm only interested in defining things in terms of either black or white (which obviously I'm never actually interested in doing when it comes to moral or intellectual matters, but "black and white" can have other merit independent of these).

As for:

Utilitarianism=it's right 'cause it makes people happy more than it makes them sad

Sure, like I said I won't dispute this one at all, but it doesn't give the full story and since I think "happy" and "sad" are completely relative anyway this is just a subset of relativism to me.

Relativism (individual or cultural)= it's right or wrong because a culture or person believes it's right or wrong

I disagree with the definition you used. It's correct, but it doesn't tell the whole story, and it certainly isn't the extent of what I mean by "relativism". I do take individual cultures into account when deciding what's morally right for one person over another, but my overwhelming, guiding light, is what is right in the situation. Cultural aspects and individual histories play a role in this, but they certainly don't tell the whole story.

Moral Nihilism= there are no morals because there are no moral truths

A subset of this would be non-cognitivism, which asserts that the cognitivist claim is false, and that moral truths cannot be known and therefore have no truth value, and thus moral knowledge is basically an oxymoron. Yeah, that's a REALLY rough definition but it's something that I'd need to give many examples for. Basically think of saying that murder is wrong as saying that peas taste good, kinda like it's personal taste (though that's not exactly right either).

I disagree because I believe that there are "moral truths", I just don't believe that there are universal moral truths.

...and that's what I think.

-Kevin