Ethics & Moral Philosophy Series Part 5: Moral Relativism & Nihilism

1. Different cultures have radically different moral beliefs
2. There's no way to prove one culture right and another wrong
3. Therefore, there are no objective moral truths

Problem: Disagreement doesn't entail no truth. Ancient astronomers disagreed about whether the Earth moves, but there's still an objective fact about it.

1. We should be tolerant of other cultures
2. To be tolerant, we must not judge other cultures by our standards
3. Therefore, moral standards are culture-relative

Problem: This is self-undermining. If tolerance is objectively required, that contradicts relativism. If tolerance is just our cultural value, why should other cultures adopt it?

Argument: Claims to objective moral truth have been used to justify colonialism, forced conversion, and cultural destruction. Relativism protects against such moral imperialism.

Response: The evils of imperialism can be condemned on objective moral grounds (imperialism is objectively wrong). Relativism can't condemn it—if the imperialist culture approves, it's right for them.

If cultural relativism is true, moral reformers are always wrong by definition:

• Martin Luther King Jr. was wrong to oppose segregation (because his culture approved it)
• Abolitionists were wrong to oppose slavery (because their society practiced it)
• Suffragettes were wrong to demand women's voting rights

The Problem: Anyone who challenges their society's moral code is automatically in the wrong. "Right" just means "what my culture currently believes."

Question: What counts as "a culture"?

• Nations? (But nations contain many subcultures)
• Ethnic groups? Religious groups? Cities?
• Can I form my own one-person culture?

The smaller we draw the circle, the more cultural relativism collapses into individual subjectivism.

Cultural relativism makes moral progress impossible to explain:

• Abolishing slavery wasn't moral progress—just moral change
• We can't say society is "better" now than when it practiced slavery
• "Progress" requires a standard beyond culture—which relativism denies

Most people believe societies can genuinely improve morally. Relativism denies this possibility.

The View: Moral statements report the speaker's personal attitudes.

• "Murder is wrong" = "I disapprove of murder"
• "Charity is good" = "I approve of charity"

Implications:

• Everyone's moral views are equally "valid" (for them)
• Moral disagreement is impossible—we're just reporting different feelings
• Hitler wasn't wrong—he just had different preferences

The View: Moral statements don't report attitudes—they express them (like exclamations).

• "Murder is wrong" ˜ "Murder—boo!" or "Ugh!"
• "Charity is good" ˜ "Charity—hooray!"

Ayer (1936): Moral statements are "expressions of emotion which can be neither true nor false." They're like cheers and jeers, not truth-claims.

Stevenson: Added that moral language also has a prescriptive function—we use it to influence others' attitudes ("Do this!" "Don't do that!").

The View: All positive moral claims are false because there are no moral facts to make them true.

Mackie's Arguments:

1. Argument from Queerness: Moral facts would be utterly unlike anything else in the universe:
   • Metaphysically queer: What kind of thing is a "moral fact"? It's not physical, not mental—what is it?
   • Epistemologically queer: How would we perceive moral facts? We'd need some special moral sense—but there's no evidence for one.
2. Argument from Disagreement: Widespread moral disagreement is best explained by there being no facts to discover.

Key Point: Error theory accepts that moral statements are truth-apt (they try to state facts)—but they all fail because there are no moral facts.

The View: Moral statements don't express beliefs about the world and therefore can't be true or false. They're more like imperatives or expressions of attitude.

Types:

• Emotivism: "X is wrong" = expressing disapproval of X
• Prescriptivism (Hare): "X is wrong" = commanding "Don't do X!"
• Expressivism: Moral judgments express non-cognitive attitudes like desires, plans, or norms

Key Difference from Error Theory: Error theorists say moral statements are false. Non-cognitivists say they're not the kind of thing that can be true or false.

The Problem: How can non-cognitivism explain moral reasoning?

Consider this argument:

1. If lying is wrong, then getting your little brother to lie is wrong.
2. Lying is wrong.
3. Therefore, getting your little brother to lie is wrong.

This seems like valid logical inference. But if "lying is wrong" in premise 2 just means "Boo lying!", what does "lying is wrong" mean in premise 1? The if-then structure requires a proposition, not an exclamation.

The View: There are objective moral facts, independent of what anyone believes.

Arguments:

• Moral phenomenology: We experience moral truths as objective—torture seems genuinely wrong, not just disliked
• Moral progress: Realism explains why abolishing slavery was progress, not just change
• Convergence: Despite disagreement, moral views have converged over time (against slavery, for human rights)

Varieties:

• Naturalism: Moral facts are natural facts (about well-being, flourishing, etc.)
• Non-naturalism: Moral facts are sui generis—a distinct category

The View: Moral truths are "constructed" by rational procedures rather than discovered.

Variants:

• Kantian Constructivism (Korsgaard): Morality is what rational agents must commit to given their nature as choosers
• Contractualism (Scanlon): An action is wrong if its principle could be reasonably rejected by anyone affected
• Rawlsian Constructivism: Justice principles emerge from hypothetical agreement behind a "veil of ignorance"

Advantage: Constructivism grounds morality in reason without positing mysterious moral facts.

The View: Start with expressivism (moral statements express attitudes), then show how we can "earn the right" to speak as if realism were true.

• We can have genuine moral reasoning
• We can call moral judgments "true" or "false"
• We can talk about moral "facts" and "knowledge"

All this without positing mysterious metaphysical entities. The "quasi-realist" mimics realism using only expressivist resources.

1. Part 6: Applied Ethics & Case Studies - Apply ethical principles to real-world dilemmas including bioethics, environmental ethics, and business ethics.