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Philosophical Overdose - The Absurdity of Moral Relativism and Subjectivism

Page history last edited by Matthew McVeagh 6 years, 3 months ago Saved with comment

Philosophical Overdose - The Absurdity of Moral Relativism & Subjectivism

 

I made several responses to this video.

 

1. General, immediate response

 

Cultural relativism is certainly nonsense - apart from anything else, cultures do not exist determinately, so how could we determine what culture someone's actions should be judged relative to. But not subjectivism. The relativity that the subjectivity of value creates is individual, not cultural and collective. People perceiving themselves to be in 'the same culture' just have a high level of intersubjective connection (and often of course they turn out not to have as much as they thought they did by 'identifying' with 'the same culture').

 

 There's a lot more I could say about the content of this video, but I'll have to leave it till later. The bottom line is - there is a vast amount of evidence for the existence of UFOs but none for objective morals. No-one has ever tripped over one, and no-one who believes in them can answer what colour or shape they are or has ever been able to produce one. They are simply believed in, as an article of faith, by supposedly 'rational' people many of whom are ardently in favour of facing unwelcome facts in other areas of life, and even philosophy, yet who determinedly head in the opposite direction on this subject. No amount of wishing there was an objective morality, or finding 'absurdity' in moral subjectivism, can make this rational.

 

2. Point by point analysis and response

 

1. 0:00 - 0:28 Given that it's true that human rights are a particularly Western concept, and that other cultures around the world think differently (and so did the West at one time, and so do some people in the West still), how do we know morality based around human rights is 'grounded in some form of objectivity'?

2. 0:28 - 1:28 This section is talking more about epistemic relativism or truth relativism rather than moral relativism. It does mention criticising cultures, which implies a basis of value, but otherwise it sounds more like it's about different things cultures or people believe about the world than about opinions of right and wrong.

 

3. 1:28 - 2:48 The speaker may find it ironic that Russell and Sartre combined a belief in moral subjectivism with outspoken comment on moral issues. But that perhaps says more about the speaker than about them. Perhaps he assumes that if you believe in moral subjectivism you would, or should, refrain from preaching to others because you would see others' moral views as as worthy as your own, or yours as as relative as theirs. But no, because the urge to try to influence others is there as much as for objectivists, and is not affected by one's opinions about the metaphysical status of ethics. He even admits that perspective from 1:55.

 

The speaker then goes on to question what kinds of moral causes you could commit yourself to if you believe morals are subjective. But he makes no argumentational points that show that a subjectivist position must be wrong, only that it's unfortunate if you want a kind of moral certainty. It may be true that Russell would have no objective arguments to overturn the opinion of a Nazi; but how would an objectivist overturn that opinion, even if they and the Nazi both believed that what is moral is an objective matter? Ultimately the only thing that would work would be an appeal to personal subjective values. And so what if Sartre concluded that moral judgement is down to individual existential choices? What argument does the speaker have that that is not how things are? None.

 

4. 2:48 - 2:53 I hate Zizek.

 

2:53 - 3:30 This is basically correct, no argument. If you say "It's wrong to impose your morality on others" you're making a moral claim without reference to any relativity. Actually you could still be a subjectivist, but then you'd have to accept that the statement was simply expressing your moral judgement, not any objective fact. The point is, this moral claim itself is not expressed subject to a relativity, so it's not a relativist position.

 

5. 3:30 - 6:27 I don't think Bagosian is right, and actually he presents no real argument for the idea that culturally relativised moral judgements 'lose their normativity' or 'become sociological'. I'm not going to defend cultural relativism because I don't believe in it, but let's suppose the universe was created by a creator with morality built in but with the nature of that morality dependent on cultural context. For instance, let's suppose the highest moral imperative is to follow the dictates of your culture: what you do about theft, abortion and vivisection is dependent on that. Then wouldn't it be the case that morality is objectively relative to culture, and that what is right and wrong depends on what culture you're in?

 

6. 6:27 - 7:39 This section is so full of problems!

 

Firstly the speaker does not, in this quote, identify 'McIntyre'.

 

Secondly, the whole piece is couched in a big conditional. "If the Enlightenment project of modernity has failed we must either go along with Nietzsche and seek power not truth, or go back to pre-modern rationality like Aristotle." ...and what if it hasn't failed? :)

 

Thirdly, what if we don't accept the terms of the conditional, or the dichotomy? What if we don't believe in 'modernity'? What if we see more flow and continuity between ancient, mediaeval and modern? What if we don't see Nietzsche's or the pre-moderns' philosophy as they're being characterised here?

 

Fourthly - and probably most importantly - no argument is given to support McIntyre's opinion. It's just quoted. What if the Enlightenment project of modernity has failed and we don't have to go back to Nietzsche or Aristotle? What if we can go forward, to something new? What if our ethical position doesn't depend on modernity?

 

Fifthly, some of the details are not made clear, there's a lot of blurring. The best example is the conflation of all ancient and mediaeval philosophers' ideas into one. They are not remotely similar enough to make that possible.

 

Sixthly, the speech at one point talks about 'realism' without specifying moral realism, and similarly about truth vs. power. Is this not just another comment about metaphysical/epistemological realism/anti-realism being brought in to support a meta-ethics question, where it is not relevant unless it can be pointed out how?

 

7. 7:39 - 8:36 The speaker outlines the idea that in the 20th century 'rationality' has come to be seen as 'merely' the working out of means to ends, i.e. whatever ends you have in mind, you think about what means would best achieve them, however 'crazy' the ends may be.

 

Well firstly rationality is not only practical, but also theoretical, that is it is not only about means and ends of doing things, but also about the reasonableness and logicality of ideas and theories, and that hasn't changed in the 20th century. Secondly it is still perfectly possible to question the rationality of ends, especially if for instance they themselves are means to further ends.

 

Thirdly, again there is no argument against the position outlined. Why can it not be that the 20th century sees rationality more honestly and lucidly than in previous centuries? Where is the support for the idea which presumably pre-existed that rationality also concerns people's purposes? I think it's absolutely the case that the use of reason in no way automatically leads someone to the truth. Instead reasoning is relative to a person's starting points, and they could be any old thing, undetermined by reason. Typically people have what are basically prejudices or articles of faith, which they then try to support with reason. Therefore it's perfectly possible to rationalise any theoretical doctrine, including moral codes, and this has been done throughout history and the world.

 

Reason, in fact, is not the ground of ethics, even for objectivists. Subjectivists like me would say that ethics are produced from people's desires, feelings, instincts, conditioning, empathy and other matters of affect, tempered by knowledge of the world and logical reasoning. Reason is involved but in the working out of details, practicality and preferability, fitting to a situation etc. Objectivists believe that ethics come from recognition of external objective facts, and applied in practice are tempered by those same things. In neither case is reason the source of ethics, instead it is just involved in its application. If reason was the source of ethics one would only have to reason differently to produce different ethics.

 

8. 8:36 - 9:40 I largely agree with the points made here, which are specifically against Emotivism, the subjectivist theory propounded by A.J. Ayer (featured in the video footage). I'm not sure how much Ayer's Emotivism is part of his Logical Positivism (as implied here), and even less how much it would be part of the Vienna School's Logical Positivism, but at any rate as a theory trying to explain how ethics are subjective it's very poor. It's basically simply not true that moral expressions are the same sort of thing as emotional expressions, and many moral conceptions are far too complex to be translated into purely emotional expressions - how for instance do you convert "Abortion is acceptable, but contraception is preferable to abortion" into 'Hurrah' or 'Boo' sentences?

 

It's also a valid point that when people make moral assertions they imagine they are disagreeing with people who make different assertions about the same subject, whereas people merely praising or booing are not disagreeing so much as just differing in their feelings. So it's absolutely true that an accurate account of ethics has to include that in its explanation.

 

As a side point, I don't think emotivism prevents meaningful political philosophy, and that is not purely a matter of ethics, but also other factors like interests, power, economics, practicality.

 

9. 9:40 - 11:02 OK, so I don't understand what the problem is supposed to be with the Enlightenment. It seems like this McIntyre chap reckons that the work of Hume, Voltaire and Kant leads inexorably to Nietzsche and Nihilism, and then into Post-Modernism, and that we have to go scuttling as far back as Aristotle to escape the problems with that. Why? How is this the case? I'm not seeing a shred of argument here, and it's a huge claim.

 

The latter part, referencing Pragmatism, is more hopeful, and makes more sense. There are indeed problems with Foundationalism, but this should not hold us back from a continuing search for truth. I still don't know what the problems with the Enlightenment are supposed to be, and most importantly I don't see how any of this bears on meta-ethics - it seems to concern epistemology. But if it makes those like 'McIntyre', the speaker and presumably the maker of this video a bit happier, then I guess it's good for something.

 

Conclusion:

This video is a sequence of snippets of speeches that talk disparagingly about moral relativist and subjectivist thinking but for the most part with no real argument. The parts where there is some sort of argument, and where I agree, are where particular non-realist meta-ethical theories are attacked, such as Cultural Relativism and Emotivism. But these are of course only particular accounts of moral non-realism; moral non-realists are not obliged to go along with them, and attacks on them alone are not attacks on moral non-realism as a whole. As regards wider moral relativist, non-realist, subjectivist, sceptical or non-cognitivist thinking the snippets do not come up with any valid objections. The objections made are along the lines that these positions lead their adherents into difficult practical situations in applied ethics, or that they have removed rationality from some previous significant role in ethics, or that they have brought about a crisis in 'modernity' that means we have to make some drastic step back to ancient thinking, or they involve a conflation with other kinds of relativism such as epistemic/truth relativism. All these objections are either irrelevant, false, or both. The video does not remotely live up to its title in showing that moral relativism and subjectivism are absurd. No arguments in favour of moral absolutism or objectivism are offered, and the video if anything indicates that a lot of moral absolutist/objectivist defence involves avoiding justifying their own positions and instead attacking the opposition - but in a way that is woolly, and full of straw men and non sequiturs.

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