Is Morality A Matter Of Taste?
Twex
Join Date: 2002-11-02 Member: 4999Members
Join Date: 2002-11-02 Member: 4999Members
<div class="IPBDescription">Contra relativism/subjectivism</div> Seeing that moral subjectivism and cultural relativism have some fervent supporters here, I thought it would be a good idea to point out that these theories are in fact invalid. As the article makes clear, this is a matter of logic, not of tolerance.
<a href='http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/schick_18_4.html' target='_blank'>Is morality a matter of taste?</a>
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Although the notion that reality is socially constructed strikes many as decidedly odd, it hardly raises an eyebrow. Many who vehemently deny that we can make something true by simply believing it to be so readily agree that we can make something right by simply believing it to be right. The view that belief makes right is known as "subjectivism" or "relativism." Despite its popularity, there are probably fewer subjectivists among professional ethicists than there are creationists among professional biologists. Why? Because as ethical theories go, subjectivism is about as bad as they come. To see this, it's necessary to understand something about the nature and purpose of ethical theorizing...<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<a href='http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/schick_18_4.html' target='_blank'>Is morality a matter of taste?</a>
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Although the notion that reality is socially constructed strikes many as decidedly odd, it hardly raises an eyebrow. Many who vehemently deny that we can make something true by simply believing it to be so readily agree that we can make something right by simply believing it to be right. The view that belief makes right is known as "subjectivism" or "relativism." Despite its popularity, there are probably fewer subjectivists among professional ethicists than there are creationists among professional biologists. Why? Because as ethical theories go, subjectivism is about as bad as they come. To see this, it's necessary to understand something about the nature and purpose of ethical theorizing...<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Comments
Proof? There isn't any. I suppose we'll need to rely on each man to realize that it is best for himself and society to follow it.
Of course, we would do well to remember that the existence of objective morality does not mean that <i>your</i> personal notion of what that morality <i>is</i> is necessarily correct. The existence of objective morality makes moral discussions possible, but by no means can it ever settle them in and of itself.
Relative morality is flawed. Makes it impossible to condemn slavery, Nazism, anything basically.
We all know that slavery was wrong, but people didnt think so back in 1800's. But I still know its wrong.
IMHO, morality can only be determined by a perfectly just judge. Got God?
To address specifically the points in the article, it is ludicrous to think that believing that morality is created by humans renders you unable to make any moral judgements. I'll use an analogy from physics here.
When we analyze situations using physics we use the concept of "models". These are mathematical ways of thinking about the subject that have shown within their scope to correctly predict behavior. We know that these models are our own creations, but that doesn't keep them from accurately describing reality.
For instance, no one actually thinks that there are little differential equations sorting themselves out inside of a planet when it's moving under gravity, but that doesn't prevent us from using differential equations to describe and predict its motion.
Ethics is simply a model for human behavior motivated towards certain goals. There is no reason to think that the concepts that we dream up of freedom, goodness, etc. have any physical representation in reality. But we are still capable of describing our view of ideal human behavior using them, and using them to analyze the behavior of others.
We, the people in western societies in the year 2003 consider slavery wrong. Does that give us the right to say to people in the past "You were wrong because you believed slavery was fine?". Although we may consider ourselves to be the just ones, the ones with the correct and good answers, everything changes in time. Who's to say that in 2450 slavery won't be back? And that the people of that era will poar scorn on people such as Abraham Lincoln for such backwards ideas as racial equality and liberty. Perception also changes the way things are viewed: we think the S-11 hijackers were evil men bent on acts of mass murder; they saw themselves as righteous warriors striking a blow against evil. Who is correct? It all depends on one's viewpoint. Again, a future generation may look back on S-11 and say "Good job, I'm glad they did that" and they will be no more correct or wrong than we are today.
Thus we can say to ourselves "Slavery isn't acceptable today". We can't say "The people in the past who practiced slavery were wrong and evil". Before you jump to judge people in the past, remember that future generations will then judge us. We may be found wanting in their eyes.
Example; let's say I think taking a life is wrong, on the grounds of myself not being a worthy enough judge to end a life, and not seeing anyone else to be fit either. Will I say murder is wrong in any case? Perhaps, perhaps not. A situation occurs in which an evil man is going to kill a good man. I can kill the evil man to save the good one, or punish him if the act has already occurred, but alas, does this not go against my morals? "But it's not QUITE as immoral," I say, because I'm doing it for the cause of good. But oops! I'm STILL committing the same act that I claimed immoral just a moment ago. So do I bite the bullet and go against my morals, or are they... adjustable?
Even our legal system allows for this (correct me if I'm wrong, I don't remember exactly where I heard of this); if I'm bleeding/starving to death or something and I break into someone's home to try to take care of myself, under certain grounds I will not be held responsible for my actions due to circumstance. Also, the idea of not condemning the insane for committing crimes falls along this line of thought.
Anyway, my general thoughts; You can't really "know" something is inherently wrong; you can only know that it is wrong to YOU, and run your life accordingly.
Ryo, I in fact feel pretty comfortable saying that slavery is and always has been wrong. This does not mean I consider myself or our society to be free of any wrongdoing; in fact, I would not be surprised if future generations eventually condemn mass slaughter of animals as wrong, and marvel at the barbarism of their ancestors.
The best that any of us can do is to try to intuit or reason out (or a combination of the two) what is "right" and what isn't, and base our decisions on that. We acknowledge that our hypothesis of what is and isn't "right" is not infallible, but we should not simply say that "what is right for me isn't necessarily right for you" - as has been pointed out, this would cripple any attempt to try to prevent wrongdoing by others, and everything would pretty much crumble around our ears if everybody just worried about themselves and made no attempt to curb wrong behavior by others.
Yet we cant look them in the eyes and tell them that "Okay we are going to give you a lethal injection now because you have killed people. Now we cant say for sure that you did the right thing or the wrong thing, but we are going to take a punt and say you did the wrong."
What makes your opinion that you did the right thing any better than our opinion that you did the wrong thing? Well frankly, we outnumber you, so you lose.
Right and wrong are then decided by population stats. Anything anyone does is impossible to nail down as WRONG. You dont even know if you are right yourself. You can THINK you are right, but you cant KNOW. I dont like the idea that we lock people up because we're pretty darn sure thats the wrong thing to do.
I want to lock them up because I KNOW they did the wrong thing.
And you honestly think there's a way around that? Believing is no substitute for knowing.
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We judge those in our society by the ethics, rules and morals that our society has. If we had a time machine, it would be wrong to go back to 1600 AD and arrest slave traders, because by the ethics of their society, they weren't doing something wrong. Now that society changed to the point where slavery was seen as illegal and imoral. Then such people would be guilty of a crime. How can we say that slavery has been always evil when past generations saw it as just and right? They were no more correct than we are today. Every society judges it's own people by it's own ethics and morals. What we should not do is try and impose these ethics and morals on past generations. They had their set of rules, we have ours. Neither one is superiour to the other.
Then why should we work to change them?
However, given that we have absolutely nothing else to judge by, we just use the best we have, which is the beliefs of the greater part of society. Well I can see where you're coming from, but I dont agree.
I still think it makes it impossible to condemn anything. How do you know that in future years the world will look back upon the current Christian persecution of homosexuals and say thankyou? You dont really, you just fight for what you think is right. You cant even say why it is right, other than thats your opinion.
I just dont like it.