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Aug

2011

Rationally Speaking: On ethics, part I: Moral philosophy’s third way

rationallyspeaking.blogspot.com/...-part-i-moral-philosophys.html

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Ethics Absolutism Relativism Morality

The starting point for my discussion of what I will refer to as ethics’ “third way” is a recent thoughtful article published in The Stone, the New York Times’ philosophy blog. There, NYU philosopher Paul Boghossian does an excellent job at summarizing the perennial discussion between moral relativists and moral absolutists. Boghossian introduces an interesting contrast to make his readers think about the differences among moral absolutism, moral relativism, and nihilism. Consider first the ancient concept of witches. We (well, most of us) no longer believe that there are witches in the world, so we have dropped talk of witches altogether, engaging in what Boghossian calls “eliminativism” about witches (analogous, of course, to the much more debatable eliminativism in philosophy of mind proposed by Patricia and Paul Churchland).
Now think of Boghossian’s second example: Einstein’s theory of Special Relativity, which teaches us that there is no such thing as absolute space and time. That did not lead us to abandon the concepts of space and time, but rather to substitute relative forms of those concepts in our ways of thinking about the world. We can still all agree about a particular space-time point if we have already agreed to use a given frame of reference. Change the frame of reference and you’ll have to rethink that particular point in space-time.
9 more annotation(s)...
- As Boghossian puts it: “When we reject absolute moral facts is moral relativism the correct outcome or is it moral eliminativism (nihilism)?” Think about that one for a second before we proceed.
- There is no question that etiquette is not per se a moral absolute: if you are in a certain country and/or a particular type of company, action X (say, belching at the dinner table) will be frowned upon and cause offense, but in a different company or culture the same action X will be welcomed, indeed, even considered a required response to show your appreciation of what the locals have done for you.
- “our relativism about etiquette does not actually dispense with all absolute moral facts. Rather, we are relativists about etiquette in the sense that, with respect to a restricted range of issues (such as table manners and greetings), we take the correct absolute norm to be ‘we ought not, other things being equal, offend our hosts.’
- let’s recapitulate what Boghossian is saying: if you take the road to moral relativism you only have two choices, let’s call it Boghossian’s dilemma (in homage to the famous Euthyphro’s dilemma, which allowed Plato to dispense once and for all with the pernicious idea that gods are necessary for morality
- Either you go all the way down to moral nihilism, or you have to assent to some absolute standard with which to ground your (now local) relativism.
- Boghossian is quite right that what appears to be culturally relative is in turn the result of what seems to be a human cultural universal: don’t offend your hosts if you can avoid it. But of course one can imagine situations in which that universal does not apply, for instance and most trivially in the case of a non-social species of primates, where the very concept of “host” (of “social offense”) doesn’t compute.
- With the idea that morality is a human (and other relevantly similar beings’) phenomenon, so that to talk about universal morality makes precisely no sense. But human beings share certain (local to the species) attributes,*** such as preferring a long and healthy life to a nasty and short one, and it is those parameters of humanness that set the axioms of our moral thinking. Ethical reasoning, then, consists of what sort of rules and outcomes logically emerge from that particular set of assumptions. Just like a good mathematician would do, we pick the most promising axioms and work with them, but we acknowledge that sometimes the search gets stuck into unproductive corners of logical space and we go back and — cautiously — tweak the assumptions themselves and get back to work.
- * Moral absolutism: X is universally right / wrong.
  Indefensible because one cannot make coherent sense of what “universally” may possibly mean in this context.
- * Moral relativism: X is acceptable / non-acceptable practice within a particular culture at a particular historical moment.
  Inevitably leads to either sterile nihilism or to some sort of hidden absolutism.

Apr

2010

The Absolutists

The Absolutists
Some people are instinctively absolutist. If they do not know a person absolutely they claim they do not know that person at all -- as someone who worked for President Reagan said of him.

www.fsmitha.com/absolutes.htm

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Absolutism Fascism