Phi202

phi202 moral phil. wk2

I need to distinguish the various versions of relativism. Also there are various forms of subjectivism. There is an important distinction in part of the theory. So to argue against subjectivists you'll be using different arguments than you would if you were arguing against a relativist.

Normative Ethics vs. Meta-ethics.

A normative ethical theory makes or entails claims about how one should behave; it specifies certain behaviour and describes it as right or wrong. It prescribes norms - rules for behaviour. A normative theory at least partly seeks to influence behaviour.

Such a theory is about morality itself; morality is its subject matter. A meta-ethical theory is a theory not about morality itself, but about theories of morality. More specifically, a meta-ethical theory typically tells you what people mean by "right" and "wrong". It doesn't tell you what you ought to do; it tells you what people who tell you what to do mean by "ought". Such a theory is descriptive not normative. It describes meanings, it doesn't prescribe behaviour.

This explains why "meta". Any meta-theory is a theory about another theory. A meta-ethical theory is a theory about (what is meant in) an ethical theory. The subject-matter of a theory is sometimes known as its object. So a meta-ethical theory has no ethical theory as its object.

A little complication. When people say that a theory or claim is meta-ethical, they usually mean pure meta-ethical. If a meta-ethical theory describes a number of normative theories and then claims that one of them is true, the meta-ethical theory will have normative consequences and so will not be purely meta-ethical. A purely meta-ethical theory will describe what is meant by all the number of normative theories without choosing between them.

Let's now restate things int he following way:

A normative ethical theory involves specifying certain moral statements and advocating that we treat them as true. (Restated this way, a normative theory is about ethical statements, but is not purely meta-ethical because it's describing certain statements as true, or truthful, or true-ish.)

Moral Relativism/Nihilism/Subjectivism

These views are closely related and involve both a normative part and a meta-ethical part.

They all share the same basic meta-ethical outlook, differing slightly at the edges.

Nihilists - all moral statements are straightforwardly false or meaningless

Relativists - moral statements can be true, but only relativisedly. Uncontroversial non-moral example of a claim that can be true or false only relativisedly;

"sydney is near the Eiffel tower". True if you mean "...compared to how far it is from the Adnromeda Galaxy". False if you mean "... compared to how far it is from the Louvre". Is neither true nor false, but meaningless, if you mean "...full stop, unrelativisedly".

Relativists think that moral claims like "it is always wrong to fight, even in self-defense." True if you mean "...according to Amish standards." False if you mean "... according to Samurai Standards".

Neither if you mean "full stop, unrelativisedly". The idea is that the relativist statements answer to facts about what people accept, but the unrelativist claims are supposed to have no facts to answer to.

So the relativist takes the same background picture as the nihilist and shifts it around at the edges.