Phi202

Phi202 Moral Phil Wk3

What's wrong with relativisit meta-ethics?

We saw that relativists, nihilists and naive subjectivists all share the one background meta-ethics: no moral facts ever and above what people accept.

^^^^^^^^^^^^
prime ante-realist doctrine

They differ not just in their normative views but in the arguments they give for this Prime Anti-realist Doctrine.

Let's look at typical relativist arguments.

One argument goes as follows:

1. Moral codes differ considerably from group to group

Therefore, 2. There is no fact of the matter as to which moral code is correct.

Why would anyone think that this little argument is valid. Groups differ widely in non-moral statements they accept as true or false, just as much as in this case of moral statements. E.g "the Earth is flat." was subject to dispute and "evolution occurs" still is. No one much at least concludes thereby that there is no unrelativised fact of the matter as to whether the statements are true.

It is plausible that what is really going on here is that relativists are assuming the prime anti-realist doctrine that they claim to be arguing for. If there are no moral facts over and above what people accept then the only thing very like objectivity you can hope for is intersubjectivity, which is agreement as what to trust is true. So if we assume that there are no objective moral facts, lack of intersubjectivity as well becomes interesting. But this is not an argument for the assumptions - at beast it's an illustration of its consequences.

(Such illustrations can sometimes make a view plausible. You show people what the world looks like assuming your view and hope that they find it the best explanation of all the candidate views)

So the argument as it stands is not valud.

It's also arguable that the inference from 1 to 2 even if it were valid, would not be sound, as a general matter. I.e. it is arguable that genuine disagreement doesn't extend to all moral principles.

For one thing, there appear to be some principles that are defacto universally accepted, e.g don't kill friends for fun.

For another, some apparent disagreement may be over non-moral evaluations of what the situation we face is like, as opposed to bedrock moral principle. E.g. lobster example.


This is important because, even if the relativist were to concede that disagreement doesn't entail the lack of a fact of them after, he or she could than mount a fall back response which is that even if there is a fact of the matter our differences of moral principle are so grea tthat there is no prospect of recoving rationally any important moral statute. This fallback a form of what is sometimes describes as 'incommensurability'.