Consider the following facts about the average, philosophically untrained moral relativist: (1.1) The average moral relativist denies the existence of “absolute moral truths.” (1.2) The average moral relativist often expresses her commitment to moral relativism with slogans like ‘What’s true (or right) for you may not be what’s true (or right) for me’ or ‘What’s true (or right) for your culture may not be what’s true (or right) for my culture.’ (1.3) The average moral relativist endorses relativistic views of morality (...) without endorsing relativistic views about science or mathematics. (1.4) The average moral relativist takes moral relativism to be non-relatively true and does not think there is anything contradictory about doing so. (1.5) The average moral relativist adopts an egalitarian attitude toward a wide range of moral values, practices and beliefs, claiming they are all equally legitimate or correct. (1.6) The average moral relativist often admonishes others to be more tolerant of those who engage in alternative ethical practices and to refrain from making negative moral judgments about them. (1.7) The average moral relativist sometimes makes negative moral judgments about the behavior of others—e.g., by harshly judging moral absolutists to be intolerant—but is less inclined to do so when the relativist’s metaethical views are salient in a context of judgment. (1.8) The average moral relativist takes anthropological evidence concerning the worldwide diversity of ethical views and practices to support moral relativism. (shrink)

The present essay offers a sketch of a philosophy of value, what I shall here refer to as ‘ethical instrumentalism.’ My primary aim is to say just what this view involves and what its commitments are. In the course of doing so, I find it necessary to distinguish this view from another with which it shares a common basis and which, in reference to its most influential proponent, I refer to as ‘Humeanism.’ A second, more general, aim is to make (...) plausible the idea that, given the common basis, ethical instrumentalism provides a more compelling picture of the philosophy of value than Humeanism does. (shrink)

This essay juxtaposes the position in metaethics defended, expressivism with quasirealistic trimmings, with the ancient problem of relativism. It argues that, perhaps surprisingly, there is less of a problem of normative truth on this approach than on others. Because ethics is not in the business of representing aspects of the world, there is no way to argue for a plurality of moral truths, simply from the existence of a plurality of moral opinions. The essay also argues that other approaches, which (...) superficially seem better adapted to defending robust and substantive conceptions of moral truth, in fact face more danger from the threat of relativism. This is particularly so in the case of 'secondary quality' or 'response-dependent' approaches, but also in the case of certain kinds of constructivism. (shrink)

The movement to respect culturaldiversity, known as multiculturalism, poses a dauntingchallenge to healthcare ethics. Can we construct adefensible passage from the fact of culturaldifferences to any claims regarding morality? Or doesmulticulturalism lead to ethical relativism? Macklinargues that, in view of a leading distinction betweenuniversalism in ethics and moral absolutism, the onlyreasonable passage avoids both absolutism andrelativism. She presents a strong case againstethical relativism and its pernicious consequences forcross-cultural issues in healthcare. She alsoprovides sound criteria for the assessment of aculture's moral (...) progress. (shrink)

Moral relativism provides a compelling explanation of linguistic data involving ordinary moral expressions like 'right' and 'wrong'. But it is a very radical view. Because relativism relativizes sentence truth to contexts of assessment it forces us to revise standard linguistic theory. If, however, no competing theory explains all of the evidence, perhaps it is time for a paradigm shift. However, I argue that a version of moral contextualism can account for the same data as relativism without relativizing sentence truth to (...) contexts of assessment. This version of moral contextualism is thus preferable to relativism on methodological grounds. (shrink)

Moral relativism is an attractive position, but also one that it is difficult to formulate. In this paper, we propose an alternative way of formulating moral relativism that locates the relativity of morality in the property that makes moral claims true. Such an approach, we believe, has significant advantages over other possible ways of formulating moral relativism. We conclude by considering a few problems such a position might face.

The scholars who defend or dispute moral relativism, the idea that a moral principle cannot be applied to people whose culture does not accept it, have concerned themselves with either the philosophical or anthropological aspects of relativism. This study, shows that in order to arrive at a definitive appraisal of moral relativism, it is necessary to understand and investigate both its anthropological and philosophical aspects. Carefully examining the arguments for and against moral relativism, Cook exposes not only that anthropologists have (...) failed in their attempt to support relativism with evidence of cultural differences, but that moral absolutists have been equally unsuccessful in their attempts to refute it. He argues that these conflicting positions are both guilty of an artificial and unrealistic view of morality and proposes a more subtle and complex account of morality. (shrink)

In this article I ask how moral relativism applies to the analysis of responsibility for mass crime. The focus is on the critical reading of two influential relativist attempts to offer a theoretically consistent response to the challenges imposed by extreme criminal practices. First, I explore Gilbert Harman’s analytical effort to conceptualize the reach of moral discourse. According to Harman, mass crime creates a contextually specific relationship to which moral judgments do not apply any more. Second, I analyze the inability (...) thesis, which claims that the agents of mass crime are not able to distinguish between right and wrong. Richard Arneson, Michael Zimmerman and Geoffrey Scarre do not deny the moral wrongness of crime. However, having introduced the claim of authenticity as a specific feature of the inability thesis, they maintain that killers are not responsible. I argue that these positions do not hold. The relativist failure to properly conceptualize responsibility for mass crime follows from the mistaken view of moral autonomy, which then leads to the erroneous explanation of the establishment, authority and justification of moral judgments. (shrink)

In this article I set out a reason for believing in a form of metaethical relativism. In rough terms, the reason is this: a widely held thesis, internalism, tells us that to accept (sincerely assert, believe, etc.) a moral judgment logically requires having a motivating reason. Since the connection is logical, or conceptual, it must be explained by a theory of what it is to accept a moral claim. I argue that the internalist feature of moral expressions can best be (...) explained by my version of moral relativism, which I call "speaker relativism.". (shrink)

Among the many virtues of Facts, Values and Norms, is the articulation of an especially subtle and detailed form of naturalistic value realism. The theory aspires to vindicate the objective purport of value discourse while granting, indeed insisting, that value is subjective in important respects. Evaluative thought and inquiry are understood to be continuous with empirical inquiry in the human sciences, so that ethical and evaluative conclusions can ultimately be defended on a posteriori grounds. Railton argues that talk of what (...) is good for a person, of what is morally right and morally valuable, and perhaps even of what is beautiful, may be shown to concern evaluative facts that are part of the natural world—a mind-independent world that is causally responsible for our experience. Yet each of these forms of value, he thinks, depends in essential ways on subjects who value them. They depend, that is, upon the existence of beings from whose subjective points of view things can matter; because a world without a locus of valuing or concern would be a world in which nothing mattered. One task Railton sets himself is to develop an understanding of the distinct respects in which value can be at once objective and subjective that could unseat the sort of skepticism about objective value that has seemed to many the inevitable upshot of a sober, naturalistic view of human life and thought: “a dark unease over what sort of thing value is and how it might find a place in the world” (86). While I find much to agree with and still more to admire in these excellent essays, I confine my attention here to an area where I have some misgivings. I want to explore the puzzling category that Railton calls “moral value,” and try to understand how the balance between subjectivity and objectivity is supposed to be achieved in that particular case. For this reason, and because they have not yet received the widespread attention.. (shrink)

The idea that normative statements implicitly refer to standards has been around for quite some time. It is usually defended by normative antirealists, who tend to be attracted to Humean theories of reasons. But this is an awkward combination: 'A ought to X' entails that there are reasons for A to X, and 'A ought to X all things considered' entails that the balance of reasons favours X-ing. If the standards implicitly referred to are not those of the agent, then (...) why would these entailments hold? After all, Humeanism says that 'A has a reason to X' is true if and only if A has some desire which is furthered by X-ing. In this paper, I develop a standard-relational theory of 'ought' and a non-Humean theory of reasons (oughtism). Together, they explain why 'A ought to X' entails not only that there are reasons for A to X, but also that the balance of reasons favours X-ing. The latter explanation depends on a theory of weight, in which the weight of a reason depends on the position of a rule (standard) in an order of priorities. The theories are truth-conditional, but do not require objective normative facts for the truth of 'ought' judgments and judgments about reasons. (shrink)

As long as there is a language for these possibilities, the book argues, an individual can see ethics as culturally based without compromising his or her own ...

Recently a number of writers have argued that a new form of relativism involves a form of semantic context-dependence which helps it escape the perhaps most common objection to ordinary contextualism; that it cannot accommodate our intuitions about disagreement. I argue: (i) In order to evaluate this claim we have to pay closer attention to the nature of our intuitions about disagreement. (ii) We have different such intuitions concerning different questions: we have more stable disagreement intuitions about moral disputes than (...) about, say, disputes about matters of taste. (iii) The new form of relativism does not vindicate the stable intuitions about disagreement. (iv) It does a better job explaining the unstable intuitions than contextualism. But, pace some relativists, it is not clear that assertion-truth rather than just proposition-truth has to be relativized to accomplish this. (shrink)

Metaethical relativists sometimes use an interesting analogy with relativism in physics to defend their view. In this article I comment on Erler’s discussion of this analogy and take the discussion further into methodological matters that it raises. I argue that Erler misplaces the analogy in the dialectic between relativists and absolutists: the analogy cannot be dismissed by simply pointing to the fact that we have absolutist intuitions – this is exactly the kind of objection the analogy is supposed to be (...) a defence against. To decide if the analogy works we need to answer the following two questions: (i) Why does it work to say that people refer to relative physical properties (like simultaneity, mass and motion) even though they intend to speak about absolute physical properties? And (ii) does the answer carry over to the moral case? I argue for a specific answer to (i), and argue that it gives us reason to answer (ii) in the negative – so the analogy does not hold. However, looking at the issue more closely also raises questions about a fundamental assumption in metaethical discussion: perhaps we cannot assume that one single analysis holds for everyone’s moral judgments. (shrink)

This dissertation investigates the plausibility of metaethical relativism, or more specifically, what I call “moral truth-value relativism”: the idea that the truth of a moral statement or belief depends on who utters or has it, or who assesses it. According to the most prevalent variants of this view in philosophical literature – “standard relativism” – the truth-values are relative to people’s moralities, often understood as some subset of their affective or desirelike attitudes. Standard relativism has two main contenders: absolutism – (...) the view that the truth-values of moral statements and beliefs do not vary in that way – and non-cognitivism – the view that moral judgements do not have truth-values, since they express affective or desire-like attitudes rather than beliefs. Almost the entire dissertation concerns the plausibility of standard relativism in contrast to absolutism. Part 1 examines first the two main arguments for standard relativism: that it accounts for the connection between moral judgements and motivation (chapter 2), and for the prevalence of diversity of moral opinion (chapter 3). Then the most common objection is considered: that it is inconsistent with the existence of genuine moral disagreements (chapter 4). I argue that these arguments are inconclusive. Both relativism and absolutism can account for the features discussed. Part 2 focuses on the fact that different people have different strongly held intuitions about the relative or absolute nature of morality. I argue that given a common methodological approach in philosophy and metaethics, which takes such intuitions as evidence of correct analyses, this difference in intuitions suggests that neither a relativist nor absolutist analysis can be correct for everyone’s moral judgements. I argue that this result holds both given semantic internalism (chapter 6) and given semantic externalism (chapter 7). To get one single analysis of everyone’s moral judgements we would have to abandon the intuitionbased methodology. In chapter 8, however, I argue that we can maintain this methodology if we accept analysis pluralism, the view that different analyses hold for different people’s moral judgements. (shrink)

Bernard Williams is a sceptic about the objectivity of moral value, embracing instead a qualified moral relativism—the ‘relativism of distance’. His attitude to blame too is in part sceptical (he thought it often involved a certain ‘fantasy’). I will argue that the relativism of distance is unconvincing, even incoherent; but also that it is detachable from the rest of Williams's moral philosophy. I will then go on to propose an entirely localized thesis I call the relativism of blame, which says (...) that when an agent's moral shortcomings by our lights are a matter of their living according to the moral thinking of their day, judgements of blame are out of order. Finally, I will propose a form of moral judgement we may sometimes quite properly direct towards historically distant agents when blame is inappropriate—moral-epistemic disappointment. Together these two proposals may help release us from the grip of the idea that moral appraisal always involves the potential applicability of blame, and so from a key source of the relativist idea that moral appraisal is inappropriate over distance. (shrink)

Machine generated contents note: Editor's Introduction -- Part I: Characterizing Relativism -- Part II: Truth and Language -- Part III: Epistemic Relativism -- Part IV: Moral Relativism -- Part V: Relativism in the Philosophy of Science -- Part VI: Logical, Mathematical, and Ontological Relativism.

I argue that evolutionary strategies of kin selection and game-theoretic reciprocity are apt to generate agent-centered and agent- neutral moral intuitions, respectively. Such intuitions are the building blocks of moral theories, resulting in a fundamental schism between agent-centered theories on the one hand and agent-neutral theories on the other. An agent-neutral moral theory is one according to which everyone has the same duties and moral aims, no matter what their personal interests or interpersonal relationships. Agent-centered moral theories deny this and (...) include at least some prescriptions that include ineliminable indexicals. I argue that there are no rational means of bridging the gap between the two types of theories; nevertheless this does not necessitate skepticism about the moral—we might instead opt for an ethical relativism in which the truth of moral statements is relativized to the perspective of moral theories on either side of the schism. Such a relativism does not mean that any ethical theory is as good as any other; some cannot be held in reflective equilibrium, and even among those that can, there may well be pragmatic reasons that motivate the selection of one theory over another. But if no sort of relativism is deemed acceptable, then it is hard to avoid moral skepticism. (shrink)

Explaining Value is a selection of the best of Gilbert Harman's shorter writings in moral philosophy. The thirteen essays are divided into four sections, which focus in turn on moral relativism, values and valuing, character traits and virtue ethics, and ways of explaining aspects of morality. Harman's distinctive approach to moral philosophy has provoked much interest; this volume offers a fascinating conspectus of his most important work in the area.

Do moral questions have objective answers? In this great debate, Gilbert Harman explains and argues for relativism, emotivism, and moral scepticism.

It is argued that anthropologists become moral relativists by mistake typically in two ways: (1) by confusing moral with factual discourse (dubbed the Normativist Fallacy) which derives in turn from a failure to distinguish adequately between direct and indirect discourse in the description of moral systems and preferences; or (2) by confusing definitive with hypothetical statements in descriptive ethics (the Definitivist Fallacy). Two representative arguments illustrating these errors are analyzed and some morals drawn from the results regarding the status of (...) relativist arguments in descriptive ethics and the prerogatives of applied anthropologists. (shrink)

If a native of India asserts "Killing cattle is wrong" and a Nebraskan asserts "Killing cattle is not wrong", and both judgments agree with their respective moralities and both moralities are internally consistent, then the moral relativist says both judgments are fully correct. At this point relativism bifurcates. One branch which we call content relativism denies that the two people are contradicting each other. The idea is that the content of a moral judgment is a function of the overall moral (...) point of view from which it proceeds. The second branch which we call truth value relativism affirms that the two judgments are contradictory. Truth value relativism appears to be logically incoherent. How can contradictory judgments be fully correct? For though there will be a sense of correctness in which each judgment is correct — namely by that of being correct relative to the morality relative to which each was expressed — if contradictory, the judgments cannot both be true, and thus cannot both be correct in this most basic sense of correctness. We defend truth value relativism against this sort of charge of logical incoherence by showing it can be accommodated by the existing semantical metatheories of deontic logic. Having done this we go on to argue that truth value relativism is the best version of relativism. (shrink)

Let C1 and C2 be distinct moral codes formulated in English. Let C1 contain a norm N and C2 its negation. The paper construes the moral relativist as saying that if both codes are consistent, then, in the strongest sense of correctness applicable to moral norms, they are also both correct in the sense that they contain only correct moral norms. If we believe that the physical statements of English are true (false) in English, we will reject an analogous statement (...) made of physical theories. We will hold that the strongest sense of correctness applicable to physical statements is not system-relative. The moral relativist denies that there is any corresponding sense of correctness applicable to moral norms. That is, there is no notion of moral correctness that is not system-dependent. It is argued that, while the position may not be true, there is not a strictly logical basis for refuting it. (shrink)

This paper is a reply to Simon Blackburn's 'Is Objective Moral Justification Possible on a Quasi-realist Foundation?' Inquiry 42 (1999), pp. 213-28. Blackburn attempts to show how his version of non-cognitivism - quasi-realist projectivism - can evade the threat of ethical relativism, the thought that all ways of living are as ethically good as each other and every ethical judgment is as ethically true as any other. He further attempts to show that his position is superior in this respect (...) to, amongst other accounts, sensibility theory (or 'secondary quality' theory). According to Blackburn, sensibility theory succumbs easily to the relativistic challenge because it depends on some 'substantive' notion of truth. It is agreed with Blackburn that the threat of relativism is less of a threat to him than at first appears, although I think that it retains some menace, but not agreed that sensibility theorists cannot also counter the threat of relativism (although, again, ethical relativism retains some menace in the face of the sensibility theorist's reply). The point is that the threat of ethical relativism depends less on truth than Blackburn supposes. Thus sensibility theorists can counter ethical relativism in much the same way that quasi-realist projectivists can. (shrink)

MacIntyre’s critique of liberalism relies crucially on a distinctive moral particularism, for which morality and rationality are fundamentally tradition-constituted. In light of this, some have detected in his work a moral relativism, radically in tension with his endorsement of a Thomist universalism. I dispute this reading, arguing instead that MacIntyre is a consistent universalist who pays due attention to the moral-epistemic importance of traditions. Analysing his teleological understanding of rational enquiry, I argue that this approach shows how it is possible, (...) dialectically, to reconcile the particularity of our starting-points with the assertion of universal truths. What MacIntyre offers, I contend, is a moral universalism that avoids the pitfalls of its liberal counterpart, and invites an important meta-theoretical shift with respect to the scope for toleration and social critique and toleration in contemporary pluralist society. (shrink)

I defend a form of moral relativism that draws upon value pluralism and incommensurability.

Ethical relativism is the thesis that ethical principles or judgments are relative to the individual or culture. When stated so vaguely relativism is embraced by numerous lay persons and a sizeable contingent of philosophers. Other philosophers, however, find the thesis patently false, even wonder how anyone could seriously entertain it. Both factions are on to something, yet both miss something significant as well. Those who whole-heartedly embrace relativism note salient respects in which ethics is relative, yet erroneously infer that ethical (...) values are noxiously subjective. Those who reject relativism do so because they think ethics is subject to rational scrutiny, that moral views can be correct or incorrect. But in rejecting objectionable features of relativism they overlook significant yet non-pernicious ways in which ethics is relative. (shrink)

Moral relativism is often regarded as both fatally flawed and incompatible with liberalism. This book aims to show why such criticism is misconceived. First, it argues that relativism provides a plausible account of moral justification. Drawing on the contemporary relatavist and universalist analyses of thinkers such as Harman, Nagel and Habermas, it develops an alternative account of coherence relativism.

Much recent work in meta-ethics and ethical theory has drawn extensively on claims about moral psychology. The goal of this paper is to provide a broad overview of some of these claims and the implications that certain philosophers are taking them to have for the plausibility of moral relativism.

Critics of Rorty’s views on truth, objectivity, and value often take them to imply some form of untenable relativism.1 While it would be worthwhile to investigate whether Rorty is in fact committed to what might be called global relativism, or relativism in most if not all domains of investigation, for our purposes in this paper we must proceed more selectively. By focusing on Rorty’s view of moral objectivity, we can hopefully shed some new light on the now stale charge of (...) Rortian relativism. In the process, we can also go quite a long way towards articulating what a Rortian approach to meta-ethics might look like. (shrink)

Moral relativism comes in many forms. Most discussed of these are metaethical ideas that make claim to some form of relativity regarding the truth, meaning and/or knowledge of moral judgements. Notwithstanding the vast differences that exist between more precise versions of metaethical relativism (MR), they all have one basic feature in common: A moral judgement can only be true (or have a certain meaning, or be known) relative to a person or some group of persons. However, a moral judgement to (...) which this applies need not be true (or have the same meaning or be known) relative to some other person or group of persons. This, in turn, is allegedly due to the actual existence or possibility of substantial differences between people when it comes to moral opinions, language and general belief systems. Obviously, such ideas tell us nothing about what is right or wrong, good or bad (not even relatively so) – in itself they lack all normative content. However, in philosophical discussions they are not seldom connected to normative ideas that in a similar manner position themselves with regard to the fact that people actually do or may have very different ways of thinking about moral matters and the world in general. (shrink)

I consider here the issue of whether and to what extent moral truths are absolute. My aim is to raise some new considerations in favor of moral relativism: the thesis that some moral statements can vary in truth-value depending on the moral standards at issue.1 2 This paper has three major components. First, I describe a new puzzle concerning the possibility of moral knowledge in light of expert disagreement. I argue that the best solution to this puzzle requires moral relativism. (...) Second, I develop a notion of a moral standard that incorporates recent developments in moral psychology, including work by.. (shrink)

It has often been suggested that people's ordinary understanding of morality involves a belief in objective moral truths and a rejection of moral relativism. The results of six studies call this claim into question. Participants did offer apparently objectivist moral intuitions when considering individuals from their own culture, but they offered increasingly relativist intuitions considering individuals from increasingly different cultures or ways of life. The authors hypothesize that people do not have a fixed commitment to moral objectivism but instead tend (...) to adopt different views depending on the degree to which they consider radically different perspectives on moral questions. (shrink)

Nicholas Sturgeon has claimed that moral explanations constitute one area of disagreement between moral realists and noncognitivists. He claims that the correctness of such explanation is consistent with moral realism but not with noncognitivism. Does this difference characterize all other anti-realist views. This paper argues that it does not. Moral relativism is a distinct anti-realist view. And the correctness of moral explanation is consistent with moral relativism.

The fundamental thought of moral relativism is set out as follows: moral criteria, derived from overall moral points of view, are used to derive particular moral judgments. Thus such a judgment might be correct relative to one overall moral point of view and incorrect relative to another. The evaluation of an overall moral point of view does not involve the application of moral criteria. Rather, the evaluation of a morality takes us outside the province of morality. The result of sharpening (...) this view is a doctrine called system relativism. System relativism is contrasted with other conceptions of moral relativism that have recently been propounded. It is argued that system relativism is the most defensible version. (shrink)

Relativistic theories and arguments are fairly common in legal thinking. A case in point is Stanley Fish's theory of interpretation, which applies to statutes and constitutions as well as to novels and poems. Fish holds, inter alia, (i) that an interpretation of a statute, a poem, or some other text can be true or valid only in light of the interpretive strategies that define an interpretive community, and (ii) that no set of interpretive strategies (and therefore no interpretation) is truer (...) or more valid than any other. In this article, I discuss these claims critically and argue that the very idea of an interpretive community is more or less unintelligible, and that in any case Fish's theory is self-refuting. I begin with a few words about the methods and techniques of statutory interpretation(Section 2). I proceed by introducing Fish's theory of interpretation, giving special consideration to some difficulties in Fish's account of the concept of an interpretive community (Sections 3-4). I then introduce two types of relativism, cognitive and moral (Section 5), and argue that Fish's theory asserts cognitive relativism in the shape of conceptual relativism and relativism about truth (Section 6). Having done that, I consider Donald Davidson's well-known objection to alternative conceptual schemes (Section 7) as well as the popular charge that relativism about truth is self-refuting (Section 8). (shrink)

Most agree that when it comes to so-called 'first-order' normative ethics and political philosophy, constructivist views are a powerful family of positions. When it comes to metaethics, however, there is serious disagreement about what, if anything, constructivism has to contribute. In this paper I argue that constructivist views in ethics include not just a family of substantive normative positions, but also a distinct and highly attractive metaethical view. I argue that the widely accepted 'proceduralist characterization' of constructivism in ethics is (...) inadequate, and I propose what I call the 'practical standpoint characterization' in its place. I then offer a general taxonomy of constructivist positions in ethics. Since constructivism's standing as a family of substantive normative positions is relatively uncontested, I devote the remainder of the paper to addressing skeptics' worries about the distinctiveness of constructivism understood as a metaethical view. I compare and contrast constructivism with three other standard metaethical positions with which it is often confused or mistakenly thought to be compatible: realism; naturalist reductions in terms of an ideal response; and expressivism. In discussing the contrast with expressivism, I explain the sense in which, according to the constructivist, the distinction between substantive normative ethics and metaethics breaks down. I conclude by distinguishing between two importantly different debates about the mind-dependence of value. I argue that a failure to make this distinction is part of what explains why the possibility of constructivism as a metaethical view is often overlooked. (shrink)

This book provides a sophisticated analysis of various types of moral relativism, showing how arguments both for and against them fail to account for the basic intuitions such theories were inteded to address. Streiffer then constructs a compelling alternative model of reasons for acting which avoids the pitfalls of theories earlier discussed.

Moral relativism comes in many varieties. One is a moral doctrine, according to which we ought to respect other cultures, and allow them to solve moral problems as they see fit. I will say nothing about this kind of moral relativism in the present context. Another kind of moral relativism is semantic moral relativism, according to which, when we pass moral judgements, we make an implicit reference to some system of morality (our own). According to this kind of moral relativism, (...) when I say that a certain action is right, my statement is elliptic. What I am really saying is that, according to the system of morality in my culture, this action is right. I will reject this kind of relativism. According to yet another kind of moral relativism, which we may call epistemic, it is possible that, when one person (belonging to one culture) makes a certain moral judgement, such as that this action is right, and another person (belong to another culture) makes the judgement that the very same action is wrong, they may have just as good reasons for their respective judgements; it is even possible that, were they fully informed about all the facts, equally imaginative, and so forth, they would still hold on to their respective (conflicting) judgements. They are each fully justified in their belief in conflicting judgements. I will comment on this form of moral relativism in passing. Finally, however, there is a kind of moral relativism we could call ontological, according to which, when two persons pass conflicting moral verdicts on a certain action, they may both be right. The explanation is that they make their judgements from the perspective of different, socially constructed, moral universes. So while it is true in the first person's moral universe that a certain action is right, it is true in the second person's moral universe that the very same action is wrong. I explain and defend this version of ontological moral relativism. (shrink)

Rampant moral relativism is widely decried as the leading source of the degeneracy of modern life.1 Though I proudly count myself a relativist, I rather doubt that relativism has anything like the cultural influence that its most ardent critics fearfully attribute to it. Much of what gets criticized under the rubric of relativism is often really no such thing. Relativists need not be hedonists, egoists, nihilists or even moral skeptics. Moreover, when it comes to the upper reaches of our intellectual (...) culture, relativism is more often dismissed than defended.2 I don’t deny that in certain literary corners of academe, relativism retains a fashionable post-modern cache.3 But in more sober philosophical circles, the catalog of ills from which relativism is widely thought to suffer is impressive.4 When taken as a characterization of the nature of moral discourse and moral argument, relativism is often thought to be descriptively inadequate. Contra the relativist, we do not treat moral disputes as rationally irresolvable. We do not tolerate all alternative moral “codes” as equally valid. Relativism may be true of merely cultural norms or practices. But morality has a felt universality that makes it quite different in character from a system of merely cultural norms or practices. In the face of morally abhorrent practices, we don’t simply shrug our shoulders and say that while the relevant practices may be wrong for us, they are alright for them. Relativism is sometimes even said to be self-undermining. It makes the very thing it purports to explain – the possibility of rationally intractable disagreements – impossible in the first place. Partly because of its supposedly self-undermining character, relativism is sometimes accused of being a strictly incredible doctrine. Those who profess to be relativists must, if this is true, either be insincere, confused, or self-deceived. Though someone might well sincerely hold the mistaken second-order belief that she believes that she believes that relativism is true, no one, in his or her deepest heart of hearts, sincerely, non selfdeceptively and informedly believes that relativism is true.. (shrink)

Moral relativism is often rejected on grounds that it is either descriptively inadequate, at best, or self-defeating, at worst. In this essay, I swim against the predominant anti-relativistic philosophical tide. My minimal aim is to show that relativism is neither descriptively inadequate nor self-defeating. My maximal aim is to outline the beginnings of an argument that relativism is a truth resting on deep facts about the human normative predicament. And I shall suggest that far from being a source of cultural (...) degeneracy, the fact of relativism has the potential to ground a culture that is deeply life-affirming. My argument against the twin charges of descriptive inadequacy and self-defeat turns on a distinction between tolerant and intolerant relativism. I concede that many of the standard arguments against relativism do have force against tolerant relativism. But against intolerant relativism, those arguments are entirely unavailing. The crucial difference between the tolerant and intolerant relativist is that although the intolerant relativist agrees with the tolerant relativist that norms are relative, she insists that agents are sometimes entitled to hold others to norms by which they are not bound. I shall argue that just because the intolerant relativist allows that we are sometimes entitled to hold others to norms by which we are bound but they are not, she is able to escape both the charge of descriptive inadequacy and the charge of self-defeat. In particular, I shall show that the intolerant relativist has a coherent and satisfying account of the nature of moral disagreement and moral argument. Establishing the ultimate truth of relativism, however, would take more than showing that one form of relativism escapes certain standard arguments against relativism. Though I do not pretend to conclusively discharge the burden of showing that relativism is true in the space of this essay, I do sketch the beginnings of an account of what I call the bindingness of norms that has intolerant relativism as more or less straight-forward downstream consequence. If there are independent grounds for accepting that account of bindingness, then there are independent grounds for accepting intolerant moral relativism. (shrink)

According to agent relativism, each person's moral requirements are relative to her desires or interests. That is, whether a person morally ought to depends on what interests or desires she has. Some philosophers charge that the main argument for agent relativism trades on an ambiguity –specifically, an ambiguity in ``reason,'' ``reasonfor action,'' or a kindred term. This charge has been common, and widely thought to damage the case for agent relativism, since its appearance, in 1958, in a now classic paper (...) by William Frankena. In what follows I examine the charge in detail, showing that insofar as it aims to discredit the argument for agent relativism, it fails in its purpose. (shrink)

The key problem for normative (or moral) cultural relativism arises as soon as we try to formulate it. It resists formulations that are (1) clear, precise, and intelligible; (2) plausible enough to warrant serious attention; and (3) faithful to the aims of leading cultural relativists, one such aim being to produce an important alternative to moral universalism. Meeting one or two of these conditions is easy; meeting all three is not. I discuss twenty-four candidates for the label "cultural relativism," showing (...) that not one meets all three conditions. In the end I conclude that cultural relativists have produced nothing that threatens universalism. (shrink)

Is it possible to recognize the limits of rationality, and thus to embrace moral pluralism, without embracing moral relativism? My answer is yes; nevertheless, certain anti-foundational positions, both recent and ancient, take a cynical stance toward the possibility of any critical moral judgment, and as such, must be regarded as relativistic.1 It is such cynicism, I argue, whether openly announced or unknowingly implied, that marks the distinction between relativism and pluralism.2 The danger of this cynicism is not so much that (...) it renders the categorical acceptance of a particular moral view unattainable, but that it renders categorical condemnation of any particular position (or action) impossible.3 Two .. (shrink)

Moral relativism is the doctrine that morality may vary from culture to culture. Given the difficulty of saying when two individuals belong to the same culture it can be taken in more or less radical forms. In its least radical form it means nothing more than that, although morality is fixed and universal for human beings, Martian morality may be different. In its most radical form it implies that each person has his own morality which may vary from one individual (...) to another and from one moment to the next. (shrink)

Some philosophers have maintained that even if John R. Searle’s attempted derivation of an evaluative proposition from purely descriptive premises is successful, moral ought would not have been derived. Searle agrees. I will argue that if Searle has successfully derived “ought,” then, based on various approaches taken towards the content of “morality,” this is moral ought. I will also trace out some of the benefits of a successful derivation of moral ought in relation to natural law ethics. I sketch a (...) possible derivation of moral obligations based on one of the basic goods in natural law ethics (i.e., friendship) that resembles Searle’s attempted derivation of an individual’s obligation to keep her promise to someone else. I also sketch a possible derivation of moral obligations based on another of the basic goods in natural law ethics – knowledge. This derivation may not parallel Searle’s attempted derivation as closely as the derivations based on friendship, but it seems to at least involve the derivation of moral obligations from all non-moral premises. (shrink)

Data about attitude reports provide some of the most interesting arguments for, and against, various theses of semantic relativism. This paper is a short survey of three such arguments. First, I’ll argue (against recent work by von Fintel and Gillies) that relativists can explain the behaviour of relativistic terms in factive attitude reports. Second, I’ll argue (against Glanzberg) that looking at attitude reports suggests that relativists have a more plausible story to tell than contextualists about the division of labour between (...) semantics and meta-semantics. Finally, I’ll offer a new argument for invariantism (i.e. against both relativism and contextualism) about moral terms. The argument will turn on the observation that the behaviour of normative terms in factive and non-factive attitude reports is quite unlike the behaviour of any other plausibly context-sensitive term. Before that, I’ll start with some taxonomy, just so as it’s clear what the intended conclusions below are supposed to be. (shrink)

Moral disagreement has long been thought to create serious problems for certain views in metaethics. More specifically, moral disagreement has been thought to pose problems for any metaethical view that rejects relativism—that is, for any view that implies that whenever two thinkers disagree about a moral question, at least one of those thinkers’ beliefs about the question is not correct. In this essay, I shall outline a solution to one of these problems. As I shall argue, it turns out in (...) the end that this problem is not really a special problem about moral disagreement at all: it is a general problem about disagreement as such. For this reason, in the later sections of this essay, I shall turn to some general questions in epistemology, about the epistemic significance of disagreement. (shrink)

David B. Wong proposes that there can be a plurality of true moralities, moralities that exist across different traditions and cultures, all of which address facets of the same problem: how we are to live well together. Wong examines a wide array of positions and texts within the Western canon as well as in Chinese philosophy, and draws on philosophy, psychology, evolutionary theory, history, and literature, to make a case for the importance of pluralism in moral life, and to establish (...) the virtues of acceptance and accommodation. Wong's point is that there is no single value or principle or ordering of values and principles that offers a uniquely true path for human living, but variations according to different contexts that carry within them a common core of human values. We should thus be modest about our own morality, learn from other approaches, and accommodate different practices in our pluralistic society. (shrink)

This paper is a critical analysis of Tristram Engelhardt''s attempts to avoid unrestricted nihilism and relativism. The focus of attention is his recent book, The Foundations of Bioethics (Oxford University Press, 1996). No substantive or content-full bioethics (e.g., that of Roman Catholicism or the Samurai) has an intersubjectively verifiable and universally binding foundation, Engelhardt thinks, for unaided secular reason cannot show that any particular substantive morality (or moral code) is correct. He thus seems to be committed to either nihilism or (...) relativism. The first is the view that there is not even one true or valid moral code, and the second is the view that there is a plurality of true or valid moral codes. However, Engelhardt rejects both nihilism and relativism, at least in unrestricted form. Strictly speaking, he himself is a universalist, someone who believes that there is a single true moral code. Two argumentative strategies are employed by him to fend off unconstrained nihilism and relativism. The first argues that although all attempts to establish a content-full morality on the basis of secular reason fail, secular reason can still establish a content-less, purely procedural morality. Although not content-full and incapable of providing positive direction in life, much less a meaning of life, such a morality does limit the range of relativism and nihilism. The second argues that there is a single true, content-full morality. Grace and revelation, however, are needed to make it available to us; secular reason alone is not up to the task. This second line of argument is not pursued in The Foundations at any length, but it does crop up at times, and if it is sound, nihilism and relativism can be much more thoroughly routed than the first line of argument has it.Engelhardt''s position and argumentative strategies are exposed at length and accorded a detailed critical examination. In the end, it is concluded that neither strategy will do, and that Engelhardt is probably committed to some form of relativism. (shrink)

§1 To many in or on the edges of the Academy, ”Relativism” is a word with overtones of sinister iconoclasm, representing a kind of intellectual and ethical free-for-all in which the traditional investigative virtues of clarity, rigour, objectivity, consistency and the unbiased pursuit of truth are dismissed as illusory and the great scientific constructions of the last two hundred years, together with our deepest moral convictions, rated merely as ‘our way of seeing’ the world, more elaborate and organised but otherwise (...) on all fours with the cosmology and customs of primitive tribes. In his short book, Paul Boghossian aims to address, and to expose as bankrupt, the idea that there is even a coherent, let alone defensible philosophical stance about truth and knowledge that can underwrite these ‘pluralist’, or ‘postmodernist’ tendencies. But since it is crucial to his project that his style of discussion make it available to non-specialists, much of the recent more technical, less emotional debate within analytical philosophy about relativism’s renaissance as a particular form of semantic theory is passed over unmentioned. Part of my aim in what follows is to illustrate how Boghossian's discussion connects quite straightforwardly with relativism in its contemporary analytical philosophical livery—what I have elsewhere called New Age relativism1— and how some of his critical arguments may be presented in that setting. My main contentions will be, first, that when relativism about epistemic justification, and about morals, are couched in the currently canonical sort of form, they still remain in range of artillery that Boghossian positions in chapter 6 of his book; second, that there is evasive action that they can.. (shrink)