Until fairly recently, I thought I\u2019d met people who could be described as moral relativists.\u00a0 But I recently met someone who\u2019s made me wonder whether they were the real deal.<\/p>\n
The \u201crelativists\u201d I\u2019d met previously were, broadly, people who make the claim that moral statements do not have the same universal applicability as statements that we might make in respect of, say, maths or chemistry.\u00a0 Thus an appeal to something like fundamental human rights may not be an appeal to anything all that fundamental after all.\u00a0 This is a view with which I have a certain amount of sympathy, to be honest: the part of me that\u2019s read too much Marx and Nietzsche is open to the idea that what we take as basic morality may be simply a trick of the historical light.\u00a0 On the other hand, I do think that there\u2019re bits of moral philosophy that do have a passing resemblance to some aspects of mathematical reasoning, inasmuch as I think that there\u2019re certain rules concerning validity in deduction, analogy, and so on that do not depend on the particularities of a particular culture.\u00a0 The fact that these rules, when applied to the natural sciences, allow us to make (a) predictions about the world that are true, and (b) machines that work is evidence that there\u2019s something to them; and if there\u2019s something to them, their application in philosophy seems plausibly to be reliable.\u00a0 On this model, there\u2019re at least some elements of Western philosophy that have come to be dominant not just because of Western political hegemony, but because they\u2019re right<\/em> – or at worst less wrong<\/em> than our unexamined intuitions.\u00a0 That\u2019s why they stayed as part of Western philosophy, and we might expect that any coherent philosophy would settle on them sooner or later.\u00a0 And so there might \u2013 no more than might, admittedly, but might all the same \u2013 be moral \u201cquasi-facts\u201d: moral statements that have a universal validity not because of any realist appeals, but for the much more idealist reason that there\u2019re certain conclusions that follow inevitably from clear thinking. \u00a0Again, we might be much better at the negative whittling away of false claims than the positive assertion of true ones, but even that counts for something, and it’s at least truth-tracking.<\/p>\n One can accept this kind of relativism while still wholly endorsing the statements made by one\u2019s culture.\u00a0 So, for example, you might think that human rights aren\u2019t fundamental, but still be willing to campaign for their extension.\u00a0 By analogy, a football fan may admit that he\u2019s devoted to his team only because it represents the town where he grew up; but that won\u2019t stop him cheering for it.\u00a0 And you might even be able to produce not just reasons why<\/em> you believe this or that, but also reasons to<\/em> believe it \u2013 or, again, at least reasons to reject its negation.\u00a0 After all, even if there\u2019s no actual universal standard, it doesn\u2019t follow that neither is there buffoonery.<\/p>\n And this brings me to the relativist with whom I was speaking the other day. He took his relativism that step further.\u00a0 Not only did he deny that there was any universally valid moral claim; he refused to attempt to argue for his own views, on the grounds that there was no universal standard by which they could be assessed, and that therefore noone was entitled to try to influence others\u2019 behaviour.\u00a0 And, before you ask, yes: he did admit that the Holocaust was morally problematic\u2026 but only from a certain perspective.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a number of things about this that I just don\u2019t get.\u00a0 The first is that I find it hard to make the leap from the meta-ethical claim about the non-universality of moral statements to the claim about a lack of entitlement to seek to influence others.\u00a0 After all, if there\u2019s no universal moral standard, there\u2019s also no universally-grounded reason to be suspicious of attempts to persuade.\u00a0 (In a similar vein, I have trouble with the kind of relativist who thinks that we ought to respect \u2013 which often amounts to preserve \u2013 other moral cultures.\u00a0 After all, if this is a \u201cuniversal\u201d ought, then we have at least one universally-applicable moral claim; and if we can have one of them, it\u2019s not obvious why we can\u2019t have more than one, and so relativism fails.\u00a0 If it\u2019s not a universal ought, though, it becomes hard to see why we should accept it as telling us anything about our behaviour after all: it\u2019s not obvious what standard we\u2019ve violated if we do<\/em> smother other moral traditions.)<\/p>\n The second is that my interlocutor did make certain moral claims \u2013 but he denied that these statements did anything more than describe his preferences.\u00a0 Moral statements, in other words, were expressivist in nature, but had only an autobiographical scope.\u00a0 They reported a certain attitude, but were not designed to alter behaviour.\u00a0 There\u2019s something odd about this: it\u2019s almost as if he was refusing to endorse his own moral beliefs.\u00a0 Maybe I\u2019m too much of a prescriptivist \u2013 but it seems to me to be a part of moral judgement that you\u2019re making a claim about how the world ought to be.\u00a0 I have to admit that I\u2019m struggling a bit to get my head around the idea that one can use everyday moral vocabulary and yet explicitly resist trying to get others to share one\u2019s point of view.\u00a0 In saying \u201cI think x<\/em>\u201d, isn\u2019t there the silent codicil \u201cand so I think x<\/em> is true\u201d?\u00a0 And if that\u2019s the case, aren\u2019t we implicitly saying that people who think not-x<\/em> should abandon that position?<\/p>\n And this leads to my third and final worry: that of quietism.\u00a0 If you\u2019re not willing to endorse your position as being at the very least better in some way than its rivals, it seems to me that you\u2019ve given up on moral argument, and on engagement more generally.\u00a0 My interlocutor denied that \u2013 but I still have trouble believing him.<\/p>\n If there\u2019re any committed relativists out there who can try to persua\u2026 Oh.\u00a0 I\u2019ll try that again.\u00a0 If there\u2019re any committed relativists out there who\u2019re willing to explain their position to me, I\u2019d appreciate it.\u00a0 Because this kind of relativism has been playing on my mind for days now, and I really, really, really don\u2019t get it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Until fairly recently, I thought I\u2019d met people who could be described as moral relativists.\u00a0 But I recently met someone who\u2019s made me wonder whether they were the real deal. The \u201crelativists\u201d I\u2019d met previously were, broadly, people who make the claim that moral statements do not have the same universal applicability as statements that […]<\/p>\n