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"Nihilism is the view that there are no moral facts, that nothing is right or wrong, or morally good or bad. Relativism is the view that moral statements are tr

• dpark 8y ago
  I don’t see these as meaningfully different. One says there are no moral facts. The other says there are no moral facts unless you impose an arbitrary moral system. Someone who doesn’t believe in “moral facts” can still understand that if you define a framework for evaluating moral statements, you can make a true/false call within that framework. To believe otherwise would be to literally reject logic. That doesn’t indicate that the arbitrary framework imposed has any actual meaning. It’s not coincidental that these are discussed side by side in your book, nor that some other definitions explicitly call moral relativism nihilism.
  • mfoy_ 8y ago
    I don't think you can just swoop in and say that two different schools of philosophy are really the same because you can't tell the difference.
    • dpark 8y ago
      This is fallacious. The fact that a difference is asserted does not mean one exists. Your particular flavor of moral relativism seems to be absolute relativism. A common criticism of absolute moral relativism is that it is indistinguishable from moral nihilism. Similarly, arguments for moral nihilism are made from a stance of absolute moral relativism. Now, there are forms of moral relativism, namely descriptive relativism, that are not the same as nihilism. These simply acknowledge the fact that different people hold different moral views, speaking to the reality of the world rather than the plausibility or implausibility of objective morals. (I would also personally hesitate to call descriptive moral relativism a philosophy since it doesn’t attempt to speak to any fundamental truth. Acknowledging that people hold different morals seems less of a philosophical viewpoint and more of an ability to make basic human observation.) But you don’t seem to be a descriptive moral relativist. You’ve made absolutist statements about the relativity of morals, leavings me to conclude that you’re making a distinction without a difference because you don’t want to call yourself a nihilist. If you can provide some practical difference between absolute moral relativism and moral nihilism, please do. I’ve been unable to find anything that draws a meaningful difference between the two except that the absolute moral relativist says you can evaluate moral statements in the context of an arbitrary moral framework, and the moral nihilist says, sure you can, but it’s arbitrary so it doesn’t actually mean anything. Everything else seems to involve painting nihilists as morons incapable of recognizing the reality of cultural norms (“Moral nihilists say you can eat babies for breakfast!”) in a weak attempt to draw a meaningless distinction because for some reason “nihilist” is seen as a worse label than “moral relativist”. To the extent that moral relativism is a spectrum, moral nihilism simply seems to be the stronger end. The weaker end is just observation and the middle is a lack of willingness to firmly accept or deny universal morality.
      • mfoy_ 8y ago
        So, to preface, I'm not a philosopher by trade, so bear with me if I misuse certain terms / labels. http://caae.phil.cmu.edu/cavalier/80130/part2/Routledge/R_Relativism.html http://caae.phil.cmu.edu/cavalier/80130/part2/Routledge/R_Re... Going off this article, I'd call myself a "moderate morality-specific meta-ethical relativist". The article also says that "some critics also fear that relativism can slide into nihilism". It's true that "radical meta-ethical relativists" would have the same (or at least, as you say, practically indistinguishable) views on morality as a moral nihilist. My bigger issue has to do with "schools of thought", or the broader labels being used here. "Nihilism" has many other forms, all of which are pretty extreme. So essentially, the most radical end of relativism has significant overlaps with the least radical end of nihilism. (Specifically w.r.t. morality) Earlier you said "atheism implies nihilism and the extent an atheist disagrees is decided entirely by how convincingly they can lie to themselves". To use the overlap between one end of relativism and the other end of nihilism to then equate the two is taking it a big step too far. It seems to me like you're deliberately blurring the distinction between these schools of thought in order to take a pot shot at atheism.
        • dpark 8y ago
          > To use the overlap between one end of relativism and the other end of nihilism to then equate the two is taking it a big step too far. This is somewhat fair, in that there is a supposed spectrum that I equated to one extreme. However, I think one end of relativism is sort of uninteresting because it's purely observational, and I think the middle ground is wishy-washy. Moderate meta-ethical relativism (as described in your link) postulates that there are some universal rules for morality. This is literally not relativist and I'm not convinced this can be a logically-consistent belief. Morals are relative, except when they're not? It feels to me that moderate moral relativism stems from the "fear that relativism can slide into nihilism". This is not a logical approach, but an emotional one. If you start with the assumption that moral nihilism is bad, but you also don't believe in universal moral truths, you're left grasping for a middle ground where universal moral truths don't exist but also somehow they do. This is essentially the same thing I was referring to when I said "the extent an atheist disagrees is decided entirely by how convincingly they can lie to themselves". If you don't like the logical outcome of your beliefs, you'll find yourself searching for a "moderate" version that is allows you to avoid confronting the reality of your views. Don't believe in universal morals but also can't stand the idea of no universal morals? Then define them as relative except when you squint just right. If you actually hold the view that there are common universal morals that can be pulled from the commonalities of all disparate human morals, then you're a secret moral universalist. There's nothing actually relativist about "rules A, B, and C are universal, and then humans also add arbitrary rules D-Z depending on their culture". That's just squinting until "not universal" and "universal" look like the same thing and hiding it behind fuzzy language. This is much like a theologist who attempts to reconcile the beliefs that God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent with the reality of human suffering by stating that we simply can't understand God's love and that's why he allows suffering. On the surface that might look like a logically consistent response, but it's a redefinition of "love" to mean something other that what humans would recognize as love. We "cannot understand" God's love, so God's love is by definition not human love, and so God's omnibenevolence is not human omnibenevolence. And what we've done is squint really hard at "not omnibenevolent" until it looks like "omnibenevolent" while ignoring the false equivalency between the two different loves being discussed. > It seems to me like you're deliberately blurring the distinction between these schools of thought in order to take a pot shot at atheism. You might assume so but you'd be wrong. My beliefs would probably be best categorized as "agnostic atheist". (If feeling clever I might call my self apagnostic, meaning "don't know and don't care".) I am a reluctant nihilist in that I don't see a logical way to believe that morals (or really anything else) have meaning in the face of an arbitrary, uncaring, and accidental universe, but all my instinct and intuition says otherwise. I was not being facetious when I said I'd love to see an convincing argument that atheists don't have to be nihilists. I see that as the only logical outcome, but that doesn't mean I like it.