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> To me, "moral relativism" just means the recognition that different societies had and have different moral ideas, and that even within a single society rules

> To me, "moral relativism" just means the recognition that different societies had and have different moral ideas, and that even within a single society rules are murky and fluid, and often outright undefined. That’s just a sociological trick. You redefine X to mean “what people think X is” and come to “profound” conclusions. That’s like saying that the laws of the universe has changed when Einstein invented relativity. Moral relativism is, for example, when you think that being a slave owner in 1800 in the US wouldn’t be bad but being a slave owner in 2023 in the US is bad because of specific cultural background that is different then and now. It’s not about people disagreeing on what constitutes bad actions or conditions per se. Everyone understands that people disagree on stuff. It doesn’t make one a moral relativist in any useful notion of that word.

dale_glass 3y ago
> That’s just a sociological trick. You redefine X to mean “what people think X is” and come to “profound” conclusions. That’s like saying that the laws of the universe has changed when Einstein invented relativity. That's exactly what you get under "objective" morality though. Everyone agrees "murder" is bad. Not everyone agrees on what "murder" means exactly. You don't have to try very hard to find people apparently just itching to kill a home invader in righteously retributive justice, or announcing the desire of going to the border to shoot trespassers. > Moral relativism is, for example, when you think that being a slave owner in 1800 in the US wouldn’t be bad but being a slave owner in 2023 in the US is bad because of specific cultural background that is different then and now. In a lot of circumstances, yes, that's indeed how the world truly works. Morality indeed can change over time, for instance using a lot of water on watering your lawn has very different moral scores depending on whether there's a drought going on or not. So it was perfectly moral 3 years ago and now it suddenly isn't. Regarding slavery, you have to recognize that international deals involve quite a lot of interaction with countries where people have far less rights than we do -- and this is one of the underlying reasons why we buy stuff from them.
- LudwigNagasena 3y ago
  > That's exactly what you get under "objective" morality though. Everyone agrees "murder" is bad. Not everyone agrees on what "murder" means exactly. I don’t see how it is exactly what you get. It doesn’t matter what everyone agrees or disagrees on. The point of moral objectivism is that doesn’t matter what people think morality is in general just like it doesn’t matter what you think about the laws of physics—they are still out there. To oversimplify it: Moral objectivism: laws of morality ~ laws of physics: something that exists regardless of what you think about it Moral relativism: laws of morality ~ rules of football: it is good or bad to do something only by nature of social conventions and views Using lots of water to grow cannabis instead of crops during a drought is bad because it could be allocated more efficiently to feed the poor — moral objectivism Using lots of water to grow cannabis instead of crops during a drought may be good or bad depending on whether people around you care about the poor — moral relativism
  - dale_glass 3y ago
    Rules of football all the way, yeah. By this analogy, rules of Monopoly. Everyone knows the game, but everyone seems to have slightly different house rules for it.
  - OkayPhysicist 3y ago
    It's worth clarifying the somewhat ambiguous subject and object of your moral relativism example. "Bob using lots of water to grow cannabis instead of crops during a drought may be good or bad depending on whether people around Bob care about the poor — moral relativism Because there is confusingly similar, yet orthogonal concept, ethical subjectivism, which argues that ethical statements can be universally either true or false, but that the truth value of such statements is tied to one's subjective reality. Whereas moral relativism says that the moral nature of one's actions should be judged by the moral culture they are acting within, ethical subjectivism concludes they should be judged by the ethics of the person doing the judging. This avoids the key pitfall of moral relativism: "One should be judged on the basis of the moral culture they are embedded in" is, in of itself, a universal claim.

dale_glass 3y ago

> That’s just a sociological trick. You redefine X to mean “what people think X is” and come to “profound” conclusions. That’s like saying that the laws of the universe has changed when Einstein invented relativity. That's exactly what you get under "objective" morality though. Everyone agrees "murder" is bad. Not everyone agrees on what "murder" means exactly. You don't have to try very hard to find people apparently just itching to kill a home invader in righteously retributive justice, or announcing the desire of going to the border to shoot trespassers. > Moral relativism is, for example, when you think that being a slave owner in 1800 in the US wouldn’t be bad but being a slave owner in 2023 in the US is bad because of specific cultural background that is different then and now. In a lot of circumstances, yes, that's indeed how the world truly works. Morality indeed can change over time, for instance using a lot of water on watering your lawn has very different moral scores depending on whether there's a drought going on or not. So it was perfectly moral 3 years ago and now it suddenly isn't. Regarding slavery, you have to recognize that international deals involve quite a lot of interaction with countries where people have far less rights than we do -- and this is one of the underlying reasons why we buy stuff from them.

LudwigNagasena 3y ago
> That's exactly what you get under "objective" morality though. Everyone agrees "murder" is bad. Not everyone agrees on what "murder" means exactly. I don’t see how it is exactly what you get. It doesn’t matter what everyone agrees or disagrees on. The point of moral objectivism is that doesn’t matter what people think morality is in general just like it doesn’t matter what you think about the laws of physics—they are still out there. To oversimplify it: Moral objectivism: laws of morality ~ laws of physics: something that exists regardless of what you think about it Moral relativism: laws of morality ~ rules of football: it is good or bad to do something only by nature of social conventions and views Using lots of water to grow cannabis instead of crops during a drought is bad because it could be allocated more efficiently to feed the poor — moral objectivism Using lots of water to grow cannabis instead of crops during a drought may be good or bad depending on whether people around you care about the poor — moral relativism
- dale_glass 3y ago
  Rules of football all the way, yeah. By this analogy, rules of Monopoly. Everyone knows the game, but everyone seems to have slightly different house rules for it.
- OkayPhysicist 3y ago
  It's worth clarifying the somewhat ambiguous subject and object of your moral relativism example. "Bob using lots of water to grow cannabis instead of crops during a drought may be good or bad depending on whether people around Bob care about the poor — moral relativism Because there is confusingly similar, yet orthogonal concept, ethical subjectivism, which argues that ethical statements can be universally either true or false, but that the truth value of such statements is tied to one's subjective reality. Whereas moral relativism says that the moral nature of one's actions should be judged by the moral culture they are acting within, ethical subjectivism concludes they should be judged by the ethics of the person doing the judging. This avoids the key pitfall of moral relativism: "One should be judged on the basis of the moral culture they are embedded in" is, in of itself, a universal claim.