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> 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 s

> 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

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.