Moral relativism Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
Moral relativism is a view that claims moral standards are not absolute or universal, but rather emerge from social customs and other sources. Relativists consequently see moral values as applicable only within agreed or accepted cultural boundaries. Very few, if any, people hold this view in its pure form, but hold instead another more qualified verson of it.Protagoras' notion that "man is the measure of all things" may be seen as an early philosophical precursor to relativism. Moral relativists hold that an unsharable, personal, and aesthetic moral core lies at the foundation of personal choices. They deny the possibility of sharing morality at all, except by convention.
A simple way to express this view is that "everyone draws their own moral from the same story" and behaves according to their own impression, acceptance, or rejection of it.
It is often confused with ethical relativism which holds that morality can be shared but only between closely-knit groups sharing a moral code and committed to joint action, e.g. an ethnic minority in a hostile situation.
A moral relativist, on the other hand, would hold that even people in such a circumstance do not follow a common moral code, but are simply unable to follow their varying personal urges due to social pressure.
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2 Emotivism and universism 3 Ethnocentrism or cultural relativism 4 Critics of Relativism 5 See also 6 References and external links |
Moral relativism stands in contrast to moral absolutism, which sees morals as fixed by an absolute human nature (Jean Jacques Rousseau), or external sources such as deities (many religions) or the universe itself (as in Objectivism). Protagoras' notion that "man is the measure of all things" may also be seen as an early philosophical precursor to moral absolutism.
Those who believe in moral absolutes often are highly critical of moral relativism; some have been known to equate it with outright immorality or amorality. Moral universalism is a humanist neologism that exhorts the use of logical and universally-common ethical standards, which together may form a philosophical alternative to both static absolutism and murky relativism.
Moral Relativism is in direct opposition of Moral Realism [which contains the concept of moral objectivism] and is characterised as follows:
Moral realism is the philosophical doctrine that moral claims are cognitive claims that are at least sometimes true. What emphasis is there for attempting to support a standpoint of moral realism? An assessment of human societal use and understanding of moral values shows an intuitive emphasis on certain actions or moral statements as having truth-value. A societal standpoint on torture as being impermissible in all situations for example, suggests that torture is considered morally ‘wrong’ or unacceptable, furthermore it suggests that if a person makes the claim: “torture is wrong” they will either be correct or false, and that at least in some situations it is possible for a moral claim to be true. A moral theory ought to try to account for the tendency to use moral statements that appear at least syntactically and perhaps intuitively to be making a truth claim, the obvious way to account for it is to support moral realism and suggest that moral statements can be true or false. A society in which the possibility exists that certain moral statements are true and false would appear to have certain obvious advantages over a society where this is not the case. For example, if a society wishes to propound and justify the claim that murder should be restricted, it might claim that “murder is ‘wrong’” or ”murder is impermissible”, under moral realism the possibility exists that these statements are true, hence they are at least justifiable, and justified if they can be shown to be true (which may of course be a very difficult task). A society that rejects any form of moral realism will find it difficult if not impossible to show why any action or standpoint is of higher or lesser value than another. Moral realism has intuitive advantages of this sort, people often look, or wish to look, no further in everyday life than the idea that some moral statements or standpoints are right or valuable or true when constructing a moral structure. Justification of moral realism is reasonably desirable, however in some forms and accounts of moral realism, meet with significant difficulties, the most desirable defence of moral realism will survive most or all of these difficulties.
Use of morality is carried out as if moral value is part of the fabric of the world, as opposed to simply being a relation amongst moral beings, it is evident and characterised in every-day speech by sentences like “you shouldn’t do such-and-such because it is wrong” over “you shouldn’t do such-and-such because I dislike it”. Humanity’s use of morality exhibits the behaviour of a situation whereby an agent experiences moral properties. The moral striving of a person or society appears to be aiming at ‘discovering’ the truth concerning what is ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ rather than, for example, a consistency of moral choices. Humans tend to act as thought the criterion of morality is external as opposed to internal. There seems some sense in which morality would be unintelligible without a degree of externally existing moral properties, as the majority of moral action appears to assume their existence.
Moral relativism has sometimes been placed in contrast to ethnocentrism. Essentially, the claim is that judging members of one society by the moral standards of another is a form of ethnocentrism. Some moral relativists claim that people can only be judged by the mores of their own society while other moral relativists argue that, as moral codes have some commonalities among societies, one can utilize the "common ground" to judge moral matters between societies.
One consequence of this viewpoint, also known as cultural relativism, is the principle that any judgment of society on the basis of the observer's moral code is invalid: individuals are to be judged against the standards of their society only, there being no larger context in which judgement is meaningful. This is a source of conflict between moral relativists and moral absolutists, since a moral absolutist would argue that society as a whole can be judged for its acceptance of "immoral" practices, such as slavery or the death penalty. Such judgments can be argued to be arbitrary through cultural relativism, although some relativists may still condemn slavery.
The philosopher David Hume suggested principles similar to those of moral relativism in an appendix to his Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751).
Some philosophers (e.g., Michael E. Berumen and R. M. Hare) argue that moral propositions are subject to logical rules, therefore, notwithstanding the absence of any factual content, they remain subject to the universal standards of formal reasoning. Thus, for example, one can meaningfully state that one cannot hold contradictory ethical judgments to be valid. This at least allows for moral discourse with preferred standards, which relativism otherwise denies. Moreover, aside from logical constraints, there is an evaluative aspect to certain moral terms (e.g., good and bad), a standard of measurement, much as is with the concepts of less or more, and this property would not be relativistic. This evaluative property allows people of different beliefs to have meaningful discussions on moral questions. One might also say, as Berumen has, if relativism were true, then in some sense it hoists itself by its own petard, for there is no reason to prefer it over any other theory.
This is an Article on Moral relativism. Page Contains Information, Facts Details or Explanation Guide About Moral relativism Moral relativism versus absolute morality
Emotivism and universism
The individual viewpoint, also known as emotivism, argues that people judge morality based on their emotions and feelings. Universism further argues that only those individuals causing or directly affected by an action can make any judgment about the action's ultimate rightness or wrongness. Those judgments can be made on the basis of reason, experience and emotion.Ethnocentrism or cultural relativism
Critics of Relativism
See also
References and external links