Science and democracy
I am currently reading Chris Mooney's The Republican War on Science, which is, as one might be able to guess from the subtle connotations of the title, somewhat partisan in its analysis of governmental censorship and/or influence upon science in the last thirty years.
It has gotten me thinking about how science is and is not democratic. One of ( Read more... )
Moral relativism holds "that moral or ethical propositions do not reflect absolute and universal moral truths, but instead make claims relative to social, cultural, historical or personal circumstances." These folk suggest that everything is more nuanced than it first appears, and that what's right for them, may not be right for you.
Moral universalism claims that "some system of ethics applies universally, that is to all humans regardless of culture, race, gender, religion, nationality, sexuality, or other distinguishing feature." Of course persons that propound a universal morality generally recommends that their own personal morality is just the universal morality everyone should follow.
As with much else, blind adoration of either position taken to an extreme is the height of folly, but you'll never be able to convice each policy's adherents of such. Moral Universalists accuse Relativists of being decadent and soft, while Relativists see Universalists as narrow-minded hard-asses. Those of us in between agree with them both, which is why we are the only people they can agree to hate more than each other. Eventually, Godwin is evoked, and it all goes downhill from there.
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