The little philosopher

[athenaltena]

In my philosophy class the professor got started today on moral relativism, and essentially said that his job in the next week is to tear that philosophy down, since neither he nor the author he’s going to have us read like it.

I am absolutely giddy because of this, because I also really hate moral relativism, because it is, in essence, a cop-out. I

Comments

[kawakiisakazuki]

I disagree that moral relativism is a cop-out. Quite the opposite, I believe moral absolutism is the cop-out: moral absolutists want to impose their values on others but rather than take responsibility for that, they want to pretend that their personal values are absolute and shared by the universe or god or whatever. It shuts down all discussion because all you can really say is "that is wrong because I say so - and I'm speaking for the universe

[athenaltena]

It's a cop-out when it comes to discussing ethical issues, which is the subject of this course.

Also keep in mind I'm a sociology major, so I know damn well that there's no such thing as a moral absolute, just as there is no such thing as a universal norm. But just because it's not universal doesn't mean that it has no meaning or power, and my problem with relativism is that it essentially takes the power away from those. Another part of sociological theory is that even though norms do not exist per se they do have power and they do have effects.

I'm not an absolutist either, far from it, but I hate that relativism gets used to dismiss other people's opinions as "well that's just your opinion" since that does indeed shut the conversation down. Where do you go from there?

It's not the theory I have a problem with so much as how it gets applied.

I also have issues with the fact that relativism itself is self-contradictory. To quote an article I read:

Q: What is the meaning of Relativism

[kawakiisakazuki]

Q: What is the meaning of Relativism?
A: That all Truth is relative.

I think it's a bit unfair to state relativism in a deliberately self-contradictory way. No relativist would express the relativist position in terms of "Truth". "Truths" are propositions, as such they make sense in a context that asserts them. The truths of Euclidean geometry are not true in non-Euclidean space. Relativism is a position about the nature of morality, and this strawman argument tries to pretend that it denies the possibility of a true proposition.

In all it's a bit disingenuous, like people who would accuse you of being intolerant of their intolerance...