Are you a moral relativist or absolutist?

I think there SHOULD be an absolute morality, but the reality is that morality is acquired – like language, it is learned and therefore must be viewed through the lens of the culture generating it.

Absolutist, definitely, otherwise you can’t make statements like the Nazis were wrong for killing the Jews, or forced genital mutilation is wrong for all cultures, or slavery is never morally permissible in any culture. I should note that there are Absolutist philosophies that still take circumstances into account.

I think I am a moral relativist, but there are some things, across the board, that should be considered immoral in any culture, such as rape, child abuse and genocide. And other things.

@gorillapaws I agree with you, but the urgency facing us all today is the one driving and explaining Israeli behavior. The only reason you can make statements like the Nazis were wrong is because they lost the war. As our own indifference prior to the war and the current Presidential administration certainly reinforces, moral or ethical condiderations are not allowed to drive or determine policies.

I don’t think winning or losing a war changes basic morality…..does it? Can it? If the Germans had won, would we all be thinking that killing off certain classes of people is OK?

I don’t think either is really relevant since no person is perfect. Morality is in the eyes of the beholder.

@Dutchess III Believe me, had Germany not lost the war, more people would find genocide (at least in Germany) acceptable if not preferable.

Perhaps. For a time. If you look at our horrible history of slavery, how many people were convinced that it was a perfectly fine thing to do? But you will always have those deeper thinkers, those compassionate people, among any corrupt institution, working to change things.

Both, but mostly relativistic.

I’m studying George Washington right now, and in his world he was one of the good ol boys, but over time, though his experiences, his view on slavery changed. In a time where that was not what good ol boys did, free their slaves, etc…

My belief is that through empathy, we can help each other be better humans. Not this screamy, rant-filled society we have now, but a more intelligent, patient society who actually wants to change things.

I hope we are slowly, slowly moving in the direction @KNOWITALL. I hope.Sometimes it seems like it’s gotta get a lot worse before it gets better.

But that’s the problem. Everyone from John Brown through Frederick Douglas were declared radicals and extremists for decrying slavery. Brown turned to violence, but few today can dispute that his take on the issue was morally and ethically correct, madman or not. People in front of any movement are always regarded as loud mouthed trouble makers.

It doesn’t matter how they were viewed. What matters is that, in the end, they were right, and that they won.

“The arc of history does (appear) to bend toward justice” but day to day morality can be a very iffy thing as you live through it. What for example, do you suppose the view will be on our current immigration positions one hundred years from now?

One thing is certain. Those advocating the slow and reasoned approach are almost invariably doomed to find themselves on the wrong side of history.

I mean, I just like boobs & that.

I think most of us have noticed. But you also like useless decadence and a staff to bully and keep “in its place”.

Although ironically i don’t much care for you & you’re a right tit :D

Well you certainly put me in “my place”. Now go whip the upstairs maid.

Ooh look, a sneaky edit & she ain’t upstairs never has been so maybe check your facts first eh?

WHAT?!!! You have only 1 maid? You sir are a scandalous betrayal of everything meaningful to your class. I offend myself with the thought that I at one time might have considered you a gentleman.

The golden rule is: do not unto others that you would not have them do unto you.

Yep.

la moralité, c’est moi.

@flutherother So like I said to mom as a child: I guess I can be pretty shitty to people, since that’s how they treat me. haha, she didn’t go for that twist.

No, that’s not what it means. It means you shouldn’t be shitty to people because you know what it feels like when it happens to you.

I don’t think that every moral comes from something greater than culture, but I believe that there is an in-born sense of basic morality that’s cross-cultural (and you can say it comes from nature or God or whatever, I don’t know). I think when you get down to the nitty-gritty, away from the big issues like killing, raping, stealing, etc. it gets less easy to say that the morals are absolute, though even then you can trace a particular moral issue to something larger and very rarely does it end up seeming completely arbitrary.

So I lean absolutist, as I do think moral relativism is untenable, but I’m not always completely convinced of it.

@flutherother haha=means joke

Haha, an astonishing outburst from the snowflake brigade, betcha been bottling that up for a while :D

What are you even talking about @ucme?

The rule these days seems to be: “Do unto others before they undo you.”

Some people feel that way. Some people have always felt that way.

I’m still confused about the meaning of the terms moral relativist or absolutist. First time hearing either term. Reading the quips doesn’t shine any light on to the meaning of the words. I’m prudent and listen to my mom, Fluther, and media for spiritual guidance. Pain and discomfort motivate me. As well as loyalty to Fluther and my friends and family.

I also listen to professionals like social workers and doctors.

OK, absolute morality means there is no grey area. Either something is wrong or it’s not.

Relative morality means it can be fluid, and may change according to the situation. In psychology class once the teacher said, “We all agree that lying is wrong. What if you had a young girl come beating on your front door in the middle of the night. When you answer it she cries that two men are after her ,they tried to rape her, and can you please help. So you hide her in the house.
A moment later those two men come banging on your door, asking if you’ve seen the girl. What do you say?”

@RedDeerGuy1 Relative morality is a morality defined upon whatever culture you are in. So, for instance, female genital mutilation is accepted practice in some African cultures and is considered morally (and medically) repugnant in others. A moral relativist may say, “We can’t judge other cultures, so they can do what they want”. A moral absolutist would say, “This is wrong no matter what culture you are from as there are basic moral principles humanity should adhere to”.

It can also be defined by what kind of situation you find yourself in. Stealing is morally wrong. Would I do it if my kids were starving? Yes, and I wouldn’t even feel a twinge of guilt.

@Dutchess_III Makes a very good point. There are different levels of moral relativism. a moral absolutist would argue that stealing to feed your children is still wrong regardless of whether or not they are starving. It doesn’t mean that you wouldn’t do it but it’s still wrong.

That would be using absolute morality in a different sense. Kant said that morality is independent of consequences. Stealing or lying are wrong under all circumstances. Kant’s theory in its full version, is very interesting, but I don’t think there are many who follow it. Consequences have to be taken into consideration.

@Dutchess_III “Relative morality means it can be fluid, and may change according to the situation.”

This statement is misleading. For example utilitarianism changes according to the situation but it’s still an absolutist position. For example, there’s the famous scenario where the train is coming down the tracks and is going to kill 4 people and you have the lever that can switch the tracks to only kill 1 person. A utilitarian would not say “it depends” (excluding edge cases, like the 4 people are pedophiles) they would say you’re morally obligated to throw the switch, killing the one person to save 4—when you do the moral calculus of evaluating the utility that comes from a given action, then you are obligated to take the action that maximizes utility, that would apply to any culture. That’s very different than moral relativism.

What kind of morality is it when an adult opts not to do something, like steal a car, only because he’d get in trouble and not because it’s just wrong?

Legalism?

@Dutchess_III That’s called psychology. Morality is the philosophy of determining what acts are right and wrong.

Something being legal and something being moral are not necessarily the same thing.

I think it’s called immaturity. From the ages of 1 to about 6 kids learn not to do things because they’ll get in trouble. That’s external control.
After the age of 6, if we parents do our job right, we teach them WHY they shouldn’t do the things, and they learn the lessons of not hurting other people, etc. That’s internal control.
Most adults who are in prison never advanced beyond external control. They never developed any internal control.

@Dutchess_III Okay, well here is the root of my question. Let’s say a hypothetical culture “A” teaches children that stoning women who have sex before marriage is a morally acceptable punishment. Is that morally acceptable because that’s how they do it in their culture? Or is there an overarching moral absolutism that says that even if it’s acceptable in their culture it’s morally wrong?

It’s an awkwardly worded question, but I’m in a bit of a hurry. You know what I mean.

I do know what you mean. I think it really comes down to the fact that morals are a man made concept. I don’t think there really is such a thing. But..we want guidance. Above all, we don’t want to be the wierdo in society.

@Dutchess_III “I think it really comes down to the fact that morals are a man made concept.”

So is Math. That doesn’t mean they’re not real or true.

Math is logic. Morals are emotional. That is the difference. And what may be true for you may not be true for someone else. Math, however, stays the same across the board.

@Dutchess_III Morals are logic too. There are logical arguments for moral theory. That’s what philosophy is. It’s every bit as vigorous as a complex math proof. Philosophers dedicate their lives to puzzling through the logic of moral theory just as a mathematician might work on a complex theorem.

I really don’t think many people realize that Philosophy is a vigorous academic subject and is not just a bunch of people opining on their feelings. Philosophy has proofs that look very much like mathematical proofs.

Moral laws are not arbitrary. We have a general sense of what they should be, but nobody has been quite able to nail them down.

Aristotle said that a good life was one that avoided extremes. There seems to be some truth to that, but surely sometimes it is necessary to go to extremes to promote a moral cause.

The Utilitarians said that morality is achieving the greatest good for the greatest number. This has some truth to it, but it too falls short of universailty. Even if we could measure goodness, there are many problems. Do we mean the greatest total good or the greatest average good? Is it okay if a bunch of sadists got extreme pleasure from the suffering of one person?

Kant said that we should not try to measure goodness. For him, immoral acts have the characteristic that if everyone did them, they would cancel each other out. You can’t have a viable society if everyone murders one another or always tells lies. It was a brilliant line of reasoning, but it also falls short. Surely there are times when the best course of action is to kill in self-defense or to lie to prevent something that is even more immoral.

W D Ross offered an interesting analysis of moral principles, but he readily admits that there are always exceptions.

Some of them most certainly are arbitrary you guys! What is the logic behind telling women they can not show their ankles? What is the logic behind insisting that a school teacher be unmarried and unaffiliated with any male? What is the logic behind banning interracial marriage?

@Dutchess_III I agree with you on this actually. Sometimes it’s fear of societal change or mores.

Interracial marriage and relations became intolerable when the rising number of mulatto’s threatened the slavery system as well as inheritance laws back in George Washington’s time.

Well, and after that it just wasn’t done. I don’t think it even became legal until 1967 or something.

@Dutchess_III Philosophers would say that there exists a set of universal moral truths out there (e.g. it’s wrong to rape people) just as there are Mathematical truths that would apply to any culture in any point in time in the past or future (note, this fact doesn’t necessitate adopting a rule-based moral system). The goal of moral theory is to develop a system that accurately describes if any particular act is right or wrong, just as Pythagoras developed a formula to express the relationship between the length of a right triangle’s sides and the length of the hypotenuse.

What rules people have come up with in practice really bears no relationship to what the actual moral truth is. People come up with shitty moral theories all of the time (people also get math problems wrong too), that doesn’t mean that morality itself is arbitrary (or that Math is for that matter). Each of those examples you list had arguments to support them, but they were lousy arguments and didn’t survive logical scrutiny. There were bad arguments in the 17th century that blood couldn’t possibly circulate around the human body for example, they likewise also failed to hold up to logical scrutiny.