Moral Relativism

• What is moral relativism?

• It is NOT simply the anthropological, sociological claim that people's moral beliefs have varied widely across cultures and times.

• Moral Relativism: There are no moral truths that hold across cultures or times--no objective moral standards by which universally to judge people's actions as right or wrong across different cultures or times. What is truly right and wrong is always just relative to a given culture or time. There is no more objective fact-of-the-matter about right or wrong.

• Some reasons many people cite for accepting moral relativism, which are NOT in fact good reasons for accepting moral relativism:

• Variation in moral belief. Cf. parallel from science regarding varying beliefs about the shape of the earth.
• Lack of proof for moral claims.
• The need for each person to decide for himself or herself what to believe about right and wrong.
• The importance of tolerance for other people's views and ways of life.

NOTE: While we are speaking of tolerance and respect, please take a moment to review the Virginia Tech Principles of Community, which all members of the university community are expected to understand and to follow: http://www.multicultural.vt.edu/pdf/Virginia_Tech_Principles_of_Community.pdf)

• The existence of exceptions to most general moral rules, and the role often played by circumstances in determining what's right and wrong.

• What is Moral Non-Relativism? Just the rejection of Moral Relativism (above):

• Moral Non-Relativism: There are at least some universal, objective moral truths or some objective standards of right and wrong that apply across cultures and times (whether they're recognized or not).
• Plausible examples of types of action that are non-relatively wrong: slavery, rape, child molestation.
• This is compatible with thinking that there are ALSO many things that are not universally right or wrong, but fall under the category of morally legitimate variation. This is the idea of reasonable moral leeway for both cultures and individuals.
• Plausible examples of morally legitimate variation, within reasonable limits: drinking age, marrying age, structure of child labor laws, dress codes regarding nudity, individual choices regarding marriage and children, level of education to pursue, how much and what kinds of charitable activity to engage in, etc.
• Digression on political rhetoric: why the rejection of particular conservative moral claims does NOT make liberals moral relativists (or advocates of a "culture of relativism").

• Examples to discuss: interracial marriage, homosexuality.

• Some good reasons for thinking that moral relativism is false:

o Examples to discuss: slavery, female genital mutilation.

o Basic point: the things that so clearly make certain practices morally wrong for us are not things that vary relevantly from culture to culture, or time to time; the things that do vary, such as people's beliefs and customs, aren't relevant to the factors that actually make certain practices so morally problematic.

To Think About: If you reject moral relativism, as I've argued one should, that still leaves open the question of where exactly you place various issues: which things do you think are objectively, universally morally wrong? Which things fall instead within the category of morally legitimate variation, either individually or culturally? And why? If a given culture chooses a certain convention from within the range of morally legitimate possibilities (e.g., a certain dress code), can that then make certain things genuinely wrong in that culture (e.g., because they would cause offense) that wouldn't be wrong in another culture that has chosen different conventions (e.g., a more liberal dress code) from within the range of morally legitimate variation? Does that allow for at least a very limited kind of moral relativism about certain things?