ETHICS: Moral Relativism or Moral Objectivism

I answered other cause I think its a little bit of both.

Maybe i'm not understanding the question being asked. But when I look at it, I see some things....such as infanticide or genocide...as being in the moral objectivism camp. I can't see any way these things can ever be accepted as moral by any group in any time for any reason.

However, when it comes to many other issues of "morality" I look at it as an issue of "in the eye of the beholder". A good example of this might be what some term as "p*rnography" others term as "art". (Playboy anyone?). So when it comes to most issues of morality, I am a moral relativist.

 

Much like has already been posted. I think some things fall into Moral Objectivism like murdering an unarmed person, and some things are relative.

 

Pragmatism: avoid irreversible non-empathetic actions, like murder and rape, but do whatever else is necessary to survive socially, materially and emotionally. Absent some exceptional insights or unique abilities on your part, remember that the group will always win.

 

The only Hell is a guilty conscience.

You are so very wrong. A moral construct allows for cooperative relationships between human individuals. Cooperative societies are the most successful. (but we need to define success. It could just be spreading the evolutionary seed if you see humans as animals. It could be a long, happy, peaceful existence if you see man as a higher life form.)

Back to the question: All knowledge is relative. We view and define everything by comparing it to our experiences.

 

Well obviously moral relativism.
Look how many people thought excluding women and blacks from constitutional rights wasn't a bad thing.

It follows societal norms. Although there are some innate moral concepts that you seem to acquire naturally. I'm guessing they are tied to human empathy and sympathy. I.e. don't kill or rob others, that's when the empathy/sympathy complex kicks in.

 

Since I believe in God, who under my belief system is the arbiter of morality, I believe morality is objective. However, as human beings we have an imperfect understanding of God's morality, and as such, what we once thought was moral we could learn is immoral and vice versa. We can only try to do our best to determine what is moral and immoral.

 

Like Aristitilian logic answers most things: just depends. I believe there are some codes that are in a way "Tao", while others depend on the state of society and the situation one is presented with.

 

There is a difference between Moral Objectivism and moral certitude.

Sometimes we don't know what the right thing to do is, or we think we know but our reasoning is flawed. Figuring out the lesser of two evils for example.

 

I like the distinction between moral objectivisim and certitude.
RedRedemption, when you point out historical views on civil liberties it sounds like what you are saying is that many people used to think differently on those issues. But were they right at the time and wrong now?
I would add to the discussion that in addition to the difference between believing that morals are objective and believing your own moral views are always correct, there is also a distinction we need to make between morals and ethics.
My major was philosophy with my thesis paper on moral philosophy. How we would define the difference in class had always been that we allow for a certain category of behavior to be relegated to ethics rather than morals when the behavior was largely dependent on societal rules.
A simple example of this is to ask "Is it wrong to cut in line?" Some of us have rather strong feelings about the jerk who steps in front of us. But it only makes sense to say it is wrong in a society that teaches to wait in line. But it used to be the case that we always gave preferential treatment to certain people such as women, elderly, etc. so that under those circumstances no one would be upset if an elderly lady stepped up to the front of the line.
When we ask about moral relativism what we are asking is whether there are at least SOME rules about which a society as a whole may be said to err not whether every societal rule has an objective standard. True moral relativism has little ground to stand on in condemning Nazi Germany or slavery in the South. Of course, the position for true moral relativism can certainly be argued. It is sometimes the most consistent position to take given the rest of a person's philosophy. While I believe in moral objectivism I am happy to see that writers like Dennet are willing to concede to relativism as the practical conclusion of their beliefs. He's wrong but consistently so.

 

Moral nihilism. Morality is intangible, and to base morality on our emotions has too much room for error for me to claim that any determination is anything other than arbitrary or subjective. All distinctions and dichotomies are artificially created and don't necessarily pertain to a material or ideal world.

Just my two cents.

 

It's probably slightly better than basing direct action on emotions, that sounds like animal behavior.

 

Here's what I concluded:

I believe in Moral Objectivism, though I acknowledge that this is a standard we can't reach since we are biased. I still believe this is the standard we should aim for because despite our bias it guarantees that we are always aiming to progress despite not knowing what related discoveries lie ahead.

I think aiming for Moral Relativism is illogical, because we know for a fact that we are biased, and deciding the relativity of morals can't be undertaken with bias. We can never achieve appropriate Moral Relativism with our inherent bias, and even if we did, it would not always aim to progress. We won't aim for progress if it conflicts with our personal, business, national or global interests.

In this question, we can't achieve either of these options perfectly. So we should aim for the one where our bias will interfere least rather than most, since the main determinants IMO are knowledge and bias.

In addition to the dangers of pursuing moral relativism, there is another danger: mixing moral relativism and moral objectivism based on our personal knowledge. This exposes a person to a second area vulnerable to bias (basically giving your bias two times as many chances to interfere), and severely overestimates a person's own knowledge and ability to recognize situations which are moral grey areas.

 

Two previous threads...

Here's one from 2007

And this one from 2010, started by...Rocket River.

 

My issue with moral "objectivism" is how objective it is? Moralilty in itself is a subjective construct and if it is imparted to us by a higher nature, what is it then? Could such objective standards afterall be someone's subjective interpretation? To me, not only is morality envolving, the judgment of morality should also be based on the surrounding circumstances. Take mass killing for example, if the circumstance in extrement is such that survival is only possible for a sub-group of human race or else the entire human race will extinguish, is letting some of the human race die immoral? I don't know the answer to that question. And many of you will quickly point to me such circumstance based morality is a dangerous slope, e.g. Nazi's genocide and killings of the disabled (Euthanasia Program), but I will argue that at least in extreme limited circumstances, free from one's evil justification, morality does change. If that's the case or at least there is a reasonable debate about it, what does moral objectivism mean then? I take the position that a hajacked moral objectivisim may be equally as dangerous as hajacked moral relativism, which in the end may have the same effect as a rigid moral objectvism.
All in all, let the people decide what's moral based on the circumstances.

 

The only reason you feel there is some "higher power" to prevent genocide or infanticide is because of genetics. Humans are genetically predisposed to like babies in order for us to raise them, care for them, and allow the species to propagate. Genocide and any other sort of murder is counterproductive to self-preservation in a general sense. As obviously killing people would create a situation where you yourself is more likely to be in danger.

If you go back in history when there were distinct class gaps between the powerful nobles and powerless peasants, those in power most certainly looked at peasants as being closer to livestocks than people. And that they didn't care for the lives of peasants nearly as much as one would think moral by today's standards.

There may be some things where Moral Objectivism may apply, but I can't think of any off the top of my head.

 

So killing an unarmed serial killer on a electric chair is absolutedly immoral?

 

For a long long time in human history, genocide was not perceived wrong. For example, Genkins-Han's army would eradicte every city it had conqued, and yet Genkins-Han is still viewed as one of the greatest military leader TODAY.

 

"he should have armed himself"