I’m still not certain if I managed to get what I think is the issue across. To clarify, here’s an example of the failure mode I often encounter:
Philosopher: Morality is subjective, because it depends on individual preferences. Sophronius: Sure, but it’s objective in the sense that those preferences are material facts of the world which can be analyzed objectively like any other part of the universe. Philosopher: But that does not get us a universal system of morality, because preferences still differ. Sophronius: But if someone in cambodia gets acid thrown in her face by her husband, that’s wrong, right? Philosopher: No, we cannot criticize other cultures, because morality is subjective.
The mistake that the Philosopher makes here is conflating two different uses of subjectivity: He is switching between there being no universal system of morality in practice (“morality is subjective”) and it not being possible to make moral claims in principle (“Morality is subjective”). We agree that Morality is subjective in the sense that moral preferences differ, but that should not preclude you from making object-level moral judgements (which are objectively true or false).
I think it’s actually very similar to the error people make when it comes to discussing “free will”. Someone argues that there is no (magical non-deterministic) free will, and then concludes from that that we can’t punish criminals because they have no free will (in the sense of their preferences affecting their actions).
I understand now what you’re referring to. I believe this is formally called normative moral relativism, which holds that:
because nobody is right or wrong, we ought to tolerate the behavior of others even when we disagree about the morality of it.
That is a minority opinion, though, and all of (non-normative) moral relativism shouldn’t be implicated.
Here’s what I would reply in the place of your philosopher:
Sophronius: But if someone in cambodia gets acid thrown in her face by her husband, that’s wrong, right?
Philosopher: It’s considered wrong by many people, like the two of us. And it’s considered right by some other people (or they wouldn’t regularly do it in some countries). So while we should act to stop it, it’s incorrect to call it simply wrong (because nothing is). But because most people don’t make such precise distinctions of speech, they might misunderstand us to mean that “it’s not really wrong”, a political/social disagreement; and since we don’t want that, we should probably use other, more technical terms instead of abusing the bare word “wrong”.
Recognizing that there is no objective moral good is instrumentally important. It’s akin to internalizing the orthogonality thesis (and rejecting, as I do, the premise of CEV). It’s good to remember that people, in general, don’t share most of your values and morals, and that a big reason much of the world does share them is because they were imposed on it by forceful colonialism. Which does not imply we should abandon these values ourselves.
Here’s my attempt to steelman the normative moral relativist position:
We should recognize our values genuinely differ from those of many other people. From a historical (and potential future) perspective, our values—like all values—are in a minority. All of our own greatest moral values—equality, liberty, fraternity—come with a historical story of overthrowing different past values, of which we are proud. Our “western” values today are widespread across the world in large degree because they were spread by force.
When we find ourselves in conflict with others—e.g. because they throw acid in their wives’ faces—we should be appropriately humble and cautious. Because we are also in conflict with our own past and our own future. Because we are unwilling to freeze our own society’s values for eternity and stop all future change (“progress”), but neither can we predict what would constitute progress, or else we would hold those better values already. And because we didn’t choose our existing values, they are often in mutual conflict, and they suffer evolutionary memetic pressure that we may not endorse on the meta level (i.e. a value that says it should be spread by the sword might be more memetically successful than the pacifistic version of the same value).
I’m still not certain if I managed to get what I think is the issue across. To clarify, here’s an example of the failure mode I often encounter:
Philosopher: Morality is subjective, because it depends on individual preferences.
Sophronius: Sure, but it’s objective in the sense that those preferences are material facts of the world which can be analyzed objectively like any other part of the universe.
Philosopher: But that does not get us a universal system of morality, because preferences still differ.
Sophronius: But if someone in cambodia gets acid thrown in her face by her husband, that’s wrong, right?
Philosopher: No, we cannot criticize other cultures, because morality is subjective.
The mistake that the Philosopher makes here is conflating two different uses of subjectivity: He is switching between there being no universal system of morality in practice (“morality is subjective”) and it not being possible to make moral claims in principle (“Morality is subjective”). We agree that Morality is subjective in the sense that moral preferences differ, but that should not preclude you from making object-level moral judgements (which are objectively true or false).
I think it’s actually very similar to the error people make when it comes to discussing “free will”. Someone argues that there is no (magical non-deterministic) free will, and then concludes from that that we can’t punish criminals because they have no free will (in the sense of their preferences affecting their actions).
I understand now what you’re referring to. I believe this is formally called normative moral relativism, which holds that:
That is a minority opinion, though, and all of (non-normative) moral relativism shouldn’t be implicated.
Here’s what I would reply in the place of your philosopher:
Sophronius: But if someone in cambodia gets acid thrown in her face by her husband, that’s wrong, right?
Philosopher: It’s considered wrong by many people, like the two of us. And it’s considered right by some other people (or they wouldn’t regularly do it in some countries). So while we should act to stop it, it’s incorrect to call it simply wrong (because nothing is). But because most people don’t make such precise distinctions of speech, they might misunderstand us to mean that “it’s not really wrong”, a political/social disagreement; and since we don’t want that, we should probably use other, more technical terms instead of abusing the bare word “wrong”.
Recognizing that there is no objective moral good is instrumentally important. It’s akin to internalizing the orthogonality thesis (and rejecting, as I do, the premise of CEV). It’s good to remember that people, in general, don’t share most of your values and morals, and that a big reason much of the world does share them is because they were imposed on it by forceful colonialism. Which does not imply we should abandon these values ourselves.
Here’s my attempt to steelman the normative moral relativist position:
We should recognize our values genuinely differ from those of many other people. From a historical (and potential future) perspective, our values—like all values—are in a minority. All of our own greatest moral values—equality, liberty, fraternity—come with a historical story of overthrowing different past values, of which we are proud. Our “western” values today are widespread across the world in large degree because they were spread by force.
When we find ourselves in conflict with others—e.g. because they throw acid in their wives’ faces—we should be appropriately humble and cautious. Because we are also in conflict with our own past and our own future. Because we are unwilling to freeze our own society’s values for eternity and stop all future change (“progress”), but neither can we predict what would constitute progress, or else we would hold those better values already. And because we didn’t choose our existing values, they are often in mutual conflict, and they suffer evolutionary memetic pressure that we may not endorse on the meta level (i.e. a value that says it should be spread by the sword might be more memetically successful than the pacifistic version of the same value).