Moral Realism x Moral Relativism

I don't think there's that much correlation. Among humans, many highly intelligent people tend to be quite solitary in their habits and often take on fussy, prima donna personalities. Among animals, several fairly intelligent animals are entirely solitary (monitor lizards come to mind) while the generally dumb-as-post ants are extremely cooperative. Cooperation generally correlates only to shared aims, and high intelligence does not correlate to shared aims.

Moral convergence still happens with subjective morality.

Logos this morning?

best relativism is absolute relativism, where even the existence of a flexible mechanism is relative only to an observant few

Relativism is for weenies.

false dichotomy. yawn.

>implying there's anything inherently wrong or even unhealthy about aggression or imperialism
your claims require evidence.

semantics. you are re-defining the word "morality" to some sort of phenomenological frame of reference to fit your argument. child's play, and fallacious, and ironically ultimately a relativist stance.

what happens when individuals cooperate in torturing, murdering, and eating other individuals? moral blossoming?

>intellectual honesty is for weenies
If you say so.

There is no morality.

And moral relativism prevents that how? All it does is predict the same outcome.

Acknowledging people have different belief structures and are subject to them (ie. moral relativism) does not suggest those two groups need either agree nor respect one another. It indeed predicts they often will not.

A moral realist might try to appeal to the other side's "better nature". A moral relativist is more apt to decide they may not have one.

Though the relativist might be better at predicting their actions, at least, by acknowledging their core beliefs may not match his own.

>A moral realist might try to appeal to the other side's "better nature". A moral relativist is more apt to decide they may not have one.
A moral realist might decide they're filthy pagans and deserve to die. A moral relativist realizes morality is a subjective thing and can possibly be changed.

The moral realist is declaring that as well, he may simply think all he needs to do is convert them and show them the light of God. He thinks his morality applies to their own, unconditionally.

The relativist might not see that as an option unless they are raised in his society and programmed from birth with its values (assuming he isn't of the /pol/ genetic culture variety). So may just as easily choose to wipe them all out.

you guys are both ironically defending relativism/realism in that it may rescue lives, and that the other stance may harm lives. might be missing the point.

Was kinda the point I was trying to make - it could go either way. One isn't inherently superior to the other in that respect.

>intellectual honesty
Is that what we call spinelessness now?

Moral relativism does not say you can't go genocide those who disagree with you.

It just says they probably won't lay down and let you. You know, that "intellectual honesty" otherwise known as common fucking sense.

You're spineless because you can't accept the fact that there's no objective morality.

Relativists are just honest with themselves and don't make up half-baked reasons for an objective morality that they realize it's unnecessary for a working morality.

What if I define morally right and wrong as what God says?

I see morality in some ways like a science. There is a truth and there are rules we can discover through observation and critical thinking, but fully understanding the truth itself is hard. You usually end up mistaking a partial truth for a compete truth or drawing the wrong conclusions in a lot of ways. Thus, I see each moral system as an interpretaion of the truth that has its own faults. However, some are closer to the truth than others, and the mixing of good ideas between systems will slowly approach the perfect system of morals.

What does that make me?

A retard because morality isn't a science. And just a slightly misguided person for thinking objective morality exists when it really all does come down to opinion and circumstances.

In practical terms your idea works, but not for any serious ethical study.

Morality is more like a language. We have a basic biological structure for morality, but we fill it with social cues during our development and share it within our communities.

When you see two people angrily discussing about politics, thinking the other side is dumb or evil for not agreeing with them, it's a good analogy to say that they're speaking different languages and they just won't see eye to eye.

Also, the study of morality is what's called ethics. It's not quite scientific, though, but rather more within the realm of philosophy.

If it can't be treated in any way line a science, then why study it? It will always just end up a feels>your feels contest if you talk purely in the abstract with no predescribed axioms. Surely some observation of how other people and you respond to an action is necessary to get a grasp in morality. In some ways I would liken that to an experiment, testing human empathy.

Also, I probably didn't articulate it well, but I looked at the specific definition of the word many ethicists use and when I said objective morality I didn't mean an a priori truth. I was thinking more about one system that produces the best standard of living for everyone.

Anyway, why care about ethics at all if it's just a set of opinions and feelings with their only function to steer people away from guilt?

>why care about ethics at all if it's just a set of opinions and feelings with their only function to steer people away from guilt?
But it's not? Ethics is the study of the moral systems people use form functional communities.

...and when some other culture disagrees with your interpretation as to his will? Suddenly outta nowhere, moral relativism.

A moral relativist, as you suggest, while there may indeed be an objective morality that can be reached and universally understood, you also admit that, in the meantime, everyone's view of that truth is different and imperfect.

If you decide to ignore everything that isn't objective, you can ignore consciousness as well.

Which is not what science really proposes one does - it merely suggests that it is a tool with its own limits. You cannot choose what to achieve with that tool with the tool alone, all grander axioms being ultimately subjective. Some things are unempirical by nature, at least temporarily, it may also be that others are so permanently.

Though at the same time, you can use logic to find the most effective ways to achieve the goals of morality - such as a smoothly functioning, stable, and prosperous society. That is what most ethical arguments attempt to do - create a logical argument for a persuasive and effective model of morality or world outlook leading to said. The goal is a bit amorphous, the path much more so, but just like any purely empirical subject, you can create hypotheses and test them, to see what does and does not work.

Granted, applying narrow visioned and thus ultimately imperfect models to a complex naturally evolving system often has disastrous results.

Basing morality on a deity is the worst thing you can possibly try.

It won't work with the people you can't convince about the existence of the deity, and said "deity's will" can be construed to be anything to justify any sort of action.

...

>false dichotomy
I can admit it is. Actually even talking about "moral realism" and "moral relativism", as if each one signifies just one thing, is inadequate.
Many meanings for those words, are, for example
> Moral realism
>> There is a god who will punish deeds that displease him and will reward deeds that please him
>> There are duties that exist by themselves and are eternal
>> There are patterns in moral systems
>> There is a supreme Good and he is the common object of everyone's will
>> Morality should be dictated by reason
> Moral relativism
>> Moral systems differ from people to people
>> We should respect other moral systems, for if there is no criterion for what is good and evil, every aggression will have no justification.
>> Every duty is hypotetical, that is, can only make sense by referring itself to a purpose or interest
>> Every rational morality is spurious
>> YOU CANT KNOW NOTHING YOU CANT KNOW NOTHING YOU CANT KNOW NOTHING AM I BEING DEEP?

I can only think about compassion as a way that morality can get beyond the individual's sphere and turn into something social, besides common interests.

>> Moral relativism
> Moral systems differ from people to people
Says that.

>We should respect other moral systems
Doesn't say that.

>or if there is no criterion for what is good and evil
Doesn't say that, your culture is the criterion.

>every aggression will have no justification.
It says your culture is the justification.

>Every duty is hypotetical, that is, can only make sense by referring itself to a purpose or interest
Doesn't say anything of the sort. Your culture can make whatever justification it choses, theological or otherwise.

> Every rational morality is spurious
Also says nothing of the sort. The value there of is determined by the people who practice it.

>> YOU CANT KNOW NOTHING YOU CANT KNOW NOTHING YOU CANT KNOW NOTHING AM I BEING DEEP?
...and we're off into lala land.

Moral relativism just says different peoples have different ideas as to what is moral.

That's it, period, end of story.

It does not say you have to respect other cultures. If your culture doesn't respect other cultures, you have no obligation to do so, and if it demands you not do so, then you are under pressure to follow suit. The collective you live among is the judge, jury, and executioner, when it comes to what is right and what is wrong.

You are confusing moral relativism with moral nihilism - the latter of which says nothing is right or wrong, the former of which says that which is right or wrong is determined by the beliefs of the society in which you live.

Not that you can't disagree with it, not that it isn't subject to change - but it sets the standard, and usually, it enforces it. The only other enforcement mechanism is necessity - but when it comes to external factors, including functionality and other cultures, moral relativism makes no judgement as to who is right or wrong.

Moral relativism leads to greater societal degeneration and has cause more death and suffering historically speaking

/Thred

It's good to have morals

Uh, seems like we have a misunderstanding here. What I was trying to say is that "moral relativism" and "moral realism" are USED with different senses, so every discussion that is based on the theme "realism x relativism" often involves confusion of those meanings. I did not mean that moral realism or moral relativism is all that I listed for each.

How so? Give concrete examples and explicate how relativism is the cause.

Actually first post best post.

Moral relativism lacks good arguments in support of it.
Basically, the only argument for it is this "Various people have held different beliefs about morality throughout history, therefore an objective moral truth is unlikely to exist".
That's a really bad argument, for the same reasons why saying that people having different beliefs about the origin of the world throughout history means there isn't really an objective truth when it comes to the origin of the world.

>rejection of objective morality leads to rejection of objective morality
wow thanks for the insightful post

morality always revolves around people who cannot prove x is objective and people who cannot prove x is subjective. i think it's a problem inherited from trying to prove anything is objective.

Morals is all down to good and evil or basically

THIS BEHAVIOR MAKES ME FEEL ALOT OF OXYTOCIN(GOOD)

OR

THIS BEHAVIOR MAKES ME FEEL DISGUST AND SADISTIC ANGER(EVIL)

This is why the morals of civilizations can vary while Euros think fucking teenagers is wrong, middle easterners see it as a casual thing.

>guy lists different way term is used
>no I'M using it right everyone else is wrong

shit eater

>moral realism incites wars and aggression
>moral relativism means you can't criticise someone whose differing morals encourage aggressive war policy

There are different kinds of relativism. The one you describe obviously makes a jump from personal opinions to the nature of the things those opinions are about.
My "moral relativism" is more like a "moral idealism" or "pragmatism" and it is basically: just like every truth will be devoid of all meaning if it is not based on the individual's experience or intuition, every value or ought will be devoid of meaning if it is not based on the individual's will or interests.
For example, in math we appeal to our intuition of space and time for geometry and algebra, and only if we can get a "vision" of a mathematical truth will it make sense; otherwise, even if there is a rigorous demonstration, if I can't "see" what is behind the proposition it is trying to prove, I can only be CONVINCED of its truth, but I can't KNOW it. The same applies for the empiral sciences: if I can't link my understanding of the world with what a scientist is trying to prove, his hypothesis will have no meaning to me. Anyway I will act according to what I believe in, to what I can see, according to my understanding of reality; pragmatically speaking it doesn't matter if I am "right" or "wrong", except if my misunderstanding of reality has practical consequences.
So, that is my position about the question of relativity in epistemology, and I only talked about it to clarify my ethical stance, which I will write about now.

Let's assume that ethics is the science of duty or of the "oughts". So, concretely speaking, what is an "ought"? What makes someone obey it? The answer should be obvious: one obeys an an ought because he wants to achieve something with his obedience, be it a positive goal or a negative one (avoiding punishment, avoiding regrets etc.). So every ought is conditional: "if you want ..., you ought to ..." The difference between ethics and epistemology is, thus, that epistemology is about our understanding of reality, while ethics is about the relation of our will with said reality (or, more adequately, our understanding of it).
So the way I evaluate things will have the same relation to an "ought" as the way I intuit and understand things has to "truth". However, while epistemology is about the nature of concrete things and our conceptions, ethics can't be about the nature of "concrete oughts" or "real oughts" for that doesn't make sense: what is a "real ought" that can't make itself obeyed? Real is only what is effective and only insofar as it is effective, and an ought is only obeyed... if it is relevant to someone's will, if it is "relative". So the only mistake you can make in ethics, the only way you can be "wrong" is by being wrong about what you want.
Now for an objection, someone could appeal to "moral conscience" and "regrets" as a prove that there is a higher instance inside each person therefore God exists and objective morality too. But regrets only prove that our will is not so monolithical as we can usually think. If you "act against your instincts" you act so because you have OTHER INSTINCTS which are in conflict with those and are stronger than them. Yes, instincts are not purely "evil", "egoistical", for they are anterior to the "ego".
I could talk about other possible objections, but they are numerous. If someone wants answers then make those objections.

It is impossible to assess anything that is created by the human psyche as "objectively" this or that... When you get down to it it is ALWAYS subjective in nature. The only objective thing that can be observed in the universe is the natural world, and the creationisms of humankind (by this I mean thought, practice, or any other kind of intellectual assumption), will always be subjective.

Even if the high caliber intellectuals do tend to be solitary, I think everyone can agree that to reach the highest level of advancement in any field humans must work together.

Even those humans that are not intellectually gifted in the slightest could in fact overcome the intellect of a single individual assuming said dumbos work together to destroy or create

Morals are spooks, you can't decide what you do, you are just electrons.

Kek haha.

My electrons deterministically decided to write that as an unbreakable chain of cause and effect beginning with the big bang all the way to my dad banging my mom, and then this. But my genes wanted to grab a spear and hunt you to the ends of the earth. It's tough not being a genetic/electromagnetic biological automaton governed by chance.

We are all slaves to the Memes of Space Explosion.

That's very different from moral relativism as typically understood. Also, I suggest you read Alasdair MacIntyre's work on ethics, because it clearly addresses the way you're talking about morality.

>My electrons deterministically decided
>what are quantum mechanics
Everything you do is random.

Or, everything I do was deterministic and everything my paired quantum entangled particles did was random.

I'm gonna go take a shit while doing a handstand and see if I can make it shoot straight up into the air and then land back in the hole. This is now the state of science.

So you literally know nothing about quantum mechanics.

I have an underground tube many miles long and I am going to take a poop and shit it out at near luminal speed and simultaneously shit at the same speed in the other direction at the same speed. When two pieces of shit collide on the other side of the tube I will analyze the resulting particles of GOD POOP before they disappear into the cosmic black hole toilet.

I had a hard time hearing your moms quantum lecture over her moaning in bed.

>imperialism is a bad thing

Lol.

Just because we can't figure out how something behaves doesn't mean that it follows necessarily from some unknown cause. But determinism and indeterminism are unfalseable any way.

doesn't follow*

All of you don't know the slightest bit about quantum mechanics.

To give credit to , at the very least you're not retarded. But quantum randomness has been mathematically proven. It's not that "we can't figure it out". We figured it out and it really is random.

Any text, book or video that could make it understandable to a layman? How it was proven, I mean.

So you want to encourage terms to be used wrong until no one knows what the fuck anyone is talking about? Is this going to become like Liberalism, where we have to distinguish between "Classical Liberalism" and "American Liberalism"?

So are we going to have "Classical moral relativism" and "Post-truth moral relativism"?

Though yes, 99% of the time when someone argues against Moral Relativism they are confusing it with Moral Nihilism. As I doubt many of them would say that the baby sacrificing Aztecs and the modern Western World are working under the same moral belief system.

But you don't change the definition of the term to make them right - you fucking call them out on it before we delve so deep into Linguistic Relativism that we can no longer communicate. Particularly when we already have a term for what they are actually talking about (Moral Nihilism).

>t. mosley

>We figured it out and it really is random.
That's not how it works. It's that it's undeterminable without an omniscient laplace demon. It's not truly random. That's just Hollywood pop-sci taking science misnomers to the extreme.

That would be the opposite of determinism, though it doesn't help with the argument for free will either. (It's also bullshit at the macro level, or you'd never be able to predict behaviors.)

Not that either free will or lack thereof has any real affect on moral relativism or even moral realism, so there's not much point in the tangent.

>mathematically proven
has it been observed or not?

>makes a moral realist argument against moral realism

Not him, but yes, and several devices depend on the fact. It's phenomenologically random, though "weighted". But it's still not truly random, it's only that you'd need to know of the positions and interactions of every particle and field both forward and backwards in time to make it otherwise - which is physically impossible in the material world, as the only device that could make that measurement, is reality itself. It's not a "you cannot know nuttin" situation, so much as a "you can only know so much" situation.

But again, not really relevant to the topic at hand.

Well that, and you can't measure and verify the system without altering it. Though I suppose you can cheat a bit: phys.org/news/2015-03-particle.html

You know there are more ways of thinking than words able to express them, and that we can only do actual philosophy if we discuss said ways of thinking instead of words, right? I even said that "moral idealism" is better suited for my ethical stance, I am not trying to prove that "moral relativism", the expression, is right, but it just happen to be more adequate to what I think, after "moral idealism". And even Stanford Encyclopedia of Philsophy and Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy recognize different uses to the word. There are not "right ways" to use such expressions, just meaningful, significant ways. You can choose between thinking the many possibilities of ethics or trying to limit your thinking to definitions of terms.

You don't need to expand definitions into other words we already have terms for. Nor should you encourage it, particular in debate. All you do is cloud and decay language, and eventually, all things are "Groot".

as much as i hate to admit it im a relativist, but could there be objective value in trying to prove a realist argument?

I'm ignorant of quantum mechanics, but not even remotely ignorant of phenomenological positivity and that's what brings me in to questioning the inability to explain the static process behind phenomena. is it truly certain that this data cannot possibly be collected under any circumstances? sounds like an unfalsifiable claim to me, though I am a layman as far as physics go.

>objective value
ironically there is only such a thing as relative value

I see it as a differentiation between particular modes of Being.

If you are at heart a phenomenologist, there's just no way that moral realism isn't true. It's absolutely true, because there have to be *correct* answers to the problem of the suffering of existence.

However, if you're a scientific materialist, and an atheist, the only possible solution is radical moral relativism, indeed moral nihilism. There cannot be any right answers to moral questions in a world that is only made of objects.

if moral realism could be proved, relativists would have to accept it, though
it would be a fuller, more meaningful system rooted in reality. shouldnt everyone be obliged to pursue it?

But I didn't prescribe a use, I just described their use based on all discussions about ethics I saw on Veeky Forums.
> All you do is cloud and decay language, and eventually, all things are "Groot".
Slippery slope fallacy :^)

"meaning" is subjective, and the hopes that something exists is not necessarily a reason to pursue it's existence. I certainly hope there is a mountain of gold buried underneath my house, though I have absolutely NO REASON to assume there is, isn't it a nice thought? I'm not going to break up the foundation with a sledgehammer to find out.

>shouldnt everyone be obliged to pursue it?
is/ought problem.

>if g*d could be proved, atheists would have to accept it, though
>it would be a fuller, more meaningful system rooted in reality. shouldnt everyone be obliged to pursue it?

...

...

>is it truly certain that this data cannot possibly be collected under any circumstances?
Part of the problem, in this instance, is that interacting with the object can only be done with another instance of that same object that alters it, therefore there is no way to measure the object without altering it. Any effort at analyzing the state of the system alters the system and changes its state, thus conundrum, you can't get any entirely untainted information about the object's current state.

There's other problems too, that being the simplest example, but phenomenology has its limits.

The end results are still weighted though, so it's not that you can't say anything about systems on this scale, it's just physically impossible to get any information that doesn't have a certain amount of "fuzziness" to it, as it is physically impossible to interact with and keep it intact.

...and it all has absolutely no effect as to whether different peoples operate from different moral principles or not.

You have no reason to assume there isnt absolute principles. the gold under the house analogy falsely represents this because you have empirical data giving evidence against there being gold under your house. empirical knowledge can't access things-in-themselves.

He's right.

the problem with this is that you can't have knowledge of the absolute.

I guess it's just difficult for me to accept that with a sufficient amount of data and processing ability, it could not be ascertained whether there is any pattern or ability to predict the outcome of an interaction. proving unprovability doesn't seem falsifiable to me.

>but phenomenology has its limits.
compared to what?

using your own reasoning, I have every reason to assume there aren't absolute principles, via empirical data, as I have seen no evidence for any.

>However, if you're a scientific materialist, and an atheist, the only possible solution is radical moral relativism, indeed moral nihilism. There cannot be any right answers to moral questions in a world that is only made of objects.
Science may not make judgements as to right or wrong, but it does make judgements as to functionality as it pertains to a goal: X+Y results in Z, A+B does not.

If the goal of morality is a more stable and prosperous society, than moral relativism is only a thing, from a scientific perspective, until you can find the most efficient moral system, that is also self-sustaining and universal in nature.

Though it's easy to conclude such a path does not exist, or at the very least, different groups of people may require different optimal paths to that goal. It may also turn out that path varies with the age and circumstance. Thus moral relativism may always be thing.

In the short term, that's impossible to test, so for now, at least, moral relativism remains.

I agree with the image, if one considers only the text. But the image doesn't make any point, it just says, "lol u came from apes" and "GOD = good, relative morality = BAD".

Well, you tell them they are wrong, before we reach the slippery slope where groot groot groot groot groot. :^)

>proving unprovability doesn't seem falsifiable to me.
You can logically and mathematically prove there's no physical way to accurately predict the phenomenon.

>compared to what?
Compared to what there is to be known. To extend the Rumsfeld argument, there are known unknowables.

The only thing they are wrong about is discussing umbrella terms instead of actual ethical problems like "What is the nature of value?", "What is the nature of duty?" or the is-ought problem.
My error was making this thread be about "Moral Realism x Moral Relativism", umbrella terms, instead of said problems.
Also, if you don't want to see moral realism and moral relativism to be used with the meanings I listed to them, what would you call each listed item?

no evidence for something doesnt count as evidence against something since the lack of evidence is literally nothing, not evidence of nothing.
there is reason to assume the existence of absolute principle(s) because it would provide actual meaning, rather than meaning we are certain is contrived.

>if you don't want to see moral realism and moral relativism to be used with the meanings I listed to them, what would you call each listed item?
I already went over that yonder .

Yes, people often erroneously conflate moral relativism and moral nihilism, and make arguments against relativism from that position (thread is full of it). That doesn't mean you should accept it, anymore than people erroneously conflate red and blue or any other two separate terms.