I’ll start with a definition. Many associate moral relativism with the view that no moral directives are justified or true. They then worry that moral relativists must think that any moral directive is as good or plausible as any other and so anything goes. But this is mistaken. Moral relativists think moral directives can be justified, but the justification of moral directives is relative to the beliefs, values or commitments of a group of people. This means that moral directives aren’t objective in the sense of applying regardless of people’s beliefs, values or commitments. Their justification, and the legitimacy of holding people to them, depends on their beliefs, values and commitments.
Here’s the argument:
This view about the connection between the requirements of practical reason and the requirements of morality is a species of moral rationalism. Moral rationalists usually say that the requirements of morality are practically decisive, but I only say that claims of morality purport to provide reasons for action that have greater deliberative significance or oomph than other practical directives. This version of the thesis avoids, on the one hand, the suggestion that morality has absolute weight in practical deliberations, and, on the other hand, the implication that morality is merely a system of hypothetical imperatives.
Premise 2 is a statement of existence internalism about the connection between reasons and motives. It is very often associated with Neo-Humean theories of motivation. Some consideration provides an agent with a genuine normative reason for action only if it is capable of playing a motivational role in her deliberations. This is just what it means for some consideration to be a reason for the agent. This statement of internalism, then, is a thesis about what has to be true in order for a reason statement truly to apply to an agent. It must connect up with things the agent cares about, or which are deliberatively accessible. This means that externalists about reasons and motivation are wrong to think that an agent has a reason for action when the proffered considerations are deliberatively inaccessible. An agent cannot sensibly be said to possess a reason that is deliberatively inaccessible to her, and so it cannot be a reason for her. The externalist could say, “Tuff. We’ll still apply the reason statement to her,” even if the proffered considerations are deliberatively inaccessible from her point of view. But that makes it sound less like the kind of thing that we should see as an authoritative directive and more like the kind of thing that would be an authoritarian directive.
The conclusion in 3 is a thesis about how to identify the contours of genuine moral directives. Understood this way, premise 2 is presenting answers to the questions raised by premise 1. Moral directives essentially claim that some agent has a significantly weighty reason to act (or avoid acting) in some way. They purport to direct others authoritatively. What, if anything, could possibly justify these claims? Premise 2 suggests the response that moral claims directed to an agent are appropriately justified in terms of considerations that are reasons for her. It follows, then, that moral directives have authoritative normativity when (and because) they are grounded in her rational and evaluative commitments; the authority that grounds these claims is her own.
In other words, the connection between normative reasons and motivation (in 2), and so the connection between morality and motivation (in 3), is read in such a way that an appropriate connection to motivation is what makes it the case that R is a genuine reason for action and M is a genuine moral directive. This is moral relativism. The most obvious objection is that moral relativism just gets the contours of morality badly wrong. Doing the moral thing cannot be so easy – like shooting an arrow, drawing a circle around where it lands and calling it a ‘bulls-eye.'
Here’s the argument:
1. M is a distinctively moral directive only if it provides reasons for acting.
2. R is a genuine reason for action for an agent only if it is capable of motivating that agent.
3. Therefore, M is a moral directive only if it is capable of motivating an agent.Premise 1 is a statement of internalism about morality and reasons. It is a conceptual claim about the semantics of moral directives: claims of morality are essentially normative in the sense that there’s a necessary connection between them and practical reason. Moral claims employ terms that are evaluative, action-guiding and prescriptive. Of course, many non-moral claims, like judgments of etiquette, aesthetics, and prudence, have this semantic feature, as well. Some philosophers have exploited this fact in an attempt undermine morality/reasons internalism. But morality is supposed to be distinctive from etiquette, aesthetics, and prudence in the categoricity or authoritativeness of the claim. Something that’s a genuine M has ‘practical clout’ or ‘oomph’, such that someone who said ‘I know it’s M, but I don’t really care about M’ is making some kind of mistake. A moral directive adverts to reasons or considerations that cannot be legitimately shrugged off in this facile way.
This view about the connection between the requirements of practical reason and the requirements of morality is a species of moral rationalism. Moral rationalists usually say that the requirements of morality are practically decisive, but I only say that claims of morality purport to provide reasons for action that have greater deliberative significance or oomph than other practical directives. This version of the thesis avoids, on the one hand, the suggestion that morality has absolute weight in practical deliberations, and, on the other hand, the implication that morality is merely a system of hypothetical imperatives.
Premise 2 is a statement of existence internalism about the connection between reasons and motives. It is very often associated with Neo-Humean theories of motivation. Some consideration provides an agent with a genuine normative reason for action only if it is capable of playing a motivational role in her deliberations. This is just what it means for some consideration to be a reason for the agent. This statement of internalism, then, is a thesis about what has to be true in order for a reason statement truly to apply to an agent. It must connect up with things the agent cares about, or which are deliberatively accessible. This means that externalists about reasons and motivation are wrong to think that an agent has a reason for action when the proffered considerations are deliberatively inaccessible. An agent cannot sensibly be said to possess a reason that is deliberatively inaccessible to her, and so it cannot be a reason for her. The externalist could say, “Tuff. We’ll still apply the reason statement to her,” even if the proffered considerations are deliberatively inaccessible from her point of view. But that makes it sound less like the kind of thing that we should see as an authoritative directive and more like the kind of thing that would be an authoritarian directive.
The conclusion in 3 is a thesis about how to identify the contours of genuine moral directives. Understood this way, premise 2 is presenting answers to the questions raised by premise 1. Moral directives essentially claim that some agent has a significantly weighty reason to act (or avoid acting) in some way. They purport to direct others authoritatively. What, if anything, could possibly justify these claims? Premise 2 suggests the response that moral claims directed to an agent are appropriately justified in terms of considerations that are reasons for her. It follows, then, that moral directives have authoritative normativity when (and because) they are grounded in her rational and evaluative commitments; the authority that grounds these claims is her own.
In other words, the connection between normative reasons and motivation (in 2), and so the connection between morality and motivation (in 3), is read in such a way that an appropriate connection to motivation is what makes it the case that R is a genuine reason for action and M is a genuine moral directive. This is moral relativism. The most obvious objection is that moral relativism just gets the contours of morality badly wrong. Doing the moral thing cannot be so easy – like shooting an arrow, drawing a circle around where it lands and calling it a ‘bulls-eye.'
As I said, I’m not so worried anymore about this implication, but I can say more in the comments. What’s attractive to me about relativism is that it secures the distinctive authoritative status of moral judgments without authoritarian bossing around.
Kyle Swan
Department of Philosophy
Sacramento State
Thanks for the interesting post, Kyle. Let me provide a bit of intellectual autobiography too: I've never got the pull of Premise 2, the neo-Humean view of existence internalism. Much of our ordinary thinking about reasons seems to be externalist, attributing reasons to people regardless of whether they care about the relevant considerations. A person who beats his wife but doesn't at all care about her well-being still seems to have a perfectly good reason for not treating her that way. Bernard Williams worries that's just brow-beating, as I suspect you would, but I don't at all.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, this kind of thinking is so much a part of our ordinary discourse that some, like Richard Joyce, think it's a non-negotiable constraint on the concept of a moral reason. So he of course is lead to think there just aren't moral facts at all (error theory) since he thinks there aren't any such "external" reasons that morality presupposes. I don't really see why we have to treat it as a necessary condition on the concept of a moral reason, since I'm open to thinking we could discover internalism is true. However, getting back to intellectual autobiography, I just don't get the pull of the conclusion that the wife-beater lacks a reason. If anything, it sounds like some serious bullet biting to say he doesn't have a reason to stop beating his wife.
Of course, Williams and similar theorists argue that the wife-beater can't have a reason because it can't motivate him. Motivation, they say, only arises from a relevant desire. But I don't find any good reasons for believing this Humean view of motivation. I think rational people can be motivated to do what they come to recognize as right, even if they lack any desire to do it. So, if the wife-beater were rational, the relevant considerations would motivate him if he were to recognize that her well-being matters. Fancy arguments are given on both sides of such debates, but even if it were a stalemate, I'd fall back on what I'd think should be the default assumption: we can have reasons to do things even if we don't antecedently care about the issues at hand. I'd personally need a damn good argument to throw out this intuitive belief.
Gee way to go Kyle! I spend all semester trying to convince my students not to be moral relativists and then you deliver this early Christmas present!
DeleteFor what it's worth, I also have a problem with premise 2. First notice that what ever set of moral beliefs a particular group holds, they can provide reasons for why those beliefs are true. For those reasons not to apply in other groups in similar contexts seems bizarre (unless they are the product of some kind of explicit contact-making). Nevertheless, cultural moral differences do seem to exist. But, here comes my objection to premise 2, people should be motivated to do what's morally right and if they aren't, then they are probably misinformed about what is morally right or they are a morally bad, perhaps psychopathic, person. The unrepentant wife-beater is either woefully misinformed, lacking in normal neurological development, or has a very evil wife and had to regularly resort to self-defense.
Getting autobiographical now, I really hope I'm right. :)
Thanks, Josh. I can think of a few things that might help:
ReplyDelete1. Yes, premise 2 is very often associated with Neo-Humean theories of motivation because of the way Williams defended it, but as stated premise 2 is broad enough that it is amenable with Christine Korsgaard’s Kantian-inspired conception of practical reason (and her qualification that the agent is rational in some Kantian sense). I’ve put it in terms of the agent’s beliefs, desires and commitments. The argument doesn’t depend on Williams’s Neo-Humean desire theory.
2. So, still less do reasons for action depend on the agent’s actual desires. It could be true that someone desires to do something that they actually don’t have normative reason to do because of a variety of other beliefs, desires and commitments they have that make it true that they shouldn’t act on the occurrent desire. I think this is true about wife-beaters. They have and endorse projects (for Williams) or practical identities (for Korsgaard) and, for that matter, have even made agreements that are incompatible with wife-beating. A rule against it is justified from their point of view. I am worried about moralistic bullying, brow-beating or bluffing, but this isn't that.
3. More generally, I think it will (almost?) always turn out true that a set of rules that protect basic agency rights can be grounded in people’s beliefs, desires, values and commitments. It will (almost?) always turn out true that people will have sufficient reason to go along with rules like that because of their beliefs, desires, values and other commitments.
4. You can easily come up with counter-examples to this. Hobbes’s “foole” comes to mind. A few of your counter-examples might even be real and not just hypothetical cases. “Other people? Phhft. My interaction with them isn’t based on mutual benefit. Considerations like that are just incapable of moving me. My practical identity is quirky like that.” In the rare cases we encounter people like this the argument suggests that we can’t be in moral community with them and so we can’t exercise genuine moral authority with respect to them. But I don’t think that means we don’t have the moral authority to protect ourselves from such people.
Kyle, I'm inclined to agree with you, though I'm suspicious that part of the reason you are at peace with MR so understood is that it doesn't necessarily commit you to any particularly controversial theses. For example, we can’t, on the basis of what you say in the post, stick you with the view that there are or ever have been moral communities of humans here on earth in which slavery or the subjugation of women or genocide is morally permissible. Maybe they just didn’t think about it enough. Though feel free to cop to something like that... I'll just be standing over here.
ReplyDeleteBut there is something else that is interesting here about the motivation condition. I appreciate the simplicity with which you stated it initially, but it seems clear from your elaboration of premise 2 and your reply to Josh that what you really mean by motivation is "rational motivation". Premise 2, in other words, would better read:
R is a genuine reason for action for an agent only if it is capable of rationally motivating that agent.
But then the question arises, why is a directive D not motivating in the relevant sense if it is simply a part of an agent's cognitive architecture, something that causes D-like behavior even though she has no reflective deliberative access to it at all? Or, alternatively, if D is just one of a set of directives chiseled on a stone tablet believed by the agent to be of divine origin? Of course, I think I understand why. Your concept of a moral agent is that of an autonomous self-legislating one, and reflective grasp of the reasons that motivate us is just what such a being requires.
But then the question is how do we arrive at that conception of a moral agent? It is, I believe, not a universal conception, but one that is specific to WEIRD cultures. I would suggest that we have hammered out this view of moral agency partly on the basis of our own moral values. In other words, it is our belief in the importance of respecting individual rights and responsibility that makes that sense of moral agency particularly compelling to us.
So if that is true then moral relativism may not be true in other cultures.
Many thanks for the reply, Kyle! I see, so you want to say wife-beaters *typically* have a reason to treat their partners better but that's only because they *typically* have a relevant belief, desire, or commitment that's incompatible with wife-beating (or they would have such attitudes if they drew out the logical implications of their current attitudes). But that does mean you'll have to bite the bullet on the right sort of case, namely one in which the wife-beater has no such beliefs, desires, etc. Suppose he doesn't believe he ought to be kind, doesn't care about others, doesn't plan to interact with them productively, etc. In such a case, you still have to say he has no reason to treat his wife better, right? That doesn't seem to me like any less of a bullet to bite. But that's just me!
ReplyDeleteThe only way I can see avoiding this consequence is if you say something like: Well, the wife-beater will always have a reason not to beat because all rational people necessarily have a commitment to being rational. But then I'd worry that the view might not deserve the name "relativism." The idea would then be that moral truths are "relative" merely because the reasons they provide only apply to us if they can motivate us if we're fully rational. But that's a kind of "relativity" that is presumably present in truths that seem paradigmatically objective or non-relative. For example, the truth of the Pythagorean Theorem is "relative" in the same weak sense: I have reason to believe it only if I'd be inclined to believe it if fully rational.
So it seems there's a dilemma: either
(a) bite the bullet and really say that wife-beaters don't have reasons to stop beating if refraining fails to fits with their own mental states, or
(b) avoid this consequence at the expense of embracing non-relativism.
Randy, some folks go that way in order to avoid moral relativism. They impose idealized constraints to ensure that everyone has been cleansed of reasons to pursue the quirky or the ‘bad’. I find these proposals, according to which practical rationality will deliver convergence on the ‘correct’ WEIRD morality, which turns out to be, despite appearances to the contrary, deliberatively accessible from any starting point, to be implausibly optimistic.
ReplyDeleteBut I didn’t mean anything that strong or idealized. Just that there is often some deliberative distance to travel from people’s actual, occurrent beliefs and desires and what they have genuine normative reason to do given their fundamental commitments. I don’t think those commitments, though, in order to be their true, fundamental commitments, have to meet some substantive, WEIRD test. I had something in mind more like coherence and consistency in reasoning concerning beliefs that are minimally epistemically rational.
If I understand your case above, I’m fine with thinking D is fine (justified in light of that group’s interests, values, beliefs, etc.). You were probably thrown off by what I said in 3 in response to Josh about agency. But minimal agency is different than some full-bodied account of rational autonomy.
Let’s have D be something like “Let’s not send our children to schools where they teach WEIRD stuff.” D is understood as fundamental to a group’s identity (or necessary to protect fundamental aspects of that identity). They live here in America and the government wants to force the group to send their children to a public school to learn WEIRD stuff to promote certain aspects of these children’s autonomy, but the group sees “jet-fueled” autonomy as destructive of their tradition-oriented community. Here, it seems to me that this community is nonetheless committed to the value of minimal agency. Their argument against the legitimacy of the coercive educational policy when applied to them actually relies on the value of agency since, in demanding to be exempt from the education policy, they are asserting the right to be left alone to organize their lives in line with certain prized values that they reflectively endorse. It also seems to me that this commitment to minimal agency would make it illegitimate for the group to act on a desire to coercively prevent someone from leaving the community and why a state could legitimately impose a coercive policy protecting people’s right of exit from it. From a first-person point of view everyone is committed to wanting to be left alone to act in accordance with his or her best light. We all presume the legitimacy of this. This claim derives from the generic features of human agency as such, e.g., deliberation and choice, so everyone has the same grounds for claiming it. Everyone values their own agency, wants others to respect it, and so is plausibly committed to respecting the agency of others. It isn’t something distinctive to WEIRD cultures.
Kyle, that's a stand-up and be counted answer, thanks. I don't know what I think about your last paragraph. It seems to me that our best shot at a conceptual truth about morality is that it is fundamentally about cooperation, which is inherently about sacrificing our autonomy for other benefits, such as sleeping better at night. So it seems to me that moral systems can run the gamut from minimal to more or less complete sacrifice of autonomy, in the latter case with minimal agency being fully accounted for by reference to the needs of a functioning society.
DeleteYou (almost) appeal to Brandeis' phrase "the right to be let alone" which is interesting in that he represented this as a relatively new right based on rising expectations and living standards. And he's right, right? Certainly it had no place in tribal morality. I mean, yeah, if Og and Grog are out on a hunt and Grog keeps flicking Og's ear for entertainment Og won't like it. But that doesn't mean there is anything moral about it. Chief Reginald may not like it because they are compromising the hunt, and thus the tribe. That's a moral consideration.
I agree, but they would reflectively endorse these cooperative rules and various sacrifices of their autonomy. Doing so is necessary to have decent social life, which is necessary to advance many interests and projects they have. That's where the authority of the rules comes from.
DeleteSo, are you saying that moral relativism is true, but all individuals in all societies (with obvious exceptions for crazies and incompetents) in fact endorse substantive fundamentally moral directives relating to respect for personal autonomy sufficient, at least, to counter my original suggestion that your argument from MR presupposes moral values not shared by all? (I am not suggesting this is incoherent, just checking.)
DeleteIf you were ok with that, then it would mean that your argument for MR actually depends on assumption that some moral directives/values are universal. Which is kind of cool.
Yes! Or, the way I was defending premise 2 depends on something like the (near) universal reflective endorseability of values or commitments related to agency.
DeleteJosh, I guess I was mainly trying to show that the argument is able to avoid the conclusion that people had the moral authority to do nasty things like beat their wives. I tried to do that in points 3 and 4 in my response to you. Maybe it is a significant bullet to bite that, regrettably, it turns out that not everyone has reason, a priori, to avoid doing things that I think are awful (where, again, their actually having a reason is distinct from whether I think it would be ok to prevent them from doing it). But I’m not sure. It is certainly more a morality without romance.
ReplyDeleteKyle, Thanks for a thought-provoking article. I’m inclined to agree with Randy’s observations. Your argument seems to presuppose that some sort of claim about the value of individual autonomy is one that every person ought to endorse. (If your assumption is that every person does in fact endorse it, I suspect this is empirically false.)
ReplyDeleteA difficulty I have with your argument probably just reflects my naivety or lack of familiarity with some of the recent literature relating to this topic. But I don’t really “get” the first premise. You say:
M is a distinctively moral directive only if it provides reasons for acting.
OK. So suppose I say to someone:
“You ought not to kill that man.”
Or “You ought not to have sex with that woman if she doesn’t want it.”
Or, “You ought not to boil that lobster alive.”
On the face of it these look like moral directives. If they aren’t, then I’m not sure what you mean by the term “moral directive.”
None of them include a reason why they should be obeyed, so in that sense they are moral directives that don’t provide reasons for acting. Presumably, then, by “provide reasons for acting” you mean one of these:
a) reasons for following the directive could be given
b) reasons for following the directive could be given, and these reasons will in fact motivate the person the directive is addressed to
c) reasons for following the directive could be given, and these reasons ought to motivate the person the directive is addressed to
My sense is that you mean either (b) or (c), but I’m not quite sure which. The problem with (b) is this. If I say, “Don’t boil that lobster—doing so will cause it pain.” And you say, “Pah! Lobsters can’t feel pain” or “Pah! Lobsters don’t matter.” then obviously my reason doesn’t motivate you. Yet I can’t see why that should lead to the conclusion that what I said was not a moral directive.
Option c) amounts to saying that the person addressed should ditch some of their beliefs and embrace some of mine (the speaker). I don’t have a problem with this sort of explicit ethnocentrism . But I don’t know well it sits with your premise 2:
“R is a genuine reason for acting only if it is capable of motivating the agent”
The exprression "genuine reason" looks normative; but the rest of the premise looks descriptive rather than normative. It suggests that if my reasons leave the addressee cold, they aren’t “genuine reasons”.
I suppose at bottom, I’m just confused over the attempt to forge conceptual links between whether something is a “moral directive” and the speaker’s ability either to give reasons for it or his ability to motivate the person addressed. Jonathan Haidt notes that most people when asked why it’s wrong for siblings to have protected sex just once as an experiment, are “dumbfounded.” They just say,” It’s wrong!” Is that a reason? If not, is the statement, “Don't commit incest” not a moral directive?
Emrys Westacott
Thanks, Emrys. About your first question I'll just repeat what I said in response to Randy. Part of the argument depends on the (near) universal convergence on values or commitments related to agency. I would be surprised by evidence that shows it's false that people want others to refrain from interfering with them in the pursuit of their projects and ideals.
ReplyDeleteYour second question about premise 1 spills over into your doubt about premise 2. But, first, 1 is conceptual. Here's Darwall's statement of it: "If S morally ought to do A, then necessarily there is a reason for S to do A consisting either in the fact that S morally ought so to act, or in considerations that ground that fact." Whether or not something is a moral directive or not, then, doesn't depend on anyone's ability to *give* reasons for it or their ability to motivate anyone. It depends whether there are reasons (with significant deliberative weight) to act that way.
But *what makes it true* that there are reasons (distinctively strong ones, at that) for S to do A? 2 offers an account. Here's the Stanford Encyclopedia summary of Williams:
"the internal reasons thesis is not the view that, unless I actually have a given motive M, I cannot have an internal reason corresponding to M. The view is rather that I will have no internal reason unless either (a) I actually have a given motivation M in my “subjective motivational set” (“my S”: 1981: 102), or (b) I could come to have M by following “a sound deliberative route” (MSH 35) from the beliefs and motivations that I do actually have—that is, a way of reasoning that builds conservatively on what I already believe and care about."
So above, in response to one of Randy's question, I noted that there is often some deliberative distance to travel between people’s actual, occurrent beliefs and desires and what they have genuine normative reason to do given their fundamental commitments. And there's definitely room for debate about how far it's ok to go along this deliberative route from someone's actual motivations and still legitimately say they still have the reason, but (according to the view) certainly if there's no such route it's not true to say that they have the reason.
So maybe think of 2 as a kind of justificatory test for a putatively moral directive. You could issue a directive using moral language where the directive doesn't pass that test. You're then mistaken -- the person you direct the claim at doesn't have that kind of reason to act as you say. In cases where you know that, you're just bluffing -- using moral language in a subtly coercive way to get the person to act the way you want her to.
Kyle,
ReplyDeleteI would like to add the agents lack of will into this. An agent’s motivation may not align with their reasoning because of internal conflict which doesn’t allow them to correspond with their true desires. Do we call these agents incompetent?
Also, It seems true that moral discourse is subject to an individual or groups beliefs, desires, and motivational sets; but it’s true that universally, in all cultures, there is right and wrong. The justification seems to come from the power of the masses or the convincing rational majority. There must be cooperation in order to achieve some level of peace while at the same time doing what one group believes is right over the sacrifice of others.
Ryan Osborne
Phil 152
Ryan, most articulations of premise 2 suggest that it's not the agent's actual reasoning (or, the agent's actually understanding of her true desires) that makes elements of her subjective motivational set normative. Perhaps, then, what you have normative reason to do would be whatever some idealized version of you -- who, by hypothesis, isn't subject to rational mistake or error -- would recommend to the actual you. I could elaborate, but I would end up repeating what I said above in response to Emrys, above.
DeleteI agree with you that a perhaps neglected but important element of most normal people's subjective motivational sets is a desire to fit in and cooperate with members of one's group/culture/society.
Kyle,
ReplyDeleteYou stated plainly that you no longer worry about the implications and applications of moral relativism, but I really want to know what your thoughts are on the use and even value of continuing to use moral relativism in the globalized world we live in now. Since WW2, with the creation of things like the UN, and establishment of Human Rights, and the idea of globalized police forces and laws, how can we continue to at the same time, enforce the idea of relativism, if the world powers seem to be shifting to all having similar moral structures?
Obviously each country even within the UN has varying ways of applying the same moral ideas (I.E everyone has the right to life, right to an education etc.) but with that fact, the UN still backs up the ideas of enforcing that uniform idea of human rights to all countries and governments.
Are we then supposed to realistically only use relativism for things such as differences in religion (as we seem to currently do), or should we really allow such differences in applications of those proposed universal human rights? What are the realistic limits to relativism in today's society?
I personally believe relativism was a valid road before universalization, especially since before the internet boomed allowing the vast majority of the world’s population to be connected. But now there really are too many objections to ignore if we are to continue with the universalization process (which we can never go back from really).
Maybe relativism really can only be used with minor moral issues, but on a global scale I don’t think we can defend it anymore
Elizabeth Mitchell
Phil 152
Liz, I'm not sure what it means to "enforce the idea of relativism." Something like: refrain from enforcing your (or the UN's?) idea of perfect justice on others who are sufficiently reflective and rational, but dissent from it?
DeleteI suspect you're either under-estimating the amount of what I called in the original post "authoritarian bossing around" in the world, or over-estimating the amount of universal convergence on a uniform idea of justice in the world. This is an empirical point, though.
Swan,
ReplyDeleteOn your premise that "the connection between normative reasons and motivation (in 2), and so the connection between morality and motivation (in 3), is read in such a way that an appropriate connection to motivation is what makes it the case that R is a genuine reason for action and M is a genuine moral directive. This is moral relativism" which you say leads to securing "the distinctive authoritative status of moral judgments". Would it then be logical to assume that you are declaring a kind of categorical imperative for moral relativism such that those who participate in a culture of a certain kind of morality are then motivated by their shared cultural morality to act morally? But you also say that this version of the thesis avoids absolute weight. So if morality and reasons goad motivation to act morally, without authoritarian weight, then the moral relativist seems to promote a world of moral looseness. What determines acceptable moral behavior versus unacceptable immoral behavior in moral relativism?
Bethany Davis
PHIL 152
Bethany, I was trying to capture the distinctive normative authority that moral directives have when they're appropriately justified. Those have a kind of categoricity, oomph, or trumping force, but usually only very strict Kantians think that this force is absolute.
DeleteBut the account of what makes a directive appropriately justified -- that it's justified in terms of the person's own beliefs, values and commitments -- makes it so that the person following the directive isn't merely goaded into so acting.
Swan,
ReplyDeleteThis argument seems to defend a world of moral looseness. What determines acceptable moral action and unacceptable moral action in moral relativism? And how is this attained in a non-authoritarian concept?
Bethany Davis
PHIL 152
Bethany, I think that the moral directives that can be justified in terms of a person's own beliefs, values and commitments will have real bite. Some of this is reflected in my responses to Josh May and Prof. Mayes above.
DeleteKyle,
ReplyDeleteWithout a universal moral framework how can individuals be held accountable for the actions they commit if it is simply up to their societal ethics and customs? I guess it doesn't matter since there will never be a single best objective moral framework imposed on all individuals. Given the circumstances, I think moral relativism is a good option since morality at the end of the day isn't an objectively real thing, so people should able to choose what they wish to follow. What is right and wrong is determined by the consensus of a group or society but each individual will deviate somewhat but mostly remain consistent with the group or society except for a select few who will deviate greatly.
Knute Meyer
Phil 152
Knute, right: the suggestion was that individuals would be held accountable to the moral standards that have the weight of authority in their social groups.
DeleteI feel as if moral relativism is a logical way to think of moral directives in the world. There is obviously going to be differences though. No one can say that we all agree on one thing, because at least a country or some people are going to disagree in a way. I feel like this is similar to when I learned of cultural relativism, an old professor taught me that it would not work because if we followed in agreement with our country, then there would not be progress in culture. So we cannot say that it is relativism, when our view on moral directives is constantly changing, but I do believe that the idea is sound.
ReplyDeleteChloe Nicholson
Phil 152
Chloe, I'm not sure I follow your old professor's point about progress. Think about the changes in what rules do/don't have the status of genuine moral directives over the past 200, 100, 50, 20 years in our society. Progress?
DeleteI think for me this is really summed up in the last sentence. Ironic as that is generally the point of a conclusion, but it holds weight none the less. The beauty of moral relativism is indeed the fact that it finds a way to secure the status of authority without committing to an authoritarian view, I think this is what makes moral relativism so attractive. It allows for an odd gray in the world of objectivity and subjectivity. On one hand, we're making the claim that indeed there is subjectivity as it comes to morality, while also allowing for an objective nature, which is necessary for morality. But it does not claim, like so many other philosophies do, that the only thing that matters is the objectivity. By doing as such, we get away from the issues that come with the objective views of morality.
ReplyDeleteA simple question I find myself dealing with whenever debating ethical dilemmas though, is what exactly can we think of morals and ethics. Must they carry the weight that is implied? We tend to agree that morality must carry weight, but I cannot see a reason for why we consider this to be a must statement. Sure it's all well and good for us to claim that it must, but our justification for such usually exists in the fact that it is simply what morality is. It's hard to agree otherwise as surely this must be the basis for morality. But, on further reflection, why? Why can we not strip down morality to a more simple basis to allow it to be more liberally applied? Surely this would undermine morality as we know it, but maybe the true problem of morality is the constant need to pose it as an angelic feat of humanity.
Shane, on the view I defended, the mustness of a moral directive comes from the way in which it's justified. That is, in other words, what makes the directive obligatory and legitimate to enforce.
DeleteThis makes me think about moral relativism a bit differently. Instead of relativism being associated with the idea of any society making any rules that is desires it is more of a practical standpoint. This practical standpoint depends on reason as well as a societies individual view. What I mean by practical is that the moral rules that a society creates are made in order to promote the most cooperation between its inhabitants. This is relative to each society, but can also follow the theme of some universality of moral rules. To elaborate, a society can make up morals for themselves based upon logic and reason. The ends of the logic and reason is creating an environment that contains the most cooperation with its citizens. I do understand that this argument relies on people exercising their use of reason and logic. But I believe that reason and logic are fairly universal and as such can be used in any given society to make a set of morals that may differ from others, but have some similarities. This is how moral relativism has changed in my view.
ReplyDeleteTyler Hutson
Phil 152
This makes me think about moral relativism a bit differently. Instead of relativism being associated with the idea of any society making any rules that is desires it is more of a practical standpoint. This practical standpoint depends on reason as well as a societies individual view. What I mean by practical is that the moral rules that a society creates are made in order to promote the most cooperation between its inhabitants. This is relative to each society, but can also follow the theme of some universality of moral rules. To elaborate, a society can make up morals for themselves based upon logic and reason. The ends of the logic and reason is creating an environment that contains the most cooperation with its citizens. I do understand that this argument relies on people exercising their use of reason and logic. But I believe that reason and logic are fairly universal and as such can be used in any given society to make a set of morals that may differ from others, but have some similarities. This is how my view of moral relativism has changed, and how it seems much more plausible.
ReplyDeleteThis sort of moral relativism brings an atomistic quality to moral norms. Morals are simply defined as a sort of quirky set of reasons for action, whose reasoning derives from an internal set of reasons which the moral agent may or may not be explicitly aware of. Have I got that right? The moral agent MUST have an internal set of commitments, but they also might not presently be aware of the logical extent of their commitments, and their implicit agreement with a norm.
ReplyDeleteThe blank nature of the moral slate here reminds me of the “contentless” quality to the “best possible situation” which we discussed in class. It comes to be assigned content, and to be clarified, I think in terms not only of the meaning of that end, but also the norms we should follow in achieving that end.
Of course, it seems possible that there could be certain, fundamentally implicit, universal human agreements which we might be able to uncover by gently scratching at the surface, by virtue of the overlap of human behavior.
Bradley Rebholtz
Phil 152
Bradley, except that the relative quirkiness of people's reasons is an empirical question and, given that societies have by and large secured norms of cooperation, the variation isn't too big.
DeleteProfessor,
ReplyDeleteI think that It is a bit hard to see how this would function in the sense that not most people or at least those with no sufficient knowledge, would come to understand the idea behind it. However, if in some sense we could imply that everyone could come to logically understand the concept, than we ought to accept that this view could solve the problem of objectivity. I am still skeptical on how this will work in other societies. In particular those with high crime rates, where the reality of the country can only be seen by those who experiment it day by day. That is because in those countries people with no education rule the country and when it comes to a relativism we could say that those in control are basically running what Hobbes calls "state of nature". So, we either get rid off crime in those nations, or we exclude those countries, in order to take in this view.
Jaime Anaya Raya
Phil 152
Jaime, a Hobbesian state of nature doesn't have any interpersonal rules or obligations. I don't think there's actually a country that answers to this description. But maybe I'm missing something about your question.
DeleteSwan,
ReplyDeleteWhat is to be said/done about the individuals in society who find nothing to be motivating? Perhaps, I do not understand depression well enough but it seems like those individuals lack any intrinsic desire to do anything. How can one establish an overarching authoritative morality to those that find no reasons motivating for acting? Are they just unfortunate outliers or is there a theory that can make morals relative to them as well?
Enrique Canto
Phil 152
Swan,
ReplyDeleteHow do we account for those that find no reason for action motivating? For example, people with depression. If I understand the condition correctly, depressed people lack no intrinsic motivation to do practically anything. How do you establish and overarching authoritative theory of morality to those whose reality does not align with the premises. I'm sure there are other non-depressed people who have similar outlooks. Are they just unfortunate outliers or is there a theory that can encompass them as well?
Enrique Canto
Phil 152
Assuming people with such an extreme level of listlessness exist, I would have thought it wouldn't be difficult to justify any rule or imposition over them. Some suggest a justificatory requirement that would only defeat rules that would interfere or conflict with a person's reasons. It's probably possible to recast the argument in those terms in a way that would address your worry.
DeleteI agree with your reasoning and I have an example within your premises.
ReplyDeletePremise 1 - M is a distinctively moral directive only if it provides reasons for acting
M = Me telling the line cutter in Starbucks to go to the end of the line.
M = provides a reason for acting.
M’s provided reason for acting - The purpose of a line is so that everyone in it fairly waits their turn, and cutting the line defeats that purpose for everyone, and my reason is to restore fairness in Starbucks.
Premise 2 - R is a genuine reason for action for an agent only if it is capable of motivating the agent.
The reason for my action is a genuine reason because that reason was capable of motivating me to tell the line cutter to go to the line.
Premise 3 - Therefore, M is a moral directive only if it is capable of motivating an agent.
Therefore, M, which is me telling the line cutter in Starbucks to go to the end of the line, is a moral directive, or official or authoritative instruction, because it is capable of motivating me to act.
The only “issue” I can see, is somebody saying,
M = Me killing someone
M = Provides a reason for acting
M’s provided reasons for acting - I hate this person, they cut me in line, they cut me off on the freeway
Then premise 2 would be satisfied because the agent could say it is a genuine action for the agent because them hating a person or that person cutting them off on the freeway is a reason that is capable of motivation.
Therefore, premise 3 would be satisfied, because me killing someone, with my reasons provided that motivated me to do so, would be considered a moral directive because that directive was capable of motivating me to act.
I don’t think that killing someone is at all a morally right thing to do, but also with this reasoning, isn’t it always simple to argue the defense for somebody who thinks killing is a morally right thing?
This is a useful example, Kaimel, but
Delete"The reason for my action is a genuine reason because that reason was capable of motivating me to tell the line cutter to go to the line."
the real question is whether or not the cutter has reason to follow the no-cutting rule.
Generally, I think people do, but it's at least possible that some people have idiosyncratic reasons. It's possible that the cutter is one of them.
Hello Professor! Moral relativism is making a bit more sense to me after reading this blog. Most people have an inner desire to act in such a way that allows them to blend in with society and stay out of trouble. What about those that truly desire to hurt people? I don't just mean killing. There are lots of people who grow up thinking it's ok to manipulate people and mess with their lives because everyone around them did the same. There are some places in the world where the only way to survive is to steal and lie to get what you need. Obviously, the person being hurt or stolen from will think this is morally wrong, but then they may need to do the same to someone else in order to survive. If both agents have motivation to steal, but both are also hurt by the behavior, how would moral relativism apply here?
ReplyDeleteRight, I think that's possible, like I said in response to Kaimel. In that case, moral relativism says that the moral directive (to them) is misplaced/doesn't apply. Yet, just because you can't interact in these cases with such people on moral terms doesn't mean you have to let them manipulate you. You have reason, from your point of view, to protect yourself from them. We could model these kinds of examples as ones where you are in a sort of moral state of nature with the person (in that situation).
DeleteYour other example about not following the stealing rule is a great one, but it might be even a little easier to handle -- it's just not true that the no-stealing rule morally applies in cases where you need to steal to survive. Even Kant(!) seemed to think something like that was true.