Ethics - Relativism

Today is Thursday; one recorded lecture remains. Content will be completed tomorrow.
Reading: James Rachels.
Discussion post due on Rachels.
Feedback will be given on discussion posts, especially early on.
A score of 4.5 or 5 indicates satisfactory work.
Study guide for unit one is posted; the test is due on Canvas on Monday at midnight.

James Rachels: A significant figure in ethics, alongside Peter Singer.
Rachels wrote introductory ethics papers and was influential in the 70s, 80s, and 90s.
Meta-ethics: Focuses on high-level questions about the possibility of ethics.

Relativism: Ethical truths are relative.
- Cultural Relativism: Truth depends on societal beliefs; what a culture believes is right for everyone in that culture.
- Individual Relativism: Truth depends on individual beliefs; what an individual believes is right makes it right for them.
Moral Nihilism: There is no right or wrong.
- Ethical Subjectivism: A type of nihilism where moral claims are neither true nor false but expressions of personal feelings (emoting).
- Example: Saying "murder is wrong" is just expressing a dislike, not stating a truth.
- Differs from nihilism about the meaning of life, focusing specifically on ethics.
Moral Realism: There are objective moral facts.
- Moral facts are true independent of individual or societal beliefs.
- Also called ethical objectivism.
- Analogous to scientific facts.
- Example: Murder is wrong regardless of anyone's beliefs.

Few philosophers or laypersons accept this view.
Example: If a rapist believes rape is right, individual relativism would imply it is right for them, which is problematic.
Angel Resendez (railroad killer) example illustrates issues with individual relativism.
- He believed killing certain people was morally righteous.
- Individual relativism would have to accept his actions as right for him.
Argument against Individual Relativism (IR):
- IR claims an action is right for a person if they believe it to be right.
- If Joe believes sexual assault is right, then according to IR, sexual assault is right for Joe.
- But sexual assault is wrong.
- Therefore, individual relativism is false.

People could never be mistaken about their own moral beliefs because believing something makes it so.
It cannot explain why we change our minds about ethics.
Disagreeing with others makes no sense if everyone's beliefs are automatically correct for them.
This theory cannot explain moral debates or arguments.

An action is right for a person if and only if that person's culture says it's right.
An action is wrong if and only if that person's culture says it's wrong.
More popular than individual relativism but still not widely accepted among philosophers.
Commonly espoused by anthropologists and sociologists.
Morality varies from culture to culture.

If cultural relativism is true, ethics becomes sociology involving descriptive data gathering (polling public opinion) rather than philosophical argumentation.
This course makes no sense if cultural relativism were true, as it focuses on arguments.
There are truths, but no objective truths in ethics, varying from culture to culture.

Cultural Relativism implies that there are objective truths in ethics.
Rachels argues this view doesn't make sense and we don't need to be cultural relativists, even if ethical practices vary.
Most people aren't cultural relativists when considering extreme examples such as: sexual assault or female genital mutilation.
Cultural relativism can never critique another culture's practices, no matter how abhorrent they may seem.
Critiquing another culture's practice is acceptable if done with thorough understanding and tolerance, but if harmful reasons are found, critique is valid. Moral realism allows for this critique.