How do you know that; can you present any empirical evidence to support that contention?

Yes. We've all done surveys of hundreds if not thousands of people, all of whom have moral preferences. None of us has yet found anyone (conscious) who does not.

hundreds if not thousands of people — Terrapin Station

Out of what...8 billion?

In any case moral relativism (at least int the way you frame it) carried to its logical conclusion means that no moral stance is inherently any more valid than any other, which entails that they are all equal form that perspective.

On the other hand the overwhelming cross-cultural prevalence of certain moral stances can reasonably be used to justify the claim that some moral stances are indeed more valid than others on account of their greater efficacy for harmonious human community.

Out of what...8 billion? — Janus

When we acquire survey data we don't have to do anywhere near 8 billion people. But it's far more survey data than the norm, because it's a survey we've all done.

carried to its logical conclusion means that no moral stance is inherently any more valid than any other, — Janus

Both inherent properties and validity are category errors here, so that's hardly a criticism of moral relativism.

But yeah, from a perspective that's completely irrelevant to morality, and completely irrelevant to any person's view, all moral stances are equal.

On the other hand the overwhelming cross-cultural prevalence of certain moral stances can reasonably be used to justify the claim that some moral stances are indeed more valid than others — Janus

Again, validity is a category error.

greater efficacy for harmonious human community. — Janus

X is harmonious, where there's any normative connotation to that

It's better to be harmonious than otherwise

X is more prevalent than y, where there's any normative connotation to that

Are all subjective preferences.

When we acquire survey data we don't have to do anywhere near 8 billion people. But it's far more survey data than the norm, because it's a survey we've all done. — Terrapin Station

If we want to rule out the possibility that there is someone who has no moral preferences we do. In any case you didn't address this:

In any case moral relativism (at least int the way you frame it) carried to its logical conclusion means that no moral stance is inherently any more valid than any other, which entails that they are all equal from that perspective. — Janus

Your second sentence reads like gibberish to me, so I can't comment on it.

Firstly, it should be obvious to you that I wasn't using the term 'validity' in the sense that pertains to formal logic.

And secondly if a moral stance promotes harmonious human community (which is the whole reason behind morals) then it is a more valid, that is a more appropriate and effective, response than a moral stance that promotes disharmony.

The very idea of a moral stance that promotes disharmony is invalid.

You're arguing with your own reference. I recommend you try reading it and understanding it. What you're debating is open to neither opinion nor debate, any more than when water boils. As to what you think validity means in this context, you are quite mistaken. Validity is a function of form, period. You need only read to see it.

If you want to do some of the heavy lifting, feel free to make an argument against my position that:

Slavery is morally wrong in all circumstances, in every time, and no matter the individual that is evaluating it.

I would be interested in hearing your argument. If you feel no compulsion to change my mind, I am fine with that as well. — Rank Amateur

No, your burden of proof is not mine. It is a fallacy to try to shift the burden of proof. Either concede or present your argument. Stop wasting time and be honest.

If moral relativism were true, then from the point of view of the disinterested observer all moral positions on any issue would be equally valid. — Janus

Oh no, not you too. No, the disinterested observer would observe that on any given moral issue, there is a right or wrong in a relative sense, and also that with regard to moral standards, there is a better or worse in a relative sense. Your inference is not rational.

No, your burden of proof is not mine. It is a fallacy to try to shift the burden of proof. Either concede or present your argument. Stop wasting time and be honest. — S

i have no idea at all what you are talking about.

You're the one rephrasing my argument to make it sound as if there's some question about whether or not I condone FGM. Do you even know what moral relativism is? — Isaac

I know you don't condone FGM, and I think I know what relativism is...

The point I'm trying to make by harping on your reaction to my statement that "per our moral values, FGM is objectively immoral" is that within a given relative moral framework of starting values we can come to positions of reasonable confidence regarding the aptitude of possible actions toward values-service, and the only sensical way to communicate our reasonable conclusions is with language that reflects our epistemic confidence; relativism need not be extended to how we feel about the utility of possible actions because the kind of knowledge that results from empirical observation can be tested for objective strength. Once we've agreed upon starting values, there are no more meaningful relativist implications on moral debate/morality in practice. Again, when we forget morality as ever supposedly having to do with objective values in the first place, and just treat it as a realm of strategy pertaining to how to achieve our goals (note: there is a useful distinction between hedonism/individual utilitarian calculus and a calculus which actually considers the values of others, which is amorality vs morality, (conflict v cooperation, basically), then it is true prima facie that some moral strategies are better or worse than others, in exactly the same way that some moves in a given chess game are strategically inferior or superior toward achieving the desired outcome.

So, in a nut shell: I'm trying to say that we can have strong inductive knowledge that certain practices, such as FGM, do not serve human/social welfare. If accurate, this means that if someone condones FGM because they think it does serve human.social welfare, they're "incorrect" according to our best knowledge. I suppose you can say that this falls outside the realm of morality (if we define morality by its relation to "objective values", which don't seem to exist), but in practice and common parlance it never does.

I realize that morality in practice is different from the most broad possible definition of morality, but why must we define morality in relation to whether or not moral values can be somehow metaphysically/objectively true or not in the first place (which captures the entire relevant distinction of subjective relativism). If we both think that human values are merely physical happenstance, let's just accept that and give morality an ontological definition befitting what it is: sets of emergent, strategic, human-values-serving (cooperative) frameworks. This way we get a descriptive meta-ethical framework that can adequately capture the whole gambit of moral values and frameworks that exist in the wild, while also not exposing our epistemic throats to meta-ethical truth claims which define morality in fundamentally different terms (it can be simultaneously true that god exists, has a perfect "moral" plan, and the Mormon religion faithfully serves it, and that the Mormon moral framework, and other frameworks, are human-values-serving strateges that either do or do not effectively serve the fundamental values of humans).

What do you think I've been presenting (with regards to vaccines)? Reasoning as to why one might not want to immunise a child. What bit of my responses on the subject do not come under the category of 'reasoning'? It just comes down to the fact that you don't agree with my reasoning, not that I haven't presented an — Isaac

You offered reasons as to why people might be reasonably ignorant of the merits of proven vaccines (once again using a kind of epistemic relativism, not one based on values). The desire to get into heaven can plausibly be framed as a value, but the existence of heaven (at least, our ability to have meaningful empirical indication about whether or not heaven exists) is firstly an empirical question; if I could prove or show it to be likely that heaven exists, we would also inherently desire to go there as well (it's not a values disagreement, it's a disagreement about facts in the external world).

Have you read anything about how "clinical trials' are conducted? I suggest Ben Goldacre's Bad Pharma, or just just read his blog, or the Statistical Society's, or AllTrials, or just about any reputable interest group. Ben's blog has got 37 articles about the misbehaviour of the pharmaceutical industry, and given his other work against homeopathy and and the anti-vax movement, he's hardly trying to bring civilisation down. — Isaac

This is called cherry-picking. It's a kind of reasoning, it's just highly fallible. We cannot draw reliable conclusions about the amount of misbehavior in the medical industry at large by focusing only on grossest instances of negligence we can find. I know (I think) I don't need to explain this to you, but I guess my point comes out so mundane that you keep missing it.

How many though? For a parent, they want to know if the actual drug they are agreeing to inject into their child is going to be worth the risk. Their child, not the average child. So let's say I'm the parent of a five-year old. What epidemiological study should I be looking at to show the long-term benefits for a breastfed child, with a diet high in fresh vegetables, a low stress environment with only small isolated groups of children and good personal hygiene (all of which the WHO list as having significant effect on immune response). Show me a study following that specific group (or even one close to it) and I might be convinced, otherwise it's just about choosing risk categories. As I said, my chances of dying in a plane crash are zero, I don't fly, so why should I learn the safety procedure just because studies show it saves lives? — Isaac

You can start with fundamentally basic statistical analysis that tracks the correlation of reduction in disease outbreaks with their corresponding vaccine usage and spread. There are plenty of epidemiological studies that can help us understand the nature and importance of "herd immunity", which can change how people look at the risks involved to begin with. It would actually be ideal for your child to be surrounded by immunized children, because then there is a far smaller chance of disease spreading through an immunized community. As one of the only non-immunized child, they would actually pose a threat to the others, because vaccines are not 100% effective, because we cannot give some of them to children who are too young, and because some people with compromised immune systems cannot get some of them at all; lacking vaccines increases the likelihood of an individual being the vector that spreads disease to others. As the anti-vax movement expands, we've started to see outbreaks of diseases in communities that have been almost entirely eliminated for decades (google "recent measles outbreaks"). Anti-vax hot-spots are seeing outbreaks, and the communities where the un-vaccinated travel to are also being put at risk. It's a straight up fact that if our densely populated cities consisted of mostly unvaccinated people, we would be dealing with massive outbreak after massive outbreak of the same diseases that killed so many in relatively recent history. There's kind of a game-theory catch-22: if vaccines do pose some risks to individuals, and if everyone else is vaccinated, then you don't really need to get vaccinated yourself (except if the odds of contracting disease from a natural source rather than from other people is greater than the risk of taking a vaccine), but if everyone tried to get away with that then it would become safer to actually get the vaccinations (given the inevitable outbreaks of known diseases we've been successful in "eradicating" (read: mitigating through vaccines)).

The medical science community is not at all divided about the importance of wide-spread vaccinations, and any quick glance at the available data strongly supports why. If you are unvaccinated, your chances of dying from vaccine related complications are zero (as opposed to a fraction of a fraction of of one percent if you were deemed healthy enough and received it), but your chances of dying from infectious disease drastically rises. You can ask me to prove this with scientific rigor for each and every individual case, but I can't. Medical doctors do take into account the strength of given immune systems before they administer vaccines, I just don't see the opinions of parents as being reasonable or reasonably persuasive when compared to the experience based knowledge of medical doctors (backed and informed by a plethora of experimental/real world evidence).

Maybe we should start a new thread about the risks and rewards of vaccinations (I'm not sure if you actually think they're based in sufficiently strong science or not). In any case, the relativity of ignorance is of no merit in a debate over empirical facts.

I have no problem with using evidence and reason. The trouble is, you seem to. I have been presenting evidence and reason as to why a parent might reject vaccination. I've not argued they might reject vaccines without any reasons, I've given reasons and you ignored them all because they don't give you the answer you decided on before the argument even began. A basic understanding of human psychology is all that's required. — Isaac

You're trying to persuade me into thinking that reason and evidence are unpersuasive by using classically fallacious reasoning and evidence. There is some elegance to that, granted, but all you're really establishing is that reason and evidence, in practice, clash against a boundary of ignorance. My point though, is that better reasoning and better evidence (and better access to it) push back harder against that boundary. I don't know what your epistemological frameworks necessarily looks like, but mine does assume that the better our predictive models conform to existing and experimental evidence/observations, the more closely they tend to approximate reliable "truth". I'm not saying everyone needs to accept the evidence in regards to FGM and vaccines (as you say, psychological circumstance prevents it), I'm trying to make the point that better evidence leads to better predictive power, and under a meta-ethical framework of morality as predictive models pursuing relative values, founding them in better evidence also leads to better predictive power (more effective strategies; superior moral decisions, per the given values). I'm making a case for moral progress that makes sense regardless of the facts of meta-ethical relativism. We no longer tolerate lynch mobs, for instance, because we've managed to erect a more effective system of protecting and delivering what we think justice is. In our environment and given our values, lynch mobs are approximately objectively less effective, to the point of being dangerous toward the service of justice, than a well trained and publicly sanctioned police force and equitable court system. Habeus corpus is objectively a good thing relative to our values, unless social circumstances somehow change.

Under the constant application of relativism, you can say that whether or not lynch mobs are more effective is a matter of subjective perception and opinion, so how can we say they are less moral/immoral? Everything becomes amoral, and the entire pool of moral language (and anything it branches in to, such as empirical claims) is set upon the relative road to moral nihilism.

You're equivocating. You argue for the seeming uncontroversial "we should use reason and evidence to determine our actions", but what you're actually saying is that reason and evidence, once applied, provide us with a single correct answer, and that's a much more controversial claim which remains unsupported. — Isaac

Single correct answer is not quite right. "directs us toward better answers" is more the point, and it is backed up by inductive reasoning and experimental evidence. The only apparent difference between our meta-ethical frameworks is that yours focuses on denying objectivity while mine highlights the only way in which our moral decisions can be "objective", which is higher on the spectrum of predictive reliability, relative to given moral values.

P.S I'm sorry for making such lengthy responses; I try to help it. Feel free to condense your response into paragraph form sans-quotation if you prefer.

In any case moral relativism (at least in the way you frame it) carried to its logical conclusion means that no moral stance is inherently any more valid than any other, which entails that they are all equal from that perspective. — Janus

Bad argument. It basically says that from an assumption outside of moral relativism, there's a problem with moral relativism. But the problem with that is that assumptions from outside of moral relativism are irrelevant to moral relativism. If you can demonstrate that morality works or makes sense without moral relativism, then go ahead. That carries a burden. It can't just be assumed. That'd be begging the question.

On the other hand the overwhelming cross-cultural prevalence of certain moral stances can reasonably be used to justify the claim that some moral stances are indeed more valid than others on account of their greater efficacy for harmonious human community. — Janus

That some moral frameworks lead to consequences you view as beneficial is not that those moral frameworks are logically sound. That's a fallacious appeal to the consequences.

And that's the question: which moral framework is logically sound. This is meta-ethics, not normative ethics.

But yeah, from a perspective that's completely irrelevant to morality, and completely irrelevant to any person's view, all moral stances are equal. — Terrapin Station

Yes. And that's the problem. It's like saying all of that, or like saying, "If I beg the question, then there's a problem with moral relativism".

And secondly if a moral stance promotes harmonious human community (which is the whole reason behind morals) then it is a more valid, that is a more appropriate and effective response than a moral stance that promotes disharmony. — Janus

Your consequentialist views are only appropriate in normative ethics, which is not what this is. In meta-ethics, it is a fallacious appeal to the consequences.

Bad argument. It basically says that from an assumption outside of moral relativism, there's a problem with moral relativism. — S

Not at all; it says that the essence of moral relativism as Terrapin frames it (and I'm not saying that is the only possible framing) is that all moral arguments are equal apart from individual preferences; and it doesn't say that is a "problem" for moral relativism, but on the contrary that that is its nature, for better or for worse.

That some moral frameworks lead to consequences you view as beneficial is not that those moral frameworks are logically sound. That's a fallacious appeal to the consequences. — S

Wrong again. The very purpose of mores is to engender social harmony. Whether or not there is social harmony has nothing to do with what how I view things.

i have no idea at all what you are talking about. — Rank Amateur

Then you are pretty clueless. You tried to manipulate me into making an argument against something you haven't bothered to attempt to support. I rejected that and exposed it for what it is. The burden of proof is on you if you make that claim. And if you don't make that claim because you can't support it, then be honest enough to admit that. Do you know how the burden of proof works? Do you understand what intellectual honesty is, and why it is important? Or do I have to educate you about all of the basics in philosophy?

Wrong again (you're not doing too well today!); what I said has nothing to do with consequentialism which is about the specific effects of moral actions as measured in terms of the "greater good".

It's very simple really; a society in which murder was considered virtuous could never be a harmonious one and would not even survive for long.

You can't plausibly deny that the purpose of mores is to engender social harmony.

Oh no, not you too. No, the disinterested observer would observe that on any given moral issue, there is a right or wrong in a relative sense, and also that with regard to moral standards, there is a better or worse in a relative sense. Your inference is not rational. — S

Really? And on what basis would the disinterested observer "observe" (don't you mean 'judge'?) that "there is a right and wrong in a relative sense" or a 'better or worse in a relative sense"? Relative to what?

Not at all; it says that the essence of moral relativism as Terrapin frames it (and I'm not saying that is the only possible framing) is that all moral arguments are equal apart from individual preferences; and it doesn't say that is a "problem" for moral relativism, but on the contrary that that is its nature, for better or for worse. — Janus

It is simply not true that under moral relativism, all moral arguments are equal, nor that that is "its nature". And under moral relativism, there is no "apart from" individual preferences, if that's what morality is necessarily relative to. You can't break that connection from within moral relativism, and you can't do so from outside of it without begging the question.

Wrong again. The very purpose of mores is to engender social harmony. Whether or not there is social harmony has nothing to do with what how I view things. — Janus

That's not a relevant meta-ethical point. The question is which meta-ethical framework is true: moral relativism, moral absolutism, error theory, emotivism, etc.

That doesn't even address that, except as a fallacious appeal to the consequences.

It's very simple really; a society in which murder was considered virtuous could never be a harmonious one and would not even survive for long. — Janus

The problem is that that's not logically relevant in the appropriate context of meta-ethics, except by connecting the dots as a fallacious appeal to the consequences. It doesn't validly lead to any logically relevant conclusion in the meta-ethical debate going on between meta-ethical moral relativism and other meta-ethical positions.

Whether what you say is true or false, given the context, it is either a fallacy of irrelevance or a non sequitur.

allow me to recap.

We finally get to a point where we understand each other's view. I say great I understand and disagree.

You don't like that and ask me to argue my view of morality to you

I say I have no interest in making such an argument to you. I have no need to change your view.

You ask again

I still say no

You say come on argue your point.

I say no, but if you want to argue I am wrong go ahead.

You call me names, and demand my unconditional surrender

It is always a special time dealing with you.

I say I have no interest in making such an argument to you. I have no need to change your view.

You ask again

I still say no

You say come on argue your point.

I say no, but if you want to argue I am wrong go ahead.

You call me names, and demand my unconditional surrender

It is always a special time dealing with you. — Rank Amateur

Jesus Christ. I just want you to be intellectually honest for once. You do not have to try to support your view. I am not demanding that. I am demanding that you be intellectually honest about why that is instead of constantly running away like a coward. You are not an honourable debater, and this is something I find deeply offensive.

A disinterested person can certainly observe, but if he doesn’t care about the observation, he would have no reason to judge it. The equality of the respective moralities would then be, equally insignificant. But he could still have an opinion.

It is simply not true that under moral relativism, all moral arguments are equal, nor that that is "its nature". And under moral relativism, there is no "apart from" individual preferences, if that's what morality is necessarily relative to. You can't break that connection from within moral relativism, and you can't do so from outside if it without begging the question. — S

This wrong for two reasons. Firstly there is no reason why moral relativism cannot be considered dispassionately, from outside it and 'apart from" individual preferences; that is it has no justifiable claim to be sacrosanct.

Secondly all moral arguments are, apart from their being individually preferred, all equal, simply because there can be, under the assumption of moral relativism, no normative criteria by which one can be assessed to be better than another.

The fact that individuals prefer one argument to another is irrelevant because that cannot be used to establish that one is in fact better than another, unless you were to use the preponderance of individual preference of one argument over another, but that would be to deny moral relativism and would hence be a performative contradiction if a moral relativist used it.

I think that if a disinterested person observed a whole bunch of moral relativists expressing their different moral opinions and arguments, she would not, in fact could not, find that there is, within the very criteria with which the moral relativists justify their own positions (which is just that they happen to prefer them) any reason to prefer one over the other. And the obvious conclusion would be that they are all equal.

Either: it's the same answer. Not immoral in itself, only immoral in the sense of moral relativism.

Moral relativism has a parallel in existential nihilism, so it might help to think about it in that way. There's no meaning in the world itself, the meaning stems from us. — S

If moral truth can only stem from subjective starting values (we agree on this) what purpose does the "amoral" descriptor serve beyond reaffirming our lack of objective metaphysical/existential foundation for our starting values?

Relativism only needs to rear its unfortunate head in the face of exclusive or competing values. And as we so often agree on those fundamental value, can't we carry on with an objective comparison of our proposed methods of serving those values?

So you're just being annoying by differing from me semantically? You have yet to learn that I'm always right, and that there should be a single unified meaning, namely my own meaning. One day I'll become a dictator and enforce my own unified meaning, like in 1984 — S

:grin:

I'm saying you should accept the overwhelming utility of moral pragmatism, which in order to be persuasive, must commandeer the definition of "morality" (to allow us to make evidence based moral rebukes), in a way that also redefines "amorality".

From your perspective I'm ignoring the implications of relativism, but from my perspective you're ignoring the implications of pragmatism (what is true for us in practice or useful/necessary to serve our values). IF we want an effective or pragmatic moral framework, then being rationally persuasive matters, objectively.

Meta-ethics is firstly about what's the case, then what's the best way of speaking about it. (That's actually what most if not all topics in philosophy are about, or what they should be about). So I conclude moral anti-realism, but then conclude moral relativism over error theory or emotivism. The differences between the positions I mentioned have much to do with how we should interpret moral language, but also about what is actually the case. — S

I'm not an epistemological anti-realist so maybe this is why you see my distinction as trivial; I'm interested in whether or not moral strategies conform with predictive power to an external world; that's the only coherent way I can see to compare and evaluate them in the face of subjective starting values (aside from attacking the internal consistency of given values hierarchies). Yes there is no objective truth component to our fundamental values, but what matters to us still matters to us, and this has always impelled us forward into the world of applied ethics, uncertainty or no.

I really enjoy the comparison of normative moral frameworks and moral decisions to chess strategies and tactics. Uncertainty is inherent with any strategy, and chess is a particularly good way to show how many different strategic methods and tactical options there are across a range of situations, but it is also a good way to show how some strategies and methods are better or worse than others. Chess shows how statistically superior strategic decisions converge toward some strategies and away from others. It shows that some strategies and tactics, and hence moral frameworks and moral decisions, are objectively superior/interior (or or less effective at serving given values) than others.

There is no meta-ethics; there is only ethics. Ethics talking about itself is part of ethics, just as philosophy talking about itself is part of philosophy. Try not to be hoodwinked by the fashionable notions of 'meta" disciplines and your thinking should improve.

This wrong for two reasons. Firstly there is no reason why moral relativism cannot be considered dispassionately, from outside it and 'apart from" individual preferences; that is it has no justifiable claim to be sacrosanct. — Janus

That's fine, but then you have to explain the supposed logical relevance. It doesn't pose a problem internally for any moral relativist, and if you are trying to criticise moral relativism externally, then you must support your external premises, whatever they might be.

Secondly all moral arguments are, apart from their being individually preferred, all equal, simply because there can be, under the assumption of moral relativism, no normative criteria by which one can be assessed to be better than another. — Janus

To the best of my knowledge, there is no "apart from" any subjective standard that makes any sense of morality. But there are evidently subjective standards of better and worse which can be appealed to in order to make sense of morality.

The fact that individuals prefer one argument to another is irrelevant because that cannot be used to establish that one is in fact better than another... — Janus

There is no "in fact better than another" beyond facts relating to subjective judgement. You need to justify that assumption.

Really? And on what basis would the disinterested observer "observe" (don't you mean 'judge'?) that "there is a right and wrong in a relative sense" or a 'better or worse in a relative sense"? Relative to what? — Janus

Yes, really. Descriptive moral relativism is pretty damn obvious, even to disinterested observers. Even Noah Te Stroete, who is strongly against meta-ethical moral relativism, accepted descriptive moral relativism.

Relative to a subjective standard. I don't appeal outside of myself to make value judgements about whose moral judgement is better or worse. That makes zero sense. It is in fact absurd.

And yes, it isn't really a matter of observation. It is necessarily a matter of evaluation.

I could care less if you do or do not make an argument. Suit yourself.

I could care less if you do or do not make an argument. Suit yourself. — Rank Amateur

You've been exposed as evasive, manipulative, and intellectually dishonest. I want nothing more to do with you. But I hope you see the error in your ways.