moral relativism what if we all agree was re after etc frank d s uucp frank o dwyer writes in article q rusnews w w mantis co uk mathew mathew mantis co uk writes got it in one similarly a moral relativist will not judge one moral syste to be better than another in every possible circumstance this does not however preclude him from judging one moral system to be better than anothe in a specific set of circumstances nor does it preclude a set of moral relativists from collectively judging a moral system from some set of circumstances which they all agree they are in o k this makes sense to me i m serious you ve explained something to me which i never understood before but just for grins suppose we almost all agree that we are in a set of circumstances called reality what then then we all live happily ever after seriously if we all agreed on the circumstances we re in i suspect we d all agree on the best course of action unfortunately i have no confidence that such a situation will ever arise some of us think there s a big god in the sky some don t some think they ve been chosen by god others disagree some think they are infallible others think otherwise until those disagreements over circumstances can be ironed out there s little hope of everyone agreeing or say for all practical intents and purposes there is no frame of reference in which thus and such is good isn t that approximately objective in the same way that we usually expect a speeding bullet to outrun a snail yes i think that for example only a vanishingly small number of people would hold that there s a frame of reference in which gassing six million jews is good so that s probably about as close to an objective moral value as i ve encountered in my life so far for example if we hear of a bomb in a crowded area isn t it a rather sensible first guess that this is an immoral act even though there conceivably might be some tail end case that would justify it well i think your example s poor if the bomb s in iraq for example and was dropped by an american plane many people would hold that it was a moral act and what weasel word do you use to describe that frame of reference if it isn t an objective reality for values i m sorry i can t parse an objective reality for values could you tr y again s an objective reality for values some values are real even in the face of disagreement i still don t quite see what you re trying to say i assume by values you mean moral values yes in which case what do you mean by real what is a real moral value as opposed to an unreal one i mean to say that values are as real as horses whatever you understand by a horse being real is pretty much what i mean about a value being real hmm so these moral values have a perceptible physical presence if you are saying that some moral systems are better than others in your opinion then all you get is infinite regress sorry but in what way is it an infinite regress it looks extremely finite to me i meant that it s never more than your opinion right and the chain ends right there the buck stops with me it s not an infinite regress you ve clarified this for me above my understanding is now that if a supermajority of relativists agree that thus and such is wrong in almost any or all frames of reference then they re saying something which is to all practical intents and purposes no different than what i m saying right the key point however is that there are vanishingly few of these moral issues where we can get of people to agree on the outcome for all frames of reference and agree on the frames of reference what you do not get is any justification for saying that the moral system of the terrorist is inferior to that of the man of peace sorry but that s not so i can provide a justification for asserting that the moral system of the terrorist is inferior to that of the man of peace i just can t provide a justification which works in all possible circumstances logically possible or actually possible i can t manage either killing hitler using a car bomb would have been a terrorist act but i have to admit that i couldn t exactly condemn it although there are tricky philosophical issues to do with hindsight by which i mean are you stretching possible to include events such as the atoms in my terminal switching places so that the terminal turns upside down or do you think it likely that circumstances will arise in which terrorism is superior to peace i think that circumstances have already arisen where terrorism would have been better than peace better in terms of numbers of innocent people killed assuming it was successful terrorism of course mathew
