re after years can we say that christian morality is in article r kh itp horus ap mchp sni de frank d s uucp frank o dwyer says specifically i d like to know what relativism concludes when two people grotesquely disagree is it a both are right b one of them is wrong and sometimes though perhaps rarely we have a pretty good idea who it is c one of them is wrong but we never have any information as to who so we make our best guess if we really must make a decision d the idea of a right moral judgement is meaningless implying that whether peace is better than war e g is a meaningless question and need not be discussed for it has no correct answer e something else a short positive assertion would be nice as i hope you can tell b and c are actually predicated on the assumption that values are real so statements like these can t consistently derive from the relativist assumption that values aren t part of objective reality i am a relativist who would like to answer your question but the way you phrase the question makes it unanswerable the concepts of right and wrong or correct incorrect or true false belong to the domain of epistemological rather than moral questions it makes no sense to ask if a moral position is right or wrong although it is legitimate to ask if it is good or better than another position let me illustrate this point by looking at the psychological derivatives of epistemology and ethics perception and motivation respectively one can certainly ask if a percept is right correct true veridical or wrong incorrect false illusory but it makes little sense to ask if a motive is true or false on the other hand it is strange to ask whether a percept is morally good or evil but one can certainly ask that question about motives therefore your suggested answers a c simply can t be considered they assume you can judge the correctness of a moral judgment now the problem with d is that it is double barrelled i agree with the first part that the rightness of a moral position is a meaningless question for the reasons stated above but that is irrelevant to the alleged implication not an implication at all that one cannot feel peace is better than war i certainly can make value judgments bad better best without asserting the correctness of the position sorry for the lengthy dismissal of a d my short e answer is that when two individuals grotesquely disagree on a moral issue neither is right correct or wrong incorrect they simply hold different moral values feelings john a johnson j j psuvm psu edu department of psychology penn state dubois campus penn state is not responsible for my behavior a ruthless doctrinaire avoidance of degeneracy is a degeneracy of another sort getting drunk and picking up bar ladies and writing metaphysics is a part of life from lila by r pirsig
