A refutation of moral relativism (1 Viewer)

Graney

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"A refutation of moral relativism: interviews with an absolutist" by Peter Kreeft is one of the most amazing books I've ever read.

It's written as a fictional transcript of an interview between "'Isa a Muslim fundamentalist from Palestine who teaches philosophy at the American University in Beirut. His interviewer and sparring partner is Libby Rawls, an African-American, liberal feminist journalist."

In it, every argument against absolutism is simply and clearly refuted and none of the many arguments for moral absolutism is refuted. Moral relativism is absolutely demolished, in every sense. All the popular arguements for moral relativism are put forward and soundly rejected.

What makes it so great, is he uses clear, logical, scientific reasoning to make the case for absolutism.

If you've read any of my posts, you'd know I'm an extreme relativist, so this book, and the strength of it's arguments came as a surprise to me.

I would be interested to hear from any of the intelligent bos relativists, enteebee, kfunk (I'm presuming he's a relativist?) etc..., their response to the book if they could get access to a copy.

I'd absolutely recommend it to anyone who has participated in the "does god exist thread", it's very accessible, and a strong argument.

http://www.amazon.com/Refutation-Moral-Relativism-Interviews-Absolutist/dp/0898707315

You can read it on google books, if that's desireable:
http://books.google.com.au/books?id...a=X&oi=book_result&resnum=4&ct=result#PPP1,M1
 

55HS

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Well I'm not sure if I'd really say I'm a moral relativist so much as a moral nihilist/sceptic. Sounds really good though from the reviews and while I don't really read much I do normally around christmas time order a heap of books and this just got added to the list... I'll probably bump this in 3 months :eek:
 

Graney

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Absolute Values: Peter Kreeft


A Refutation of Moral Relativism. Peter Kreeft. 1999. Ignatius Press, San Francisco.

Here are the arguments for moral relativism Kreeft believes he demolishes: 1. Absolutism has bad consequences. 2. Different cultures have different values. 3. Values are socially conditioned. 4. Relativism gives people freedom. 5. Relativism is tolerant. 6. Morality is relative to changing situations. 7. Morality is relative to changing intentions. 8. Morality can be explained by evolution as a survival device.

A relativist may raise some of these issues in a discussion of how he or she thinks people arrive at their moral values, but the assertions Kreeft puts in the mouth of his opponent as “proofs” of the truth of relativism are so weak and at times sophomoric that Kreeft’s supposed refutation of them is irrelevant to the heart of the relativist challenge: No one can provide objective support for a claim to have an absolute foundation for moral values. Because Kreeft doesn’t even acknowledge this core issue, there isn’t much need to go over any of his other objections to relativism, the less irrelevant of which are covered in my original post (August 10, 2005).

Here’s an example, though, of how he approaches difficult issues. He asserts that Auschwitz is “the fruit of moral relativism,” and as “concrete evidence” he cites Mussolini: “If relativism signifies contempt for fixed categories and men who claim to be the bearers of an objective, immortal truth … then there is nothing more relativistic than fascistic attitudes and activity … the modern relativist infers that everybody has the right to create for himself his own ideology and to attempt to enforce it with all the energy of which he is capable.” The citation is the extent of Kreeft’s argument. He doesn’t explain how this is “concrete evidence” of historical causation, particularly of events that occurred in a nation that Mussolini didn’t rule, nor why we’re supposed to take this posturing buffoon as a historian and philosopher of such acuity and learning as to consider him an authority on the true nature of moral relativism or the driving force of fascism’s absolutist ideology. In fact, did the Nazis believe that “everybody has the right to create for himself his own ideology”? Did they have contempt for the man who claimed to be the bearer the “objective, immortal truth” about the Jews among other things? Kreeft considers Nazism a form of relativism because its absolutes disagree with his, which of course are the only correct ones, a claim implicit but unproven throughout the book.

And here’s an example of how Kreeft, who claims his book offers “respectable logical arguments” from a “clear and very intelligent” viewpoint, in fact abuses language and logic. To defend the idea that changing situations “change how you should apply the rules, but they don’t change the rules” he gives the example of lying to a Nazi searching for hidden Jews: “The Nazis had no right to know that truth” so it wasn’t wrong to “deceive” them. “Lying is always wrong, and that wasn’t wrong, so that wasn’t a lie.” To safeguard the absoluteness of the rule that says “Lying is always wrong,” Kreeft redefines “lying” from “the speaking of a falsehood” to “the speaking of a falsehood when it’s not permissible to do so,” and so the rule becomes “The speaking of a falsehood when it is not permissible to do so is wrong.” Besides the irony in a professed absolutist ignoring the common meaning of a word to suit his purpose—and in particular redefining “lie” in defense of a belief in absolute truth—his raises the problem of how we’re to know, by objective standards, when “speaking a falsehood” is permissible and therefore not lying, otherwise this rule is wholly vacuous. If his semantic juggling is to be of any use, Kreeft needs to prove his claim to have such standards, and he fails to.


Kreeft’s arguments in favor of absolutism are as follows:

1. Absolutism has better consequences.

The issue of whether relativism or absolutism has “better” consequences is irrelevant to the question of which view is correct, even if one could find an objective means of weighing what consequence in a given situation is “better.”

2. Common consensus: “nearly everyone who has ever lived has been a moral absolutist.”

He acknowledges this is only a “probable,” not a conclusive argument. It’s hard to see what this could prove, even probably, even if were true: Nearly everyone who has ever lived, particularly before the twentieth century, believed in life after death. Does that make it probably true? In any event, the claim is open to more doubt than he acknowledges, and since even he doesn’t find it completely convincing, there’s no reason for someone who finds it even less so to argue it further.

3. Moral experience.
a. “The first and foundational moral experience we have is always absolutistic. Only later do you get relativism—later in the life of the individual or of the society … we can all remember what moral experience was like before we became sophisticated. It was absolute.”

Children are told what they must and must not do; early societies ruled by priests and kings laid down the law and demanded obedience. What this bit of data proves is that people and societies are told that moral rules are absolute; it doesn’t prove that they actually are.

b. “Conscience immediately detects real right and wrong, just as your senses immediately detect real colors and shapes…. Moral relativism … denies the data….Moral absolutism is empirical, or experiential. It’s data based…. we experience more than ‘what is’ as our data; we also experience ‘what ought to be’ as part of our data…we have immediate good-and-evil detectors—consciences… [This] shows that absolutism is scientific. It’s true to the data, the experience.”

The supposed data: We “immediately” know, by virtue of our God-given conscience, what is right and wrong.
Then why do people disagree? And why can’t some of them see the truth?
(The following answers aren’t quotes from Kreeft, but I think they represent fairly his approach to questions like these.) Because, although a person’s conscience is as infallible as the God whose prophet it is, people can be driven by inappropriate desires or confused by false teachings. Thus, people who say they disagree aren’t hearing clearly the voice of conscience, or are hearing it, but are lying about what their conscience tells them, and are letting things other than their conscience dictate their beliefs and actions.
How can we tell who is speaking and acting out of the genuine dictates of the one true universal conscience?
By observing whose actions are in accord with true moral teachings.
How do we know which moral teachings are true?
Our conscience immediately tells us.
But what about people who disagree with us, and make the same claim about what their conscience is telling them?
Their claims are false.
How do we know their claims are false?
Because they disagree with what our conscience tells us and with what their conscience, if they were honest and clear with themselves, would tell them.

What these data show is not that absolutism is scientific, but that Kreeft believes his conscience is absolutely infallible because he believes God made it so, and although he doesn’t tell us how he knows this is true, presumably he believes it is because the tradition he believes in told him it is, and he believes that tradition is true because his infallible conscience tells him so. And round and round, with nothing on which to rest this self-reinforcing circle of certainty.

4. How we use moral language.
a. According to C. S. Lewis, we speak as though we believe there are moral absolutes.

Even if this were true, it would hardly prove there really are such things. In addition, Lewis's standard tactic is to make it seem as though his imaginary “we’s” or “they’s” represent real-life people who of course always believe and behave as he describes—who is the universal “we” in the present assertion? The conclusions that follow from this tactic are convincing only to believers, which is what makes Lewis both a useful and useless apologist.
Christians believe in an immortal soul, but they mourn people who die, and they go to doctors when their lives are at risk; in other words, they act as if they believe a person really dies—does that “prove” the soul is mortal because people who believe it isn’t act as if it is?

b. Kreeft follows Lewis in claiming that, in essence, all moral arguments are about how to apply, in particular situations, what everyone agrees are certain universal, objective, and unchanging principles.

In addition to the weakness already mentioned of basing conclusions about the actual nature of something on how “everyone” supposedly talks about it, this version of the assertion relies on an appeal to principles “everyone” supposedly agrees on. In fact, it turns out that by “everyone,” apologists like Kreeft and Lewis mean people with values close enough to theirs for those people to be considered morally competent or reasonable. What they’re really saying is, “Based on my interpretation of what’s important and valid in the beliefs of others, I find that everyone agrees on what is right and wrong, except for people who disagree with me (for example, relativists, fascists, feminists, fanatics of relgions other than mine, sociopaths, mental incompetents, etc.), and they can be discounted because their views are obviously unacceptable to reasonable people like me,” which is hardly a convincing move in an argument for the existence of common principles.

5. “The fact that relativists act like absolutists when you do them an injustice. They say, “No fair!,” just like everybody else…they contradict themselves.”

First, acting as though there were absolute values doesn’t prove that there are. In addition, because someone’s behavior contradicts his expressed beliefs about moral values doesn’t mean his beliefs are necessarily false; it might just be difficult or inconvenient to put them into practice, or the person might indeed be a hypocrite. That doesn’t mean he hasn’t identified something true; he might be unable or unwilling to live up to it. The failure of a person to live up to his beliefs doesn’t mean those beliefs are false, something the religious apologist should be thankful for.

In addition, this claim relies on some rhetorical sleight-of-hand used by Lewis in Mere Christianity, where he describes the imaginary reactions of imaginary relativists and then claims that this is how people behave in the real world; I dealt with this in an earlier post (August 18, 2005).

And that’s pretty much the substance of Kreeft’s defense of absolute values. He throws in quite a bit of invective against people and principles he disagrees with, but he never addresses the following question: What are your objective, universal, and timeless reasons for claiming that your foundation for absolute values is true? The assertion that God came down to Abraham with the “real religion” (with the implication that Kreeft and his fellow Catholics have an absolute understanding of exactly what moral rules follow from this) isn’t good enough, and in fact, taken in conjunction with the rest of Kreeft’s performance, raises the question of just what qualifications are required to teach philosophy at Boston College.
http://pkoplin.blogspot.com/search?q="a+refutation+of+moral+relativism"

I would like to see the arguments in this book refuted, but the review above isn't convincing to me.

I find point 3 on moral experience particularly doubtfull; he overly simplifies the argument for moral experience. About certain, fundamental beliefs, concious, rational people do not disagree.
 
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pkoplin

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Thanks for quoting my review. You state that you don’t find it convincing, but you only cite an objection to point 3, an objection that is remarkably circular and thoroughly begs the issue: “About certain, fundamental beliefs, conscious, rational people do not disagree.” How do you determine who these “conscious, rational people” are? I assume that you find these to be the people who agree with you. Well, if you only grant the people who agree with you the right to be heard on what constitutes moral truth and disqualify anyone else as “irrational,” your claim comes down to saying that the fact that everyone who agrees with you agrees with you proves that there is universal consensus on what is right.

The book doesn’t confront, much less demolish, any serious argument for moral relativism, only a bunch of rather lame straw men. And the claim that Kreeft uses “clear, logical, scientific reasoning to make the case for absolutism” is completely unsupported. He offers no such reasoning beyond the circular one mentioned in my review—his completely unfounded claim that “we have immediate good-and-evil detectors—consciences,” a claim that assumes what it needs to prove: that Kreeft has objective criteria for distinguishing between a conscience that is working properly from one that is not—otherwise he’s falling into the fallacy I criticized in the previous paragraph. In fact, Kreeft’s argument is not based on “clear, logical, scientific reasoning” but on the unexamined assumption that his version of Christianity is absolutely and objectively correct. As stated in my conclusion, “he never addresses the following question: What are your objective, universal, and timeless reasons for claiming that your foundation for absolute values is true?” Without even an attempt to address that question, his book is useless for any purpose other than as an example of how not to conduct a religiously based apologetic.
 

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Graney said:
I would be interested to hear from any of the intelligent bos relativists, enteebee, kfunk (I'm presuming he's a relativist?) etc..., their response to the book if they could get access to a copy.
I happily accept the 'relativist' label when I'm feeling lazy, but my views perhaps more properly fall under moral nihilism (which avoids some of the variability in how 'relativism' is used).

The book sounds interesting, and I agree with some of his ciriticism of popular arguments for relativism (e.g. like 'tolerance is good' and 'oh hey, people believe different things!'). However, it seems that he misses out on what I see as being the stronger arguments against absolutism, and in doing so he plays the straw man game - which, in his defense, is fairly easy to do in the realm of metaethics.

If you want to read a good challenge to absolutism I strongly recommend The Myth of Morality by Richard Joyce (the best argument of this sort that I have come across).
 

Graney

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pkoplin said:
Thanks for quoting my review. You state that you don’t find it convincing, but you only cite an objection to point 3, an objection that is remarkably circular and thoroughly begs the issue: “About certain, fundamental beliefs, conscious, rational people do not disagree.” How do you determine who these “conscious, rational people” are? I assume that you find these to be the people who agree with you. Well, if you only grant the people who agree with you the right to be heard on what constitutes moral truth and disqualify anyone else as “irrational,” your claim comes down to saying that the fact that everyone who agrees with you agrees with you proves that there is universal consensus on what is right.
I agree absolutely with parts of your view. For example, when he says something along the lines of "in rejecting absolute moral truth absolutely, relativists are in themselves become absolutely"... which is an obviously rediculous reasoning, to which one must respond "so what?"

“About certain, fundamental beliefs, conscious, rational people do not disagree.”

Lets start with a simple example: greed. I don't think a moral arguement for greed (being defined as something like, excessive consumption, to the unnecessary detriment of others) can ever be made, although perhaps I can see how a nihilistic framework could possibly refute it as inconsequential...

I'm a doubting relativist, so I made this thread in the interest of the presented arguments being refuted. I was perhaps a little over enthusiastic in my initial review, given I'd never read, or even considered a resonable argument for absolutism could possibly be made.

Thanks for your recommendation kfunk, will read.
 

pkoplin

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Your argument about “greed” illustrates a significant part of the problem about finding something about which “everyone” agrees. You characterize it as “excessive consumption, to the unnecessary detriment of others.” Thus, for everyone to agree that “greed,” as here defined, is wrong, everyone would have to agree on what is “excessive” or “unecessary,” which clearly people don’t.
 

Graney

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I never used the phrase "everyone agrees" and uniform agreement has nothing to do with truth.

Just because there is no uniform agreement on what is excessive, does not mean there is not some degree at which behaviour becomes hostile to measures of social or environmental harm and sustainability.

We can use science to absolutely quantify what would be excessive consumption, to the extent of measuring what may threaten life, society, environment, sustainability.
 

Graney

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Lets broaden the scale of discussion: Is the existence of life, and the continuation of such, an absolute good, and a worthy goal?
 

Graney

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Graney said:
Lets broaden the scale of discussion: Is the existence of life, and the continuation of such, an absolute good, and a worthy goal?
In answer to my own question, outside my anthropocentric frame of reference, the truth is probabaly no. Not to say it is evil, but it doesn't really matter one way or another.

In which case all the above is bunk lol.

Kreeft's still an interesting read though to know how the other half of the world think.
 
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pkoplin

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When you stated “About certain, fundamental beliefs, conscious, rational people do not disagree” you were in fact claiming that there are moral values about which every rational person agrees—“rational” as defined by you as being a person who cannot deny what you believe to be morally true.

The problem with trying to define some sort of objective measure of social or environmental harm is that, once again, people will disagree on the point at which the cosequences of a given action—say, putting certain gases into the atmosphere by driving an automobile to work—crosses over into a “hostile” social practice and therefore constitutes a “harm.” These are always sociocultural negotiations.
 

Graney

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"rational" as I define it, is someone accepting proven evidence based logical argument presented by science. People commonly hold beliefs contrary to proven science, it doesn't mean these beliefs are valid, or should be accepted in any way as containing any kind of truth.

Just because people disagree, has nothing to do with truth.

If human actions lead to the mass extinction of species, can that ever be said to be morally fine?

If science examines the figures, and proves that X human exploitative practices will cause species extinction (something science is fully capable of), and that said activity is not absolutely, fundamentally necessary to meeting basic human needs, how can it be morally defended?

You seem to be saying that certain practices can't be scientifically proven to be unsustainable, something I find laughable. If someone was to use DDT today, would that not be an absolutely evil act?

If we accept the basic assumption about the basic good of life existing at all I posted in post #11 above, then from that a whole range of moral absolutes must be accepted.

Of course, I realise there may well be a valid nihilist challenge to this assumption. And I encourage you to make that challenge. However I am scared of the consequences of that challenge.
 
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Graney

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I apologise for how juvenile my ideas may be, especially to someone like kfunk. I've tried to get my hands on sum Nietzsche, but not a single library or bookshop in Newcastle stocks it :confused:

I'd be interested to receive recommendations on the best concise guide to modern relavist thought?
 

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People often object to the results of scientific studies on the grounds that they were improperly conducted, and such critics are not necessarily being “irrational.” Einstein once responded to an experimental result that contradicted his theory by saying, “Too bad for the experiment.” It turned out that not only was he not being irrational, he was correct.

Even if one accepted that an experiment showing that an eagle fed DDT in a lab produced eggs with thinner shells, one could argue without necessarily being irrational that such a result couldn’t legitimately be extrapolated to any significance in the natural world. And even if one did accept the latter extrapolation, one could still argue without being irrational that the agricultural and environmental tradeoffs involved justified the occasional use of DDT to protect certain crops at certain times and places. So the claim that DDT use is evil depends on a number of culturally determined values and interpretations.

Significant moral issues may be informed by, without being determined by, scientific results: A person executed in an electric chair can be shown scientifically to be indubitably dead, and sociological research can cast doubt on the deterrent effect of such executions—but the question of whether capital punishment is moral depends on the notions of justice held in the given society. Science can show that a fertilized egg can survive outside of the human body—but the question of whether such an egg may be discarded or used for research depends on how the society defines “personhood” and the rights that may come with it. The clump of developing cells within a pregnant woman can be shown scientifically to be human tissue—but the question of whether abortion is permissible depends on how society considers the woman’s rights vis-a-vis the rights (if any) of the fetus.

Moral values depend on notions such as justice, personhood, and rights, which are not scientifically measurable. The interpretations given to such notions in different social contexts can’t simply be judged “rational” or “irrational” without realizing that those labels are often determined by prior judgments about what that society considers right or wrong, in which case “rational” and “irrational” simply function as synonyms for “right” and “wrong,” respectively. Science can't say which positions on capital punishment, stem cell research, or abortion are “rational” and which are “irrational.”

Thanks for the discussion, which helps me to clarify (I hope) my views, others of which can also be found on my blog, pkoplin.blogspot.com.
 

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Graney said:
I apologise for how juvenile my ideas may be, especially to someone like kfunk. I've tried to get my hands on sum Nietzsche, but not a single library or bookshop in Newcastle stocks it :confused:

I'd be interested to receive recommendations on the best concise guide to modern relavist thought?
Unfortunately I don't know of any good concise guides that I can recommend, but I can suggest some key thinkers who examine the so called 'truth' of common morality:

- Bernard Williams Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (Go here first - Williams is a brilliant writer who seems very tuned in to the subtleties of different arguments. The book examines how the Socratic "how are we to live?" question is approached from a number of different camps and, as such, could work well as an overview of some of the issues)

- J. L. Mackie Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (the 'error theory' outlined in chapter 1 is fairly prominent in metaethics)

- David B. Wong Natural Moralities: A Defense of Pluralistic Relativism (this is the kind of relativism I try to distance myself from - in particular the suggestion that there are multiple 'true' moralities... An interesting position nonetheless)

- Simon Blackburn Essays in Quasi-Realism (... if you want to get into the underlying metaphysical arguments/problems which ethicists too often pass over, e.g. the Frege-Geach problem)

- Other relevant philosophers include Allan Gibbard, Gilbert Harman, Walter Sinnot-Armstrong, and Richard Joyce (as previously mentioned).
 

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pkoplin said:
People often object to the results of scientific studies on the grounds that they were improperly conducted, and such critics are not necessarily being “irrational.” Einstein once responded to an experimental result that contradicted his theory by saying, “Too bad for the experiment.” It turned out that not only was he not being irrational, he was correct.

Even if one accepted that an experiment showing that an eagle fed DDT in a lab produced eggs with thinner shells, one could argue without necessarily being irrational that such a result couldn’t legitimately be extrapolated to any significance in the natural world.
That's interesting. So the results of biological research are only relatively true? Can that be extended to other sciences? Is what we understand about mathematics only relatively true?

I suppose if you view one of the positivist sciences as only relatively true, you have to view them all as relatively true, given how much of biology can be validated mathematically, and how linked the disciplines are.

I find it hard to comprehend that basic arithmetic is only relatively true, but it's an interesting notion.

Or am I misreading what you're saying?
 

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Hi. I meant my example of DDT and egg shells to address the issue of whether it was necessarily "irrational" to reject the result of a scientific experiment. It might have been better to frame the question as, When should an experiment be considered "scientific"? For example, if you measured one egg before and one egg after a bird had been exposed to DDT, found that the egg laid after DDT exposure was 3% thinner, and claimed that you had proved that DDT cause shell thinning, it would be legitimate and not at all irrational to reject your claim on the grounds that you had tested too few eggs from too few birds and used too narrow a measure of damage for your result to be valid.

There is a general consensus, derived from statistical considerations, in each field for determining when an experiment is to be considered valid, but even then, results are usually given with error ranges and probabilities of being correct. At some point it might become "irrational" to continue to deny the preponderance of evidence on a given issue, but one needs to recognize that sometimes objections might have a valid basis.
 

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