Moral Relativism

[Tunco]

I've recently been indulging in this book called The Moral Landscape [for author's website, here]; it makes some very strong points about morality, about how we can come up with a universal moral system based on what we already know about the human brain and how the states of the human brain relates to the states of the world, hence, he argues that we can have a science of morality based on the common ground of what Harris calls 'human well-being'. He argues that this concept is the only thing we can reasonably value in the name of 'morality'.

The book is mostly written in a non-academic manner and is very easy the grasp if you have some basic gist of a few famous philosophical ideas.

Here's a relevant TED talk the author, Sam Harris, has made.

Needless to mention, the book has persuaded me with its ideas (so far), one of them being the invalidity of moral relativism. Two short key excerpts from the book, directly about this point:

Many of these people also claim that a scientific foundation for morality would serve no purpose for any case. They think we can combat human evil all the while knowing that our notions of "good" and "evil" are completely unwarranted. It is always amusing when these same people hesitate to condemn specific instances of patently abominable behavior. I don't think one has fully enjoyed the life of the mind until one has seen a celebrated scholar defend the "contextual" legitimacy of the burqa, or of female genital mutilation, a mere thirty seconds after announcing that moral relativism does nothing to diminish a person's commitment to making the world a better place.

Moral relativism, however, tends to be self-contradictory. Relativists may say that moral truths exist only relative to a specific cultural framework - but this claim about the status of moral truth purports to be true across all possible frameworks. In practice, relativism almost always amounts to the claim that we should be tolerant of moral difference because no moral truth can supersede any other. And yet this commitment to tolerance is not put forward as simply one relative preference among others deemed equally valid. Rather, tolerance is held to be more in line with the (universal) truth about morality than intolerance is. ... Given how deeply disposed we are to make universal moral claims, I think one can reasonably doubt whether any consistent moral relativist has ever existed.

[Tanner]

Let me begin by saying that I respect Sam Harris more by his association with the Four Horsemen of New Atheism than anything else but I do respect him. But I disagree that this book, The Moral Landscape, makes a strong case against moral relativism. Firstly, the parts where he actually gets into neuroscience (and science in general) are very good and very interesting. Unfortunately, those are this book's best times by far. Perhaps if it had been written in a more academic manner, we might have seen some stronger arguments therein but the rest of the book is full of rhetoric against religion (which I appreciate but it's not an argument against moral relativism), and a strong application of general utilitarianism to morality which, I think, appeals to many intellectuals (it certainly appeals to me) but, again, isn't a strong argument against moral relativism except in that it provides another alternative (if you can call it an alternative since it's been around for hundreds of years).

In the end, I found it be a fun thing to troll Christians with but nothing more.

Also, Donfuy, your poll is ambiguous.

[Tunco]

I don't think it's possible persuade anyone even slightly if the person in inquiry is questioning your premise on a meta-physical basis. He states throughout the book, especially in endnotes that this sort of (philosophical) skepticism doesn't really make sense, i.e. It wouldn't make much sense to question the basis of the ideas he adheres to -moral realism and consequentialism- in his quest to developing a 'valid', 'real', etc. human value (in this case, "human well-being").

I don't think it is useful to even discuss whether his pragmatic approach is 'valid', since, both sides of the argument could argue, at any point, that the other side's proposition resides on false concepts, (concepts that need their concomitant ones in order to be intelligible) hence the whole debate would be null. I think a valid analogy would be two people trying to speak completely different languages and yet trying to draw a conclusion to a problem.

I get what you're saying; and it's very frustrating that any idea could be rejected on the framework of some sort of 'meta' thinking. I don't think it will ever be possible to reconcile the world of the meta-physical with what we take for 'physical', (the word is starting to lose its meaning here) which is kind of depressing.