Witnessing people you believe to be moral now supporting genocide will create strange inconsistencies like that.
It is not a genocide if god’s chosen people do it!
For the people not getting it:
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They treat morals as opinions.
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They also treat their personal opinions like they’re the absolute best opinion.
Another way:
They think everyone likes different ice cream flavors and that’s fine. They like Rocky Road flavor. They also think anyone who doesn’t is a monster.
Convictions are one thing. But they need to be logically consistent. Saying morality is subjective but you’re evil if you don’t subscribe to my personal version is illogical.
Let’s say we decide that
moralswhat is right and wrong is decided entirely by ourselves. Then it makes perfect sense to defend your own opinions and to disagree with people who disagree with your stance on right and wrong. You chose those morals after all. It’s kinda part of the deal that they can’t apply to you alone (example: when is it just to kill?)So I don’t see a contradiction.
I guess this post is about Inability to engage with a different set of morals. But assuming that their is an absolute truth for right and wrong wouldn’t solve that issue, so I’m not sure why they brought it up.
The issue is believing that everyone has a right to their beliefs but then attacking them. It’s like in cultural anthropology: you should only judge a culture by its own internal morals and standards and not impose your outside view when studying them. Kinda like Star Trek Prime Directive.
If you TRULY believe everyone is entitled to their own morals, then you’re breaking that when you criticize someone else’s. After all, they have their own morals system and you’re perfectly fine with that. Your morals can only include your actions. If you believe that your morals are objectively the best, you’re no longer thinking the first thing anymore. It’s subjectivism vs objectivism.
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I’m not quite following. From my recollection meta ethics deal with the origins of morality, with absolutism being that morality is as inherent to nature as, say, gravity is, and relativism that morality is a social construct we have made up.
Is it hypocrisy to acknowledge something is a social construct while also strongly believing in it?
If I grew up in the 1400s I’d probably hold beliefs more aligned with the values of the time. I prefer modern values because I grew up in modern society. I find these values superior but also acknowledge my reason for finding them superior ultimately boils down to the sheer random chance of when and where I was born.
I don’t believe he’s commenting on whether morality is actually absolute or relative, but rather pointing out the irony that those who strongly believe it’s subjective are appalled by the seemingly logical consequence that individuals reach different conclusions and disagree.
The misunderstanding I see here is in the definition of “subjective”.
Subjective is often used interchangeably with opinion. And people can certainly have different opinions.
But the subjective that is meant is that morals don’t exist without a subject, aka a mind to comprehend them.
A rock exists whether or not a mind perceives the rock. The rock is objective. It is a physical object.
The idea that it is wrong to harm someone for being different is subjective. It is an idea. A thought. The thought does not exist without a mind.
So yes. Morals are all subjective. Morals do not exist in the physical world. Morals are not objects, they do not objectively exist. They exist within a subject. Morals subjectively exist.
That does not mean that any set of morals is okay because it’s just an opinion, bro. Because it’s not just an opinion. Those subjective values effect objective reality.
But suffering objectively exists. I know this. I experience this. It is an objectively immoral experience that exists in this reality that I am calling ‘suffering’.
That pretty much enough for moral objectivism for me on some level.
Do no harm, do only good. In that order.
The keyword there is experience.
You are a subject. Suffering isn’t an object, it’s a feeling. A concept.
Subjective doesn’t mean “not real”. It’s something that needs a subject to exist. The suffering, just like morals, do exist. They are real, they can be measured, they can be discussed, they have real effects.
What makes them subjective isn’t “well that’s like, just your opinion, man”, it’s the fact that without a subject to experience them, they would cease to exist.
To you I am subjective. But from where I am sitting it isn’t.
You have a physical presence in space. That’s objective. Emphasis on object. Something being objective doesn’t mean “this is a fact”, it means it has physical form.
The pain you feel is not an object. It’s an experience. Again, that does not translate to “that’s your opinion”. It is real, it simply is not a physical object.
Objective and Subjective are both real. They’re mind and matter, not opinions and facts.
Woah there buddy, I said suffering. Not Pain. Distinct difference that nullifies your point as it’s completely irrelevant, talking about something else sorry.
Alright. Is suffering an object?
I think this is a bit too simple. Suppose I say that moral badness, the property, is any action that causes people pain, in the same way the property of redness is the quality of surfaces that makes people experience the sensation of redness. If this were the case, morality (or at least moral badness) would absolutely not be a subjective property.
Whether morality is objective or subjective depends on what you think morality is about. If it’s about things that would exist even if we didn’t judge them to be the way they are, it’s objective. If it’s about things that wouldn’t exist unless we judge them to be the way they are, it’s subjective.
Nobody used the word subjective. What are you on about?
So you legitimately don’t recognize the screenshot as being fundamentally based around the issues of subjectivity and objectivity?
I mean… what are you on about?
I think you should read more carefully in the future, but this time I’ll explain it to you: The OP used the word relative. The reply went into a discussion about how the word subjective has a narrow meaning in philosophy that isn’t the same as the common usage. The OP was not discussing subjectivity in the sense of the reply, nor did it use the word subjective.
Probably in relation to the use of ‘relative’, I guess a synonym for subjective?
(Edit) I thought is was an interesting comment btw
Yeah, I guess. Maybe they misread the OP. I agree that it was interesting, though completely irrelevant to the statement in the OP.
Honestly, those two points don’t seem incompatible to me. For example:
Teaching the history of fashion to undergrads in 1985 is bizarre because:
- They insist that standards of dress are entirely relative. Being dressed decently is a cultural construct; some cultures wear hardly any clothing whatsoever and being nude is a completely normal, default way of presenting yourself.
- And yet when I walk into class with my dick and balls hanging out, they all get extremely offended and the coeds threaten to call the police.
(And yes I changed the year because I’m sick of so many of these issues being brought up as though “the kids these days” are the problem, when so often these are issues that have been around LITERALLY FOREVER.)
I’m not trying to dunk on this Henry Shelvin guy – I’m certain that he knows a lot more about philosophy than me, and has more interesting thoughts about morals than I do. And I’m also not going to judge someone based on a tweet…aside from the obvious judgement that they are using Twitter, lol. But as far as takes go, this one kinda sucks.
And yet when I walk into class with my dick and balls hanging out, they all get extremely offended and the coeds threaten to call the police.
Cancel culture today is out of control.
We used to have academic freedom. Now we just have sensitivity trainings and PANTS. SHACKLES OF THE MIND, I TELL YOU!
Well because we have indecent exposure laws. Hanging your dick and balls out in public is not relevant to cancel culture or fashion.
Removed by mod
you’re an asshole if you make a big deal about someone doing some drugs.
Did you respond to the wrong person? I was talking about displaying your cock and balls in public being illegal. Where did this come from?
laws and morality don’t really correlate.
ok. yes thats right. what are you talking about though? when did we start talking about morality?
The woke mind virus strikes again.
No, that is not the direct equivalence. The direct equivalence for 2. Would be something like
“But then they insist that being naked is never acceptable and is grotesque, and anyone that disagrees is a gross pervert”
That’s where the inconsistency comes from
Can both points not be true? There will be local morals and social morals that differ from place to place with overarching morals that tend to be everywhere.
Not all morals or beliefs have to be unshakable or viewed as morally reprehensible for disagreement.
Unless they mean all their ethics are held that way in which case that’s just the whole asshole in a different deck chair joke.
If you agree that morals are relative and culturally constructed, then you shouldn’t reject differences in morals of others as immoral.
That’s basically just taking a position where you want to be able to change your mind on what’s “moral”, and expect everyone else to follow your opinion on it.
I said that some are but it seems cultures share a couple of them in common like not killing without cause. So in that system there are local morals and global/regional morals.
I don’t think acknowledging morals as relative to the culture they exist within exempts decrees of immorality. Relative to their culture, it is. Should they speak from the point of view of a culture that they don’t understand? I personally think it’s a sliding scale where, to the extent it harms other people, it needs to be viewed more objectively just, and where it doesn’t harm, it’s fine being a difference in opinion. The only downside to this is that sometimes you don’t know enough about a topic to know there are victims, and so your prescriptive thoughts can change very quickly about the morality of it. Perspective is important and should always be maximized to avoid this problem.
I wish I could have phrased it that well.
Not all morals or beliefs have to be unshakable or viewed as morally reprehensible for disagreement.
The tweet suggests the sample group disagrees with this statement.
I think you’re expressing the general consensus: people get a lot of their morals from their environment, but there’s some stuff that’s universal/non-negotiable; and we should be able to find common ground with that.
At least, I think that’s the general consensus. I’ve gotten into trouble with that assumption though.
I’m sure both are true for some people, but I think the irony he’s pointing out is that this belief system recognizes that every individual/culture has different morals, while simultaneously treating individual/cultural differences as reprehensible.
Sounds like someone who was raised in an echo chamber. They recognize other chambers exist, but hate that they do. We’re back to tribalism.
Or someone with strong morals? I think LGBT people deserve to live. I understand that other people do not based on their own moral arguments. I would not want to associate with them. I don’t live in an echo chamber. I recognize and interact with people with different beliefs (even on LGBT issues), but there are certain moral beliefs that make me not desire to interact with people. Is that tribalism or my morality? If I don’t wanna hang out with nazis, I guess that’s tribalism and the outgroup is nazis? Should I stop living in an echo chamber and hang out with more nazis?
The concept of an echo chamber when used in this casual way is so reductive. “People hang out with other who and consume media that aligns with their beliefs”. That’s not inherently a bad thing. It becomes bad when they are unable to recognize other beliefs exist and unable to accept at least some of them as valid alternative perspectives.
But the point is that, if you follow moral relativism (which the hypothetical students in the post do, as they insist morality is relative), then you must acquiesce that cultures which hate queer people are valid and acceptable, because doing otherwise would not be moral relativism. Or, take another example, slavery. Is it okay for any culture to practice slavery?
And if you don’t agree that it is valid and acceptable on a philosophical level, well, you can just follow a form moral universalism. Which is more appropriate if you do think some sets of morals are simply more ethical than others, such as, for example, not allowing slavery
It’s not so much about whether different moral standards exist or not, but more whether different standards for morals in and of themselves are acceptable/ethical.
The fact that they didn’t use “moral relativism” explicitly suggests to me that like most general philosophy classes, they are probably moral realists and the OP is just being cheeky about it, or legitimately for some reason completely unable to present moral realism as a subject of discussion.
I don’t agree with your characterization of moral universalism here, but regardless it’s clear that they are either bad at their job or posting for the memes because it’s literally their job to be able to establish what a cohesive view would be and why that is important, so it’s weird to act like clowning on their students for having a selfcontradictory view is anything but an admission of failure on their end.
The context is important - “morals” covers both “I think drinking is/isn’t an inherently morally irresponsible activity” and “I want to gas minorities”, and one of those has slightly higher stakes. You can understand the latter often happens because small town america might not have ever met minority groups, or somehow figures the small immigrant community with delicious food is “one of the few good ones” - that doesn’t make their “morals” any less reprehensible.
I think we agree/are saying the same thing? I’m saying that talking in absolutes about echo chambers being bad is reductive. To me, the important distinction between an actual echo chamber and being a normal person with beliefs and opinions, is the ability to recognize that sometimes others have different beliefs/opinions and that those may be equally valid. Like I said I’m anti nazi, but also that normal people (which I’m sometimes classified as) are able to accept some differences. So I’m not ok with nazis, but I think it’s ok to fast for lent if you want even if I don’t. So, we’re both saying context is important?
I see no paradox here. Yes, the rubrics change over time, making morality relative, but the motivation (empathy) remains constant, meaning you can evaluate morality in absolute terms.
A simple analog can be found in chess, an old game that’s fairly well-defined and well-understood compared to ethics. Beginners in chess are sometimes confused when they hear masters evaluate moves using absolute terms — e.g. “this move is more accurate than that move.
Doesn’t that suggest a known optimum — i.e., the most accurate move? Of course it does, but we can’t actually know for sure what move is best until the game is near its end, because finding it is hard. Otherwise the “most accurate” move is never anything more than an educated guess made by the winningest minds/software of the day.
As a result, modern analysis is especially good at picking apart historic games, because it’s only after seeing the better move that we can understand the weaknesses of the one we once thought was best.
Ethical absolutism is similarly retrospective. Every paradigm ever proposed has flaws, but we absolutely can evaluate all of them comparatively by how well their outcomes express empathy. Let the kids cook.
To add to this, morality can be entirely subjective, but yeah, of course if I see someone kicking puppies in the street I’ll think: “That’s intrinsically morally wrong.” Before I try to play in the space of “there’s no true morality and their perspective is as valid as mine.”
If my subjective morality says that slavery is wrong, I don’t care what yours says. If you try to keep slaves in the society I live in as well I want you kicked out and ostracized.
In moral philosophy cultural relativism isn’t merely an empirical observation about how morality develops, though. It’s a value judgment about moral soundness that posits that all forms of morality are sound in context.
(When he says “entirely relative” that signals cultural relativism).
To use your chess example a cultural relativist would hold buckle and thong to the argument that if most people in your chess club habitually play scholars mate and bongcloud then those are the soundest openings, full stop, and that you are objectively right to think that.
Of course chess is a problematic analogy because there are proven known optimums, so tha analogy is biased on the side of objective morality.
Sorry for my delay. I’m with you, and it’s possible these undergrads could be considered cultural relativists.
I suspect all they’re equipped to express is something like the prime directive from Star Trek due, potentially, to their knowledge of the troubled history of deploying foreign (e.g. colonial) mores in non-native contexts. If pressed, I wouldn’t expect any of them to truly support every moral schema without reservation.
Of course chess is a problematic analogy because there are proven known optimums, so the analogy is biased on the side of objective morality.
This confusion was my point, actually. The only proven optimums in chess relate to end game positions, as I mentioned above, due to computational complexity. For moves elsewhere in the game, such as openers, we have convincing anecdotal evidence of optimality, but we definitely cannot prove them without onerous assumptions about the opponent’s behavior.
As a moral relativist myself, I’m obligated to point out that this prompts the question of what constitutes the end game in the moral context. That is, in what situation are the extended effects of any morally relevant action known to a given moral agent? If we can find an example, only then can we begin defining a truly objective moral construct.
Until then, however, “convincing anecdotal evidence of optimality” must suffice, to the chagrin of moral absolutists everywhere.
Edit: swype errors
Kids thinking anything goes while also being incredibly close-minded is not new.
*humans
There are no adults in the room.
Im 50. The only difference between me and a 12 year old is cancer scares and a bit more wisdom due to experience. Im convinced this is true for most people.
Even if all morality is subjective or inter-subjective I have some very strong opinions about tabs vs spaces
As I have learned today: “tabstospaces”: true
Tabs. F alignment for aesthetic purposes
My heart goes out to those who suffer with poor editors where this is a problem. I do empathize with them. It’s important to love others and help. That’s the code for my life: love others. Except vim users. Straight to jail.
People who use tabs are monsters
Vertical or horizontal tabs? And I don’t mean browser tabs.
Tabs are the one true way! All those who blaspheme against the might tab will be regex’d into compliance.
<overly dramatic threat of violence here>
Morality is, and always has been, built entirely upon empathy. Understanding how someone else feels and considering the greater implications beyond yourself is the fundamental building block to living a moral life. If you’re willing to condemn the world to your shitty code just because the tab key is quicker, you’re a selfish monster who deserves hyponichial splinters. See also: double spaces after a period.
My morality is built on furtherment of mankind technologically, with weights assigned to satisfaction and an aversion to harm. Here are some examples on how to apply this logically and without any emotion, empathy included:
- It’s kind of like not really believing in human rights but supporting them anyways because the people who oppose human rights are destructive and inefficient.
- Humans are animals. We must act according to our basic wants and needs in a way that maximizes our satisfaction, or else we are acting against our own nature. However, we must do this in a way that causes no harm, or we have failed as a collective species.
- Diversity is a must because exclusivity is a system which consistently fails every time is has ever been tested.
- The death penalty is taboo not because life is sacred but because one person deciding the importance of another’s life is intellectually bankrupt and only leads to a spiral of violence.
- All life is meaningless, full stop, which gives us the right to assign whatever meaning we like, and having more technology, with equal control over it by each individual person, gives us the collective power to make more choices.
I will not be taking any questions, meatbags
So, empathy like I said.
Why do you value the technological advancement of the human race? How do you determine what is advancement, and what is regression?
Why place emphasis on satisfaction and aversion to harm? How do you determine the relative levels of satisfaction and harm except through empathy?
The correct answer is to map tab to spaces in your IDE.
This is gonna get out of hand.
ANNNND
Fuck you, nuh uh
Morality is, and always has been, built entirely upon empathy. Understanding how someone else feels and considering the greater implications beyond yourself is the fundamental building block to living a moral life.
Stoning people to death for mixing fabrics was based on morality too.
Nah, the probibitions against mixed fabrics, and who can be considered holy, and how to pray and to whom, all of those are edicts designed to exert control. It has nothing to do with morality.
Who did that? Jewish people who wore mixed fabrics were unclean and had to cleanse themselves. Who murdered people for that?
Oh no, my half remembered example of overly violent reactions to breaking moral traditions might not be literally accurate!
Did religions include extremely harsh punishments for breaking moral codes? Yes. That is the point even if the details aren’t exactly right.
You can hold to an ethical code while breaking your moral code. This seems to be an example of that, and my frustration with ethics codes of many professional societies/organizations. You can be entirely ethical yet still spend your life crating efficient life ending tools.
Yeah, that’s because moral relativism is cool when you live in a free and decent society.
The irony is that you can afford to debate morality when society is moral and you’re not facing an onslaught of inhumanity in the form of fascism and unchecked greed that’s threatening any hope for a future.
But when shit hits the fan, morality becomes pretty fucking clear. And that’s what’s happening right now. Philosophical debates about morality are out the window when you’re facing an existential threat.
They used to be the case that just calling your political opponents evil was oversimplifying. But these days? They literally are just evil in the most cruel ways imaginable to the point where there’s nothing to debate, and people who do so are doing so in bad faith most of the time. I think that’s another dimension of the situation, a poorly moderate websites like Twitter make it so that people are constantly in a hostile environment where good faith cannot be assumed so you have to learn to operate in that kind of environment
I mean yeah, the democrats are violent, authoritarian, and and generally awful.
True. Just ask someone from Gaza
Yeah, things have hugely improved in Gaza since one of the most powerful countries in the world got rid of their “democrats” in government.
Ohnowaititstheopposite.
I think the person replying to you actually just outlined the point the post made. You can frame all of these views for both sides, and could let two people on both side argue about who is actually trying to be cruel.
As much as I’d agree so much evil shit is going in, it’s a good point about how perceptions from others don’t change our own views lately and we aren’t even interested in discussing them. I also understand your point of there being no reason to try discussing them, but that’s the view the people on the other side have had for the past 9 years now, and that’s why we’re where we are. I’m not American but I truly wonder if there’s a way that people can capitulate to each other without having to start a civil war.
When the other side is doing stuff like Mass deportation ASMR videos you’re past the point where it’s a reasonable debate about the exact level of income tax or whatever. Actual cartoon villains wouldn’t dare behave this badly
And the evil guys are yelling that the other side is evil, while the other side is too good to call anyone evil 😔
post-structuralism has done a lot to attack the basic idea that something like “right” and “wrong” even exist in the first place, outside of the mind of the observer.
I’m kinda pissed about that btw.
I don’t see the problem. One can have unshakeable moral values they believe everyone should have while acknowledging those values may be a product of their upbringing and others’ lack of them the same.
What about the last part: “viewing disagreement as moral monstrosity?”
I believe abortion is moral. I believe people who disagree are morally monstrous. I can also understand that their beliefs on whether abortion is moral or not can be a product of their culture and upbringing. What am I missing? Why is this odd?
Your approach is an absolute approach. You see another culture doing something that’s monstrous and say hey that’s monstrous but I guess that’s how they were raised. In other words, your values are absolute.
When you say “abortion is moral,” do you mean that it is never immoral? As in, you literally can’t think of a situation where it would be wrong for a woman to get an abortion?
The only situations I can imagine where abortion would be immoral are extremely contrived scenarios that don’t happen in reality.
That’s very nieve. You can believe in a woman’s absolute right to choose while also acknowledging that sometimes people do heinous things.
Not the person you responded to, but yes, that describes me.
I’m someone else, but yeah, I believe the right to bodily autonomy trumps quite literally every other right.
If the world’s smartest person’s survival depended on compromising my bodily autonomy for 5 seconds, I would be in my right to let that person die. If you forced it on me, I would be in my right to kill the world’s smartest person for violating my bodily autonomy.
And not just that, but I think the vast majority of people hold this opinion, but they’re either too dumb to realize it, or commit non-stop special pleading to deny it. I think that very basically, because to think bodily autonomy is NOT the ultimate right, is to think it acceptable to farm human organs as long as it’s for a sufficiently good reason.
So mother is in the 12th hour of labor, she can just morally request an abortion? What if the baby is crowning? How about before the cord is clamped or cut? What about the day before a C-section?
It’s the kind of thing professors say when they want to go viral on some fascist platform.
I think you’re missing the significance of his phrase “entirely relative”.
In moral philosophy, cultural relativity holds that morals are not good or bad in themselves but only within their particular context. Strong moral relativists would hold the belief that it’s fine to murder children if that is a normal part of your culture.
I guess I’m parsing the statement as “understand it as a concept” when they mean “hold that position.”
Noam Chomsky would like a word.
He’s a linguist who has his own issues with moral duality
Hah! Cool to see Henry pop up on my feed. I knew this guy back when he was a grad student. And as somebody that also teaches ethics, he is dead on. Undergrads are not only believe all morality is relative and that this is necessary for tolerance and pluralism (it’s not), but are also insanely judgmental if something contradicts their basic sense of morality.
Turns out, ordinary people’s metaethics are highly irrational.
I just commented elsewhere in this thread, but isn’t moral realism a thing for this exact situation? Is his post not a self report on his inability to identify a moral framework that fits his students worldview, or at least to explain the harm that arises if one has a self contradictory worldview and help them realize that and potentially arrive at a more consistent view? Seems like this comment section is filled with a lot of people that understand their moral framework more than this professor, but obviously are not in the field. Can you please elaborate on the issues here? Like I think abortions are fine, but I understand that others think it’s murder. I don’t think they’re bad people for that, but I understand if they think I’m a bad person for my views. How we deal with it on a societal level is obviously even more complicated. I don’t see how there’s a problem there.
It seems like ALL is doing a lot of heavy lifting in your comment. Do they really believe ALL morality is relative and are also always insanely judgy if things contradict their beliefs?
I think the issue is that students aren’t consistent. They’ll fall back on relativism or subjectivism when they don’t really have a strong opinion, or perceive there to be a lot of controversy about the subject that they don’t want to have to argue about. But fundamentally, whether there’s an objective and universal answer to some moral question or not really doesn’t depend on whether there’s controversy about it, or whether it’s convenient or cool to argue about.
I think that there are parts of morality that really are culturally relative and subjective, and parts that aren’t. Variation in cultural norms is totally okay, as long as we don’t sacrifice the objective, universal stuff. (Like don’t harm people unnecessarily, etc.). The contours of the former and the latter are up for debate, and we shouldn’t presume that anybody knows the exact boundary.
Your beliefs seem to align with what the students are saying and generally with moral realism.
You just said “I think that there are parts of morality that really are culturally relative and subjective, and parts that aren’t.” so you can view some morality as subjective and some as necessarily universal. That is what most people default to and what you seem to saying is wrong with the students. You state they aren’t consistent, but you’re also not consistent. Sometimes subjectivity is right sometimes it’s not. I’m not seeing a distinction, so please elaborate on it if I’m missing it.
Not disagreeing that they’re probably just inconsistent.
Is it possible to be consistent about moral relativism & still make firm choices?
What’s it called when morality is construed as systems of arbitrarily chosen axioms & moral judgements amount to judges stating whether something agrees with a system they chose? Is it inconsistent to acknowledge that these axioms are ultimately choices, choose a system, and judge all actions eligible for moral consideration according to that chosen system?
Sounds like “all moral philosophies are equal, but some are more equal than others”
Love your username.
Thanks bro, had read it in Plato but was on a real King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard kick when I signed up for Lemmy (still am).
I don’t know, I might intellectually understand that morals are relative to a culture and that even our concept of universal human rights is an heritage of our colonial past and, on some level, trying to push our own values as the only morality that can exist. On a gut level though, I am entirely unable to consider that LGBT rights, gender equality or non-discrimination aren’t inherently moral.
I don’t think holding these two beliefs is weird, it’s a natural contradiction worth debating and that’s what I would expect from an ethics teacher
an heritage
Who pronounces it as 'eritage
I’m gonna guess French people
That’s so objectively morally reprehensible
Being Fr*nch is a choice. It’s Adam and Eve, not Adam and Oui-ve
That’s because there are 2 general schools of thought in ethics - relativism and absolutism. Relativism (the idea that morality is intrinsic to the person’s experience and understanding) is the one that seems to be the most talked about in general society. I believe in absolutism, the idea that there is a set of guidelines for moral behavior regardless of your experiences or past.
Your example (more formally known as the paradox of tolerance) is what convinces me that absolutism is the better school of thought
I can’t help but be struck at how cowardly ‘moral relativism’ seems. Yes, you could potentially offend or step on someone’s toes if you express moral outrage at the practice of childhood genital mutiliation, for example, but are you truly opposed if you are willing to contextualise said opposition? If you have a strong moral objection to something, then have a strong moral objection.
There are 8 billion people, and not all of them are going to or have to agree with you. There’s absolutely no need to play the chameleon to keep everyone happy.
If your moral objection to something isn’t universal, then it isn’t an objection.
