PHIL 150 Lecture Notes - Lecture 14: Moral Relativism, Relativism
Document Summary
Moral relativism (mr): what makes an act right or wrong is whether a culture or society approves of the act. What is right in one culture can be wrong in another. It is sometimes supported by the diversity thesis. Diversity thesis (dt): different societies have different moral codes. Cultural differences argument: different societies have different moral codes. (dt, therefore, there are no society-independent facts about right and wrong. (mr) Well, only if we accept the further claim that disagreement shows there is no fact of the matter. This seems to hold for matters of taste, but not for science. The diversity thesis may show that cultures have different moral beliefs, but nothing about moral truth obviously follows from this. Objections to moral relativism: outrageous moral claims: mr has to say that a nazi does not act wrongly when he kills jews. As long as a culture approves of the act it is morally permissible.
