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From: mangoe@umcp-cs.UUCP (Charley Wingate)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Absolute moral relativism
Message-ID: <1417@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 27-Aug-85 23:34:54 EDT
Article-I.D.: umcp-cs.1417
Posted: Tue Aug 27 23:34:54 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 29-Aug-85 23:37:13 EDT
References: <1358@umcp-cs.UUCP> <1631@watdcsu.UUCP>
Organization: U of Maryland, Computer Science Dept., College Park, MD
Lines: 52

In article <1631@watdcsu.UUCP> dmcanzi@watdcsu.UUCP (David Canzi) writes:

>Further definitions:

>MORAL SYSTEM - a set of moral principles.

>MORAL PRINCIPLE - I'm unable to completely define this concept, but I
>	think most people would agree that a moral principle must be a
>	statement about the permissibility of some kind of behaviour.

>To say that some moral system claims that it can be determined to be
>correct amounts to claiming that one of the principles of the moral
>system states that all the principles of the system can be determined
>to be correct.  A principle that says so is not a statement about the
>permissibility of any kind of behaviour, but rather a statement about
>statements about permissibility of behaviour.  Therefore, it's not a
>moral principle.

But it is still a moral absolute (which is not necessarily a moral
principle; it can be a "meta-principle").

>Your definition of absolute moral relativism, which I repeat here:

>>ABSOLUTE MORAL RELATIVISM - the idea that it is impossible to conclude that
>>                any particular moral system is correct.

>is rather confusing.  It looks like it was deliberate cooked up to have
>just a sufficient amount of vagueness in all the right places so that
>it could be used to draw the conclusion you want.  You might try arguing
>with the version of absolute moral relativism that I prefer:

>ABSOLUTE MORAL RELATIVISM - the idea that the truth or falsehood of a
>	statement of the morality or immorality of some action cannot
>	be demonstrated objectively.

All right.  I think it is reasonable to accept the principle that a moral
system should be consistent with respect to its own meta-principles, and
also with respect to whatever other principles we accept.  Absolute moral
relativism as defined above becomes an absolute.  If we accept this
principle as being true, than we can derive logically from it that any moral
principle derived from the claim that "some principle is objectively evident"
is in fact incorrect.  This implies either that absolute moral relativism is
incorrect, or that it cannot be proven objectively.

By constrast, a limited version of relativism which says nothing about
extra-system principles does not have this problem; objectively true moral
principles are perfectly OK, since they can be demonstrated from outside the
system.

Charley Wingate

  "Weight has nothing to do with it."