Section 14 - 3
In our group we talked about Simon Blackburn on Moral Relativism but we focused on Abortion, whether abortion is acceptable or not. As we discussed some think abortion is acceptable and some think it is not. We all agreed that abortion is permissible if the person was raped but it is not permissible if that person goes around and have sex with everybody. Simon also talked about how some people think that assisted euthanasia is permissible and how others think it isn't. Some people think the will of Allah has to be done and other people think it is of any relevance at all. So people have different views, different positions, and the potential for conflict. So it is all subjective. So, moral relativism would be any theory which encapsulates the idea that there are individual differences in morality for which there may be a cultural explanation and there are no absolute truths about any moral judgment that we make. Like Blackburn said 'Torturing babies is wrong' is subjective; it's just a matter of taste. Simon Blackburn pointed out how the subjectivist is a relativist and i agree with Blackburn because i can say truly that abortion is permissible and you can say it is not, and we can both have our own truth. And the i can protect the idea by saying "I am just describing my own reaction." I can say i am approve of abortion and you're saying of yourself that you don't. And we could both be true. So, moral relativism is merely the positive or descriptive position that there exist, in fact, fundamental disagreements about the right course of action even when the same facts hold true and the same consequences seem likely to arise. It is the observation that different cultures have different moral standards. Also, moral relativists believe not only that people disagree about moral issues, but that terms such as "good," "bad," "right" and "wrong" do not stand subject to universal truth conditions at all; rather, they are relative to the traditions, convictions, or practices of an individual or a group of people. In addition, moral relativism is a theory that says that there is no absolute moral truth and that all moral views are subjective, helps to explain why different cultures have different ideas about right and wrong. According to this view every individual has their own moral 'truth'. After all, Blackburn maintains that moral relativism is not an accurate account of the world because it doesn't fully explain moral disagreements and conflicts. In a conflict a relativist says that everyone has their own truth and that is the end of the story, essentially saying that there is no disagreement. Overall, the main idea is that everybody has their own opinion about something, you cannot say someone is wrong just because of their point of view about something.
While i was writing this there were a couple questions running through my head. Such as:
How do we know what we know is "TRUE"?
Can you say someone is horrible just because they have different point of view about something?
Favorite Quote:
Great Video, it relates to our topic.
Sorry for the late post guys, after i wrote everything down my computer decided to overheat on me and deleted everything i wrote. so, i had to rewrite everything. -_-
ReplyDeletehaha we forgive you! i totally agree with blackburn as well! i liked that quote you posted of him saying "human beings need to behave well in this world, not any other, we stand on our own feet and our feet are human feet" but what does he exactly mean? how do we know what "behaving well" means? does he mean behaving like human beings rather than savage animals?
DeleteI agree with Blackburn as well, in the fact that you or the other person may be right in a situation ,and both sides need to be heard no matter if you have a different opinion or not. whose to say your right and their wrong & viceversa.
ReplyDeleteWhat we "think" we know is all based on collective agreements we've created and shared with society. This is a very good question though. Is anything really true? Maybe I'm being a bit critical, but how do we know what truth is if we are the ones that created it?
ReplyDeleteHaha you aren't being critical at all! These are perfectly logical questions, as everyones' "truths" are based on what we are conditioned or brought up to believe. One thing we can be certain of is that our own thoughts are true, because we actually manifest those thoughts (it depends how we use these thoughts). But we don't have the ability to get inside each others heads to realize their thoughts, also you have to take into consideration that people have the ability to lie.
DeleteHow do we know that mainstream media news networks like cnn and fox actually present accurate information 100% of the time? In my opinion, the government, by using this msm, lies to us all the time. Remember during the war in Iraq when the media constantly talked about the weapons of mass destruction that they "definitely" had. It turned out there actually was none, but msm made it seem like there was so people would support the war efforts. Same goes with the Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting. I wasn't there, I didn't see video footage from inside the school of a shooter, or of body bags or anything. So how do we even know that it happened? People will believe anything that the government run media presents, unfortunately, no matter how illogical.
After diving deeper into relativism myself via reddit, I came to a useful user post touching on the topic with "To perhaps clear up some confusion, I would say that, as a graduate student in philosophy, there is a distinction between moral relativism and moral subjectivism. The former is a strict thesis about cultural norms and is accepted widely in philosophical circles for obvious reasons;the latter is more of a phenomenological claim that says we experience the world as if morality was subjective, but this isn't widely accepted. In almost all cases, people experience morality as if was something externally "given" and not subjective e.g. in Christianity, morality is experienced as objectively given by God."
http://www.reddit.com/r/philosophy/comments/94v38/is_moral_relativism_respected_in_philosophical/
I think blackburn acknowledged humans and there animal like tendecenies. Relativism could be defined as the way things relate to one another in situations that may not appear to relate without deeper analitical thinking. What we think we know can be question by , how do we know what we know is true. How do we know where we gained the information , is a trustworthy source, how do we know it would stand in a room of highly educated scholars.
ReplyDeleteI was the floater this week from Group 4, when I came into this group we talked about relativism as it relates to gun control. We started by talking about whether gun control measures really reduce gun violence in the first place, and basically came to an interesting side point where it was noted that to make an intelligent decision about whether or not something is right or wrong, you need to have accurate information. As Sean has pointed out above, that is sometimes (Sean would say most times) not the case, and thus a person could believe they are making the right choice but are basing their moral argument on false information. If I was told that "studies show that when everyone has a gun in their pocket, nobody ever uses one", I would probably think that to reduce gun crime we should actually make it easier for people to get guns. That makes really important (particularly now) to look at who is giving the information. If a study showing those results were discovered to have been heavily sponsored by the NRA, for instance, that might reduce the credibility of the information somewhat. I've found it useful in all cases to closely examine why someone is telling me what they are telling me.
ReplyDelete