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OK, it's on.
Moral Relativism
- Thread starter Ex-User (9062)
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Trebuchet
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I enjoyed listening to that, but it seemed very simplistic. Sort of a beginner's primer.
For example, he brought up Martin Luther King, Jr., and argued that if popular relativism were true, MLK would have been evil for going against the majority of his society. This discounts any possibility of a society having smaller groups within it (oppressors and oppressed, for example) that essentially form two societies. I'm not saying that is the best way to describe the Civil Rights movement in the US, but he didn't address it.
Also, he says that popularism can't be true because it wouldn't allow change. The majority opinion would hold for all time and prevent minority views from ever becoming dominant. Since he started by defending objective morality by saying (correctly) that it isn't rigid and can adapt, it is odd that he insists that popularism is rigid, and that societies can't change their opinions (about slavery or whatever). Even without change from within, other societies can have an influence from the outside, by warfare, through economic means, by immigration, or by persuasion.
He also argued against tolerance (as he defined it in the video - I am sure he is personally quite tolerant in the usual sense of the word), because it required everyone to be tolerant of everything, and at the same time denies the validity of individual instinctive reactions. Well, sure, if you take it to the extreme.
But since people don't all have the exact same views and priorities at every moment, it follows that you simply have to be tolerant of some things in order for society to function at all. You can't fight every fight, and some of them don't matter anyway. When you come across something that you simply can't ignore, then you have to examine why, and conclude that either you are wrong or they are. Over time, you may have to examine it again. People can change, and sometimes change the world.
There were other examples, but they all come down to carrying out the definitions to an extreme. People are way more chaotic than his assumptions make them out to be, and societies messier, and any time you try to make a neat little model of them, you will fall short of reality.
Still, he was a very engaging and clear speaker, and since this is part of a class, maybe it gets more in-depth later, once these definitions and obvious arguments are out of the way.
For example, he brought up Martin Luther King, Jr., and argued that if popular relativism were true, MLK would have been evil for going against the majority of his society. This discounts any possibility of a society having smaller groups within it (oppressors and oppressed, for example) that essentially form two societies. I'm not saying that is the best way to describe the Civil Rights movement in the US, but he didn't address it.
Also, he says that popularism can't be true because it wouldn't allow change. The majority opinion would hold for all time and prevent minority views from ever becoming dominant. Since he started by defending objective morality by saying (correctly) that it isn't rigid and can adapt, it is odd that he insists that popularism is rigid, and that societies can't change their opinions (about slavery or whatever). Even without change from within, other societies can have an influence from the outside, by warfare, through economic means, by immigration, or by persuasion.
He also argued against tolerance (as he defined it in the video - I am sure he is personally quite tolerant in the usual sense of the word), because it required everyone to be tolerant of everything, and at the same time denies the validity of individual instinctive reactions. Well, sure, if you take it to the extreme.
But since people don't all have the exact same views and priorities at every moment, it follows that you simply have to be tolerant of some things in order for society to function at all. You can't fight every fight, and some of them don't matter anyway. When you come across something that you simply can't ignore, then you have to examine why, and conclude that either you are wrong or they are. Over time, you may have to examine it again. People can change, and sometimes change the world.
There were other examples, but they all come down to carrying out the definitions to an extreme. People are way more chaotic than his assumptions make them out to be, and societies messier, and any time you try to make a neat little model of them, you will fall short of reality.
Still, he was a very engaging and clear speaker, and since this is part of a class, maybe it gets more in-depth later, once these definitions and obvious arguments are out of the way.