Meta-Ethical Moral Relativism Is An Incoherent Position.

Alas, it seems I've reached another debate in which the majority of my effort will be dedicated towards explaining a concept rather than discussing it's philosophical merit. I obviously intended for the latter, and given the contrary this irks me. Nonetheless, given that this is my last round I will be as comprehensive as possible in the hopes that it will quell most of my opponent's concerns. ==================== MMR & Emotivism ==================== "However, we have both posted definitions of MMR, these definitions have been mutually agreed upon." What? Simply because we agreed on the definition of MMR does NOT necessarily entail you are accurately arguing for MMR, which has become evident that you are not. The entire point of me bringing up emotivism is to highlight the fact that your arguments stand in favor of emotivism, NOT MMR. "My opponent despite being instigator has yet to attempt to meet the burden of proof for his argument that MMR is incoherent or unsound." In my previous 2 rounds I stated how MMR is logically incoherent - the idea of certain statements (truth-apt sentences) being relative entails epistemological relativism. And given that epistemological relativism is absurd, we can deduce via modus tollens that MMR is absurd as well. The only reasonably close attempt you have made at refuting this central argument is to say the entailment doesn't follow. In response, I stated that you are confusing emotivism with MMR, thus invalidating your response. I feel like I'm doing a commentary more than a debate, but apparently I'm forced to. "My opponent also should now indicate how the position of emotivism fails is mutually exclusive with MMR." The relevant distinction is that MMR includes truth-apt sentences whereas emotivism does not...how is that not clear in my last round? I specifically stated the crucial difference. "I have stated that this is a strawman and demonstrated why this is the case, the above paragraph is merely my opponent stating his disagreement, not actually why he or anyone else should disagree. It appears he has conceded this point, but does not want to acknowledge it." You can reiterate that I committed a straw man, but until you specifically demonstrate how this is so your claims are empty. Adding to the humor, you even claim that I "concede this point". Seriously? My rebuttal began IN THE NEXT PARAGRAPH. Frankly, I'm perplexed as to how you can miss the function of my arguments, the reason I even bring them up, etc. Since this is my last round, as a last-ditch effort I'll treat this like an elementary school project and explain every step of my argument in painstaking detail. If that fails as well, then whoop de whoop. ==================== Criticism of MMR ==================== In this section I will give an entire overview of both our sides (albeit not in chronological order), where I stand, why I used the arguments I used, and why Cerebral has been wrong in the exact fashion I have stated earlier. ---Step 1--- As with any appropriate debate, the first thing we clarified was the definition of meta-ethical moral relativism. The following was agreed upon: "The truth or falsity of moral judgments, or their justification, is not absolute or universal, but is relative to the traditions, convictions, or practices of a group of persons." My opponent proposed a slightly different version, but this didn't bother me as it practically stated the same thing. Notice the beginning of the definition clearly pinpoints the relevant issue ("the truth or falsity of moral judgments") to be about the truth value of moral judgments. In other words, MMR is specifically a COGNITIVIST thesis, meaning it's an ethical theory that proposes moral judgments to be propositions. And to do a bit of Philosophy 101, a proposition is any sentence that has truth-value, i.e. the ability to be true or false. "The earth is the center of the universe" is a proposition (in this case a false one) whereas "go over there" is not (in this case it's a command). Remember how I bring up emotivism? This is a non-cognitivist thesis that claims moral judgments aren't propositions, but expressions of the speaker's attitude about certain phenomena. The distinction between cognitivism and non-cognitivism should NOT be ignored. ---Step 2--- With these two definition in place, I then did two separate things: I first objected to MMR on the grounds of epistemological relativism, and further I argued for an interpretation of my opponent's argument that would better classify him as an emotivist rather than a moral relativist. My objection to MMR, per my burden as the instigator, took form as a modus tollen argument. I argued that MMR entails epistemological relativism, and given that the latter is absurd, so is MMR. The explanation is simple: if MMR claims that a certain group of statements have relative truth values, then this would contradict the law of identity (the law of non-contradiction can be seen as corollary) given that it would entail any proposition has only one truth value (either true or false). Such an entailment would be aligned with epistemological relativism, the thesis that truth is relative, and this position is absurd given that it's self-refuting. At this point, my opponent can do several things. He can argue in favor of epistemological relativism by either somehow rescuing it from being self-contradictory, or argue that this somehow doesn't matter. Or, he could argue that there are different "types" of truth (thus allowing for the possibility that not ALL truth is relative, and only a certain group is). However, the problem here would be in how he would demonstrate moral propositions to be epistemologically distinct from other propositions. It's clear he didn't even attempt to do any of these strategies, among others. The second issue is my point in bringing up emotivism. The reason I did this is to perhaps propose that this is the real position my opponent is arguing for, given the absurdity of MMR. I based this proposal given that my opponent continues to echo "moral judgments are subjective" while refusing to clarify on this usage of subjective. Is it subjective in the sense of sentiments like art? Then that would be a non-cognitivist approach like emotivism. Would it be a subjective proposition? This would be a MMR approach, but seemingly much more unlikely given that a "subjective proposition" would violate the laws of logic. ==================== Conclusion ==================== There is one possibility my opponent can take - to connect MMR with a non-cognitivist position. Some, though not many, have taken this approach in the current debate about MMR. While this would be an interesting approach, I doubt my opponent would take this response (without violating the definitions agreed upon). But besides that little side note, there isn't much to say about this. My opponent seems to consistently ignore my argument, and hopefully this extensive round can REALLY clarify my argument. I'm worn out from doing debate in which 90% of my effort is explaining my arguments rather than defending them. I almost feel like a continental philosopher, lol.