Meta-Ethical Moral Relativism Is An Incoherent Position.

Further to my opponents definition of Meta ethical moral relativism (MMR) I would like to add, from the same source the further description of, "First, it is sometimes said that the truth or justification of moral judgments may be relative to an individual person as well as a group of persons. " To address the argument we must first take a step back and consider what is meant by morality. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy states that there are two definitions of morality, "1. descriptively to refer to a code of conduct put forward by a society or, a. some other group, such as a religion, or b. accepted by an individual for her own behavior or 2. normatively to refer to a code of conduct that, given specified conditions, would be put forward by all rational persons. " [1] The first description is instantly reconcilable with MMR, the second definition I will address later. We can observe that morality does vary from and within culture, time and person. Victorian morality was based on Christianity, class, racism and intense sexual repression. It was also full of examples where these moral values were challenged. Modern British society is highly atheistic, values money and fame over social class, multicultural, and sexually open. At the same time it is home to religious people, snobs, racists and sexual conservatives. It is abundantly clear that morality is a relative concept, the examples of variation even if restricted to the two examples shown above could fully use up the character limit. In addition I would go a step further, there are no universal moral laws, or taboos that are universally agreed upon by every person or every society. Incest, cannibalism, rape, murder, not one of them has universal condemnation. Indeed this is one of the core foundations of modern anthropology. How can one judge what is moral, amoral, or immoral? We can do this only by our own personal judgement, which is the result of socialisation, religion, philosophy and is entirely relative and subjective. It can be objectively demonstrated that 2+2 = 4. There is no objective way of ascertaining if an act is good or evil, moral or immoral. I consider homosexuality entirely acceptable, someone else would claim that it is violation of God's law, self destructive, harmful to society, unnatural and offensive. Both sides would be able to offer arguments, some cultures would take one side, some individuals would take another. Both sides represent a subjective moral judgement, there is no objective truth in regards morality. The universe does not care for the concepts of good and evil. If mankind (and all sapient life) vanished then so too would concepts of morality. Such concepts do not exist objectively unlike scientific facts and mathematical logic which exist even if there is no one there to realise it. If moral relativism is false, there must be some sort of objective standard or yardstick to measure moral questions against. This takes me onto the second definition, "2. normatively to refer to a code of conduct that, given specified conditions, would be put forward by all rational persons. " There does not exist a single code of conduct that is agreed to by all rational people. Hitler was for most of his life rational, Stalin was rational, Ghandi was rational, the incestuous Pharaohs were all generally regarded as rational people, Charles Manson appears entirely lucid. Yet they all held opposing and conflicting moral codes. Morality is therefore subjective, and relative, a matter of personal or collective societal opinion and it is for those reasons I affirm that MMR is both 'sound' and 'logical'. I could spend some more time attempting to pre-empt arguments that my opponent may use, but I am not certain as to what his argument is so I shan't! . http://plato.stanford.edu...