Moral Relativism is True

Thank you again for accepting the argument. You start off by saying that your moral argument will not be "ethically popular". You say this because, as you admit, moral relativism has some very alarming conclusions. But with the same breath, you say that we should forget about these concerns. Why? Because such an argument appeals to emotion and, thus, commits the fallacy "Appeal to Consequence". There is an exception to this logical fallacy: Ethics! The "Appeal to Consequences" only refers to arguments which assert the truth of a premise based on it's consequences; appeal to consequences does not refer to arguments that address a premises desirability (good or bad, or right or wrong) instead of its truth value. Thus, an argument based upon an "Appeal to Consequence" is valid in ethics. [1] Therefore, you created an argument against your position by admitting that relativism has unacceptable conclusions against our feelings and common sense. The readers and voters, therefore, have a right to base their decisions on emotion. I want to take this a little further by introducing a concept known as "intuition" or "a priori knowledge". Consider this conversation: Me: "My hand is injured." You: "How do you know it's injured?" Me: "Because it hurts." You: "How do you know it hurts?" Me: "Because I feel it." You: "But how do you know you feel it?" I guess I'm at an impasse. The knowledge that I'm injured is based on my direct access to introspection. It's just obvious; no evidence or reason required. Let's apply this to morality. I know that torturing innocent babies for fun is morally wrong. No justification needed. Those who deny obvious moral rules- like the one I just gave- do not merely have a different moral point of view; they have something very wrong with them. So, when you say, " you can't really say that ANY ACT is morally wrong." Anyone with a working sense of moral intuition would find this statement very, very wrong. No justification needed. This premise of relativism is just plain "wrong". __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Later in your argument you appeal to morality based upon the individual and upon the culture. Here are the problems with this: At first glance, the wide variations in moral practices of variations cultures seem to indicate a broad diversity of basic moral values. Apparent moral differences often only represent differences in perception of the known facts. Facts are descriptive, answering the question, "What is the case?". A fetus is or isn't a human. Lies are or aren't always wrong? Values, on the other hand, are prescriptive answering the question "What ought to be the case"? One ought not to murder etc. Unjustified killing of human beings have always been wrong in any given culture throughout time; what has changed is the concept of justification. Hitler killed the Jews because (justification) he thought they were subhuman. People blow up abortion clinics because (justification) they think they are murdering people. Thus your "evidences" for relativism are false. In many cases, apparent moral discrepancies between cultures represent only a difference in the perception of the facts of a given circumstance, not an actual conflict in the moral values themselves. Furthermore, just because cultures and individuals have different moral viewpoints doesn't mean objective moral truth is a mere fiction of the mind. In logic, this is called a non sequitur, the conclusion does not follow from the premises. The simple fact of disagreement on morality does not lead to the conclusion that there is no moral truth. This confuses the epistemological issue (the accurate knowledge of objective morality) with the ontological issue (the existence of objective morality). __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ "If you were to postulate the existence of a moral absolute, you'd have to say that some moral values are wrong whilst others are right. But in order to do so, you would have to demonstrate that there exists an independent moral yardstick that allows you to assess which moral values are right and which ones are wrong." Consider the following: You: "If you were to postulate the existence of objective mathematical truth, you'd have to say that some mathematical equations are wrong whilst others are right. But in order to do so, you would have to demonstrate that there exists an independent mathematical yardstick that allows you to asses which mathematical equations are right and which ones are wrong. So, in order to demonstrate that a mathematical absolute exists, you have to first rely on the existence of a mathematical absolute." You can see the fallacious logic in this can't you? How do we know that a mathematical absolute exists? Intuition. No evidence required. It's just plain common sense. How do we know that absolute morality exists? Intuition. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org...