moral relativism: "feet firmly planted in mid-air"* (part 1)

I read an excellent book last summer. It was Francis J. Beckwith's Defending Life: A Moral and Legal Case Against Abortion Choice.

Don't worry, I'm not going to post a book review or anything. I personally tend to bank on those things being uninteresting and unhelpful. Instead, I just want to post some of Beckwith's own words. This will be the first of a two-part post. Sorry it's a bit long, but try to bear with me (and him). I find his case to be quite compelling. And he's pretty easy to read.

He begins with moral argument:

"I have participated in a number of public discussions on the question of abortion. Inevitably, either my opponent or a member of the audience will make the assertion, "Don't like abortion, don't have one," followed by rousing applause by like-minded audience members. This assertion, though common, reveals not only a deep misunderstanding about the nature of the abortion debate but also a confusion about what it means to say something is morally wrong.

The culprit, I believe, is moral relativism: the view that when it comes to questions of morality, there is no absolute or objective right or wrong; moral rules are merely personal preferences and/or the result of one's cultural, sexual, or ethnic orientation. So choosing an abortion, like choosing an automobile, vacation spot, or dessert, is merely a matter of preference. Some people like Haagen Dazs, others abortion. To each his own...

Many people see relativism as necessary for promoting tolerance, non-judgmentalism, and inclusiveness, for they think if one believes one's moral position is correct and others' incorrect, one is close-minded and intolerant. I will argue in this chapter that not only do the arguments for relativism fail, but that relativism itself cannot live up to its own reputation, for it is promoted by its proponents as the only correct view of morality. This is why relativists typically do not tolerate nonrelativist views, judge those views as mistaken, and maintain that relativism is exclusively right.

Relativism, admittedly, has lost a lot of its rhetorical edge as of late, largely due to its inadequacy in accounting for the deep wickedness of the reality of terrorist and state-sponsored atrocities of which we continue to grow more aware. For this reason, a rapidly growing number of citizens have no problem embracing the judgment that there are just some activities that are simply wrong no matter what a particular culture, religion, individual, or public figure may think. Nevertheless, many of these same citizens still resort to embracing relativism when it comes to the issue of abortion, maintaining that reasoning, especially moral reasoning, has no place in this dispute...

Moral Relativism and Moral Discourse

Moral relativism has stunted the ability of many to grasp the nature of moral claims. Some people often confuse preference-claims with moral-claims or reduce the latter to the former. To understand what I mean by this, consider two statements:

1. I like vanilla ice cream.

2. Killing people without justification is wrong.

The first statement is a preference-claim, as it is a description of a person's subjective taste. It is not a normative claim. It is not a claim about what one ought or ought not to do. It is not saying, "Because I like vanilla ice cream, the government ought to coerce you to eat it as well" or "Everyone in the world ought to like vanilla ice cream too." A claim of subjective preference tells us nothing about what one ought to think or do. For example, if someone were to say, "I like to torture children for fun," this would tell us nothing about whether it is wrong or right to torture children for fun.

The second claim, however, is quite different. It has little if anything to do with what one likes or dislikes. In fact, one may prefer to kill another person without justification and still know that it is morally wrong to do so. This statement is a moral-claim. It is not a descriptive claim, for it does not tell us what, why, or how things are, or how a majority of people in fact behave and/or think. Nor is it a preference-claim, for it does not tell us what anyone's subjective preference may be or how one prefers to behave and/or think. Rather, it is a claim about what one ought to do, which may be contrary to how one in fact behaves and/or prefers to behave.

Unfortunately, the espousal of moral relativism has made it difficult for many people in our culture to distinguish between preference-claims and moral-claims. Rather than pondering and struggling with arguments for and against a particular moral perspective, people sometimes reduce the disagreement to a question of "personal preference" or "subjective opinion"... That is, the objective moral rightness or wrongness of abortion (i.e. whether it involves the unjustified killing of a being who is fully human) is declared, without argument, to be not relevant. But it is clearly a mistake, for those who oppose abortion do so because they believe that the unborn... is a full-fledged member of the human community, and it is prima facie wrong, both objectively and universally, to kill such a being. For this reason, when the pro-lifer hears the abortion-choice advocate tell her that if she doesn't like abortion she doesn't have to have one, it sounds to her as if the abortion-choicer is saying, "Don't like murder, then don't kill [anyone]." Understandably, the pro-lifer, committed to objective moral norms, finds such rhetoric perplexing as well as unpersuasive. Of course, many sophisticated abortion-choice advocates are opponents of moral relativism as well. But it just seems that in popular debate abortion-choicers tend to reduce the issue of abortion to a matter of preference and thus seem to have been more affected by moral relativism than have their opponents. (But they are not completely affected, for they do appeal to "fundamental rights" which are typically grounded in some objective morality.) It is true that the pro-lifer's arguments may be flawed, but the abortion-choice advocate does not critique those flawed arguments when he mistakenly turns a serious moral disagreement into a debate over preferences.

Arguments for Moral Relativism

There are two arguments that are often used to defend moral relativism. The first is the argument from cultural and individual differences and the second it the argument from tolerance[1].

Argument from Cultural and Individual Differences

In this argument, the relativist concludes that there are no objective moral norms because cultures and individuals disagree on moral issues. To defend this premise the relativist typically cites a number of examples, such as cross-cultural and intra-cultural differences over the morality of sexual practices, abortion, war, and capital punishment. In the words of Hadley Arkes, an opponent of moral relativism, "In one society a widow is burned on the funeral pyre of her husband; in another, she is burned on the beach in Miami. In one society, people complain to the chef about the roast beef; in another, they send back the roast beef and eat the chef." There are at least four problems with this argument[2].

Relativism does not follow from disagreement

The fact that people disagree about something does not mean there is no truth of the matter. For example, if you and I were to disagree on the question of whether the earth is round, our disagreement would certainly not be proof that the earth has no shape. The fact that a skinhead (a type of young neo-Nazi) and I may disagree on the question of whether we should treat people equally and with fairness is certainly not sufficient reason to conclude that equality and fairness are not objective moral truths. Even if individuals and cultures hold no values in common, it does not follow that nobody is right or wrong about what is moral truth. That is, there could be a mistaken individual or culture, such as Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany.

If the mere fact of disagreement were sufficient to conclude that objective norms do not exist, then we would have to believe that there is no objectively right position on such issues as slavery, genocide, and child molestation, for the slave owner, genocidal maniac, and pedophile have an opinion that differs from the one held by those of us who condemn their actions. In the end, moral disagreement proves nothing.

Disagreement counts against relativism

Suppose, however, that the relativist, despite the logical failure of his case, sticks to his guns and maintains that disagreement over objective norms proves the correctness of relativism. But this will not work. For the relativist has set down a principle- disagreement means there is no truth- that unravels his own case. After all, some of us believe that relativism is a mistaken view. We, in other words, disagree with the relativist over the nature of morality. We believe that objective moral norms exist whereas the relativist does not. But according to the relativist's own principle- disagreement means there is no truth- he ought to abandon his opinion that relativism is the correct position. And to make matters worse for the relativist, his principle is a proposition for which there is no universal agreement, and thus on its own grounds must be rejected. As Arkes points out, 'My disagreement establishes that the proposition [i.e., disagreement means there is no truth] does not enjoy a universal assent, and by the very terms of the proposition, that should be quite sufficient to determine its own invalidity.'"

Finally, Beckwith points out that "if there are no objective moral norms that apply to all persons in all times and in all places, then certain moral judgments, such as the following, cannot be universally true: Mother Teresa was morally better than Adolf Hitler; rape is always wrong; and it is wrong to torture babies for fun. But to deny that these judgments are universally true seems absurd. For there seem to be some moral judgments that are absolutely correct regardless of what cultures or individuals may think."

When it comes to a moral issue, but especially one as weighty as abortion, we need to look at the arguments for and against relativism and decide whether or not it is a legitimate viewpoint. If it's not, then some position in the abortion debate has to be morally superior to another. I think it would be difficult to effectively argue that that position is the pro-choice one.

More to come...

Vita Pro Omni!

* Francis J. Beckwith and Gregory Koukl wrote an insightful book on this topic that I would recommend called Relativism: Feet Firmly Planted in Mid-Air

[1]I will post his argument from tolerance at a later date.

[2]In hopes to make this post more reasonable in length, I have included only two.