Originally Posted by
Justinian
It is common to hear, when making a values judgment about another culture or people in a different time period, that "you are judging them through a 21st century perspective", or "it was another time -- they didn't know better" or "their morality differs from you; it's just their culture". This has been used to explain away all matter of practices ranging from the inane to the bizarre to the barbaric; though ironically, the perspective that we need to view other cultures through their perspective and not our own is a 21st century one, as for better or for worse (almost always for worse) we didn't stop to think about that in the past.
My problem with this is that I do not believe in any kind of moral relativity -- I find it to be an illogical and inconsistent concept which devalues a key aspect of humanity. This discussion came up on another website and I think it took an interesting turn, so I'd like to repost it here and hopefully spur more debate on the topic because it is one I feel is very important. The context of discussion is how rape was considered to be not wrong in many different cultures in the past, so that should hopefully explain any passing references to it. So this is what I wrote on the subject of moral relativity:
(in response to: "Well you're looking at "wrong" through a 21st century humanist perspective.")
I hear this a lot. It's a difficult thing to tackle, because on the one hand, yes of course it's true, I view things from a 21st century perspective because that is my perspective; the question is whether that in any way invalidates my claim to right and wrong -- that is, does the time in which one makes a moral observation have any bearing on the legitimacy of the observation? This is not true of any more finite observation, so why should it be true of morality? Consider the scientific -- whether you are stating the Earth is (near) spherical and not flat in the 21st century or the 2nd, you are no less right. The difference is in what tools were available to people to affirm their observation, not in the truth of the observation itself. Or take gravity -- people have always known that things fall to the ground, because you can see it happen, but it took 4,000 years of human development to figure out what force causes it. Had Ahamahet the Egyptian formulated Isaac Newton's theory in the 10th century BC, he would have been just as right as Isaac Newton. So the time in which one makes an observation about the general way that things work logically has no bearing on how true it is. What makes morality any different from this?
If a 12th century knight had said "you know what, rape is wrong because it violates the personal rights of the victim, shows a lack of respect and restraint for our fellow humans, and is a base and animal act", would he have been wrong to say so because the prevailing view in his time was the opposite? Does the opinion of the masses effect the truth of a statement? Does the fact that 90% of people in modern Western society would agree with my moral views make mine true and the Sudanese female circumciser's false?
Of course the problem is that unlike the scientific, morality cannot be measured and proven to be "correct" or "incorrect", "right" or "wrong". The only thing we can PROVE about morality is that the concept exists, and has existed for recorded history, which would suggest it is as innately and uniquely human a concept as something like love or philosophy -- which gives it some power both as a force in our lives.
Another problem my viewpoint encounters is that the only way it is possible to make a factual moral statement is within the framework of one's own morality. Something is wrong because I feel it is wrong, because that is the innate moral sense that I have and many share.
This all is if and only if if I accept and we all accept the concept that morality is relative and not finite. And I think there is less for me to prove by saying that morality is not relative -- simply the concept was less developed in the past, like gravity or the perceived shape of the earth, which means that the majority of people held the wrong opinion but if someone had surfaced with the "right" opinion centuries early, he would have been right. That morality has progressed in a mostly linear way with fluctuations. There is more for you to prove that morality IS relative -- superficially it's an easier argument to make (people believe different things, murder and rape are acceptable in some places and not others, etc), but you then have to ask the 'why' which is the question that drives human knowledge. And I believe closer examination makes the argument for moral relativity disintegrate.
If morality IS relative, then all morality is worthless; an idea is meaningless if it is true in some situations and not in others. It is illogical to even accept it as an idea, which would make the only thing holding you back from doing as you please and satisfying your purely animal urges the fear of retribution from society, and what does that make you? If morality IS relative it creates a situation in which morality is true in EVERY situation, which is a paradox -- if morality is relative and thus always true whenever anyone has a concept of morality, that morality is ALWAYS wrong whenever anyone has a concept of morality, because my morality and Papua New Guinea tribesmen's moralities are incompatible, in much the same way that all religions cannot be simultaneously right (because being simultaneously right would make them simultaneously wrong). It's like the philosophical equivalent of dividing by zero, you have to do all kinds of complex things to get around the roadblock you've created, whereas I can just say 'that's undefined and I don't need to learn more complex math, so let's just move on'.
The only consistent way to say morality is relative is to say that it is neither right or wrong ... but since 'rightness' and 'wrongness' are the key concepts OF morality, doing this once again makes it worthless.
So the only way in which morality is worth a damn thing at all is to say that it is constant, and the only way to have any moral feelings -- it is wrong to murder and rape children, for example -- without being a hypocrite is to accept morality as not being relative. If morality is relative then you must accept it is a worthless concept and that there is no reason to feel things are wrong or right, which would surely entail some amount of self-examination.
Either a concept that seems to be deeply ingrained in the human mind on a level deeper than social construction for millenia is absolutely worthless, or there is some kind of quantifiable truth to it ... which is an uncomfortable view for an atheist like me to hold because of the questions it raises.
So what do you think?