Hi. Thanks for all the very interesting comments on
the discussion forum for my lecture about the science and morality.
I just wanted to pick up a couple of things that came up,
and say a few more things about them.
In no way is this going to settle the debate or maybe even advance the discussion,
but hopefully it will give you a little more food for
thought regarding some of the stuff that came up.
So first thing. Some people asked whether there could
be moral principles that were universal.
And so, that seems objective
but nonetheless which had different applications in different contexts.
And what that might in some way undermine
the distinction between objectivism and relativism or going the other direction.
Other people were interested in whether there might be
particular moral judgments that we all almost universally agreed about.
But when we try to find their basis, we disagree.
And again, whether that undermine the distinction between objectivism and relativism.
So just as an example.
An example the first kind of thing you might think.
Someone might say "Look,
here's an evidence for relativism".
Women not to wear headscarves in public or men not to take off their hats indoors.
These sorts of claims are true in some cultures and false in other cultures.
So that's, you might think, some evidence for relativism.
But the objectors might come back and say "No, no,
no, there's a universal moral principle."
Roughly something like "When In Rome,
do as Romans do" principle.
And that just applies differently in different contexts.
So if you find yourself in a culture where women wear headscarves,
usually that but in another culture you don't have to do that,
that's no evidence for relativism.
That being a kind of example of
a universal principle that has different applications in different contexts.
Or an example going the other direction is something like you might think.
We all agree kicking dogs for fun is bad,
but we might disagree about why it's bad.
Some people might say it's because of the pain,
some people might say is because of the disrespect.
Who knows what. So there might be differing views
about why it's bad even if we all agree that it is bad.
So, the question really is,
what does this tell us about the debate between relativist and objectivist?
And I guess my opinion is that in some sense
these examples are real examples and they tell in
favor of an objectivist view if the evidence for relativism is disagreement.
But you can locate the source of that disagreement in
agreement on some higher order principle that
then gets applied differently in different contexts.
Then that's some reason for thinking that objectivism is true rather than relativism.
I think what these examples illustrate and what this issue illustrates is that there
might be two senses of objective that are at play in this debate.
There's one instance of objective where it means something independent of us.
The objective facts like the fact you might discover in science.
There's another sense of objective where it means something universal,
applies to all people.
And so, I guess it's important to distinguish those two senses of objective.
When somebody says they are an objectivist about morality,
they might be neither one.
I think when relativists say they're relativists,
they really mean that they're only being denying the second one.
That there is some moral principles that,
or maybe all moral principles,
that apply to everyone equally.
They can agree with the first sense that the moral principles are somehow independent
of us out there like scientific facts.
That was one issue that I wanted to raise.
The second issue I want to raise which is deeply related
that is this question that several people ask.
What should we even think morality is,
and more specifically with respect to the theories that I outlined in the lecture?
Could morality maybe be some kind of
disunified thing where objectivism is true about some,
moral principles relativism is true about other moral principles,
and a lot of it is true about still other moral principles?
So you might thought, I was asking the lecture which of these is
the best theory and I was a bit like asking who's best,
Bayern Munich, Miami Heat or Serena Williams?
Bayern Munich won the Champions League.
Miami Heat won the NBA finals,
and Serena Williams' a top rated player in the Women's Tennis Association.
But you might think those are three different things. They are incomparable.
You don't really ask which is the best in that sense.
Asking which is the best theory,
objectivism, relativism or motivism,
sort of like that.
Well, I want to admit that I think moral judgments often come from different places.
So sometimes when people are talking about morality,
especially when they're thinking about how to organize society,
they seem to talk about what's best for the most number of people.
So if you're a politician arguing that
a particular policy is morally the best policy to engage,
and you might be thinking about what's best for the most number of people.
Whereas other times people seem to be talking about what violates
their conscience or what would be an inconsistent reason to act for,
not be something different.
And still other people are, maybe the same people,
in other moments seem to be talking about what would
be warranted or licensed by their religion or the God they believe in.
So I think that it's true that we get morality
in these kinds of different domains and there may be still other domains.
Still the idea that a lot of philosophers have had is that morality
hangs together as a subject or as a domain in at least two respects.
One respect is what philosophers called "Agent neutrality".
So the idea is that the reasons
that morality provides for our acting are more agent neutral.
They don't depend on my or your particular circumstances.
They would apply equally to anybody in the same circumstances.
And so, they're agent neutral in that way and not relative
to a particular person circumstances.
And the second idea that fosters, sometimes appeal to,
for unifying morality is that moral reasons are overriding.
So the thought is that when you're trying to decide what to do,
there might be all sorts of different reasons or just reasons
for "This would be good for your family".
There's a reason this would be good to make some money.
This might feel good or this might be a beautiful act, something like that.
But if we're talking about morality,
whatever the reasons are, they override everything else.
And so, morality is in that sense overriding.
So the thought is if,
and I don't know if this true, it's a big if.
But if morality is distinguished by these two features that
the reasons it provides are agent neutral and overriding,
then you would expect there to be some unified domain.
And then it would be a little bit weird if relativism is true by a part of that domain,
and objectivism is true by another part of that domain,
and motivism is true about a third part of that domain.
Reasons that are both
agent neutral and overriding seems like if the men want unified explanation.
That's just a sort of theoretical hunch, it's not an argument,
but that was a theoretical hunch that was
the behind in some of the comments I made in the discussion forum about
how I thought it probably couldn't be
that each of these theories was right about their own domain.
Like I said in the lecture, I don't think
any of these theories are probably completely right.
Each of them need refinement and there might
be only some successor theory that is the right theory.
But still I would find it terribly
dissatisfying if there wasn't one theory that covered this domain.
Because I think I'm working from this idea that there is unified domain that
provide agent neutral and overriding reasons.
But of course we might think that's wrong too so that's up for debate.
But anyway, there's been a lot of really good discussion and I encourage you to keep
discussing the issues from my lecture and also the issues from the later lectures.
And we'll keep watching those discussion forums. Thanks so much.