Eduardo Pérez-Navarro (University of Santiago de Compostela), “Friends with the Good: Moral Relativism and Moral Progress”
The Philosophical Quarterly, 2023
Moral relativists are the worst. How can they say what’s right and what’s wrong depend on each culture’s values? If this were so, we would have to say that chattel slavery was right in 18th-century America because it was sanctioned by the values prevalent at that time and place. But then we wouldn’t be able to say that American society has progressed since the 18th century, because it hasn’t replaced the wrong values with the right ones—it’s just replaced values that were right at one time with values that are right at another.
In my paper “Friends with the good: Moral relativism and moral progress”, I try to debunk this argument. In particular, I argue that moral relativists don’t have to say that chattel slavery was right in 18th-century America just because it was taken to be so at the time. But I also try to show that moral relativism is, in fact, the only view that allows us to wholeheartedly reject chattel slavery while refusing to assume that we have the absolute truth. I think these are the two things we need to talk about moral progress in a meaningful way, so the point of the paper is that moral relativism is the only view that makes sense of our talk of moral progress.
The reason moral relativists don’t have to say that chattel slavery was right in 18th- century America is that moral relativism, as I think it should be understood, is the view that the truth of a moral claim depends on the context from which we try to decide whether it’s true or false. It doesn’t depend on the context where the claim was made, so when wondering whether chattel slavery was right in 18th-century America we shouldn’t check whether it was taken to be so at the time, but how we feel about it. If we reject chattel slavery, we can say it was wrong even then, and thus that the change in public opinion on chattel slavery amounts to moral progress.
(The view that the truth of a moral claim depends on the context where it was made, which has often been identified with relativism, is what I call “moral contextualism”. It is moral contextualism that forces us to say that chattel slavery was right in 18th-century America and, as a consequence, that American society hasn’t progressed since then.)
But being able to say that we have replaced the wrong values with the right ones isn’t enough if we want to talk about moral progress. There are views other than relativism and contextualism that get us progress in this sense, but not a meaningful variety of progress. This is the case of moral objectivism, which is the view that the truth of a moral claim depends on an objective moral standard that doesn’t vary from one person to another. Objectivists can say American society has progressed since the 18th century because it has replaced the wrong values— those not according with the objective moral standard—with the right ones.
However, they can say so only in an empty sense, because views that accord with the objective moral standard can’t change again without ceasing to do so and progress that doesn’t make room for future changes of mind, I contend, isn’t true progress.
Of course, objectivists don’t usually say we actually assess moral claims according to the objective moral standard; the usual thing to say is that the objective moral standard, although the standard we should use in our assessments of moral claims, isn’t the one we do use, as the limitations of our human nature make it inaccessible for us. But can we then wholeheartedly say that the values of 18th- century America were wrong? All we can say, I contend, is that that they’re wrong by our current standards, so I think this kind of objectivist has the same problems to account for progress as the moral contextualist.
To talk of moral progress, in sum, we need to be able to say of some things that they are good or bad without any qualification. But moral contextualists can’t say that chattel slavery was wrong in 18th-century America, and, as Montesquieu said, “the best is the mortal enemy of the good”, so views that are only satisfied with the best, such as moral objectivism, must choose between saying this and making room for future changes of mind. This means that only moral relativism can be friends with the good and, consequently, make sense of our talk of moral progress.
The difficulty with morality is not morality itself but our interpretation of it. Is it moral to spank a child for doing a wrong even though the local authorities forbid corporal punishment? If convicted, is the parent then immoral although insisting on innocence and acting in the best interest of the child? These segments of facts are not adequate to make a proper judgment, yet moral relativists may be inclined to do so and why? The difference of opinion between the traditionalist and the relativist cannot be reconciled so who prevails is a matter of reasoned argument in a legal venue, which is the opposite venue in which we raise our children. The relativist ironically will claim the same holds true no matter the context thereby denying the relative nature of their opinion. Sometimes parents simply know their children the best and that cannot be explained by law or logic. Fear of a single immoral parent slipping through this safety net is the narrow view that as one acts all act, again not very relativist suggesting relativism itself is a flawed perspective as its premises are flawed generally.
From the point of view of moral relativism, how will morality change if we resurrect the neanderthals?
How will morality change if we create a new type of creature that is much more sophisticated than humans, much as humans are much more sophisticated than chimpanzees?