More Evidence That You Can't Discuss Relativism Rationally
Especially On the Intertubes
At Drum's digs.
Here's the way the discussions normally go:
Person A: Hey, here's a case of some heinous thing that happened in another culture.
Person B: So much for cultural relativism!
Person C: Oh, a conservative, eh?
Person B: No, but [describe relevant case here] was wrong. Anyone can see that.
Person C: Oh yeah? Well you are a fascist and hate all other cultures and besides our culture is evil and so are you and conservatives hate relativism so you must be conservative too did I mention that? so you really suck!
[Here discussion degenerates into an even more complete and incoherent variety of incoherence, as we fade out...]
Relativism is like a mind virus. It lays around dormant, and then emerges every now and then to derail discussion and eat up wetware compute cycles. Almost no one understands it (in part because 'relativism' is used to name about twenty different views), but everybody seems to have a passionate opinion about it. Conservatives hate it, though conservatism (in some ways) actually has closer affinities to relativism than liberalism does. Liberals defend it because conservatives hate it, even though it is a decidedly illiberal view--and indefensible.
What a freakin' mess.
In the case in question in the Drum post, a 13-year-old Somali girl was raped by three men. When her village found out, they buried her up to her neck and stoned her to death for "adultery".
Now: this is as heinous a crime--the murder, that is, though the rape is heinous enough--as can be imagined. If anything is morally wrong, then this is morally wrong. And any culture that condones such actions is, to that extent, morally reprehensible. Anyone with at least half a brain should be able to see this.
The arguments concerning cultural moral relativism are complex and tangled, though relatively easy to see through once you lay them all out clearly--which, sadly, takes several weeks at bare minimum, provided that you already understand them ahead of time. However it's not always necessary to look at the philosophy here. Many folks on the left defend CMR for a variety of political reasons, perhaps most notably this one: they recognize that many people to are opposed to CMR are actually dogmatists and/or ethnocentrists seeking to covertly indicate that our culture is optimal. But, of course, this doesn't mean that CMR is true. Note that many people on the left actually defend CMR in order to deflect criticism from totalitarian leftists regimes--it's a common way to defend China, for example. (And now: Somalia.) So, like any other position, CMR can be used for nefarious purposes by bad or confused people. But this has nothing to do with its truth or falsity.
Cutting to the chase, CMR is, at root, the view that consensus or tradition constitute moral rightness. That is, of course, insane. A large number of people doing x over and over again cannot make x right. Repetition might make people believe that x is right, but that's a very different thing. Moral rightness, whatever it is, is not a matter of repetition. Arguments for that conclusion can be given, but shouldn't be needed.
Folks on the left who wish to defend other cultures from any criticism should note that they cannot do so without insulating our own culture from criticism. However, it is clear that we have made--and continue to make--many moral errors. The defender of CMR cannot, say, defend the actions of Martin Luther King, who defied American traditions in order to make the society more just. CMR entails that what King did was wrong--but that, of course, is false. (There are niggling little epicycles the relativists can throw in here to try to stave off inevitable refutation...but they only muddy the water, they don't change the result.)
Unless you believe what no sane person believes, that e.g. the rape, torture and murder of an innocent young girl can become right merely because it has been done many times before (something which, you will note, makes the action worse, not better), then you shouldn't be defending CMR.
Especially On the Intertubes
At Drum's digs.
Here's the way the discussions normally go:
Person A: Hey, here's a case of some heinous thing that happened in another culture.
Person B: So much for cultural relativism!
Person C: Oh, a conservative, eh?
Person B: No, but [describe relevant case here] was wrong. Anyone can see that.
Person C: Oh yeah? Well you are a fascist and hate all other cultures and besides our culture is evil and so are you and conservatives hate relativism so you must be conservative too did I mention that? so you really suck!
[Here discussion degenerates into an even more complete and incoherent variety of incoherence, as we fade out...]
Relativism is like a mind virus. It lays around dormant, and then emerges every now and then to derail discussion and eat up wetware compute cycles. Almost no one understands it (in part because 'relativism' is used to name about twenty different views), but everybody seems to have a passionate opinion about it. Conservatives hate it, though conservatism (in some ways) actually has closer affinities to relativism than liberalism does. Liberals defend it because conservatives hate it, even though it is a decidedly illiberal view--and indefensible.
What a freakin' mess.
In the case in question in the Drum post, a 13-year-old Somali girl was raped by three men. When her village found out, they buried her up to her neck and stoned her to death for "adultery".
Now: this is as heinous a crime--the murder, that is, though the rape is heinous enough--as can be imagined. If anything is morally wrong, then this is morally wrong. And any culture that condones such actions is, to that extent, morally reprehensible. Anyone with at least half a brain should be able to see this.
The arguments concerning cultural moral relativism are complex and tangled, though relatively easy to see through once you lay them all out clearly--which, sadly, takes several weeks at bare minimum, provided that you already understand them ahead of time. However it's not always necessary to look at the philosophy here. Many folks on the left defend CMR for a variety of political reasons, perhaps most notably this one: they recognize that many people to are opposed to CMR are actually dogmatists and/or ethnocentrists seeking to covertly indicate that our culture is optimal. But, of course, this doesn't mean that CMR is true. Note that many people on the left actually defend CMR in order to deflect criticism from totalitarian leftists regimes--it's a common way to defend China, for example. (And now: Somalia.) So, like any other position, CMR can be used for nefarious purposes by bad or confused people. But this has nothing to do with its truth or falsity.
Cutting to the chase, CMR is, at root, the view that consensus or tradition constitute moral rightness. That is, of course, insane. A large number of people doing x over and over again cannot make x right. Repetition might make people believe that x is right, but that's a very different thing. Moral rightness, whatever it is, is not a matter of repetition. Arguments for that conclusion can be given, but shouldn't be needed.
Folks on the left who wish to defend other cultures from any criticism should note that they cannot do so without insulating our own culture from criticism. However, it is clear that we have made--and continue to make--many moral errors. The defender of CMR cannot, say, defend the actions of Martin Luther King, who defied American traditions in order to make the society more just. CMR entails that what King did was wrong--but that, of course, is false. (There are niggling little epicycles the relativists can throw in here to try to stave off inevitable refutation...but they only muddy the water, they don't change the result.)
Unless you believe what no sane person believes, that e.g. the rape, torture and murder of an innocent young girl can become right merely because it has been done many times before (something which, you will note, makes the action worse, not better), then you shouldn't be defending CMR.
posted by Winston Smith at
8:25 AM
19 Comments:
I teach high school juniors in an ethics class for a theology credit, in which the first semester is spent talking about non-theological ethics.
We talked about relativism back at the beginning of the course, which meant laying out several different arguments against a couple different kinds of relativism.
They all nodded and raised their hands when I asked who agreed that these problems were fatal for relativism, but I keep getting resurgences of it. Yesterday we talked about Aristotle, and one girl raised her hand and asked, "Who is Aristotle to tell me what to do?" (I'm fairly sure she meant this in a subjectivist sense.)
And they have a really hard time distinguishing between the claims "A Utilitarian considers x to be wrong" and "A Utilitarian considers x to be wrong, so it is wrong for her." And it's even worse when I try to get them to distinguish between tolerance and relativism.
It's like relativism is their natural state of mind or something.
I feel ya, man. I still remember a day back at UNC when a student came over to talk to me after the final class, and talked for an hour about how the course had changed his life, in particular by showing him that relativism was false.
But at the end of the hour he said "But I guess everything really is relative when it comes right down to it."
Nice.
"Relativism" isn't even a real position, but a vague agglomeration of disparate positions. "It" survives by being vague and multiply ambiguous. Many of the views that get included in the tangle are genuinely difficult to refute, if not impossible. Combine this with a few virtually meaningless locutions that (a) tend to stop discussion in its tracks, that (b) almost nobody knows how to respond to briefly and effectively, and that (c) have an almost irresistible grip on young minds (e.g. "Who's to say?", "well that may be true for you...", "it's all relative") and you've got a blueprint for intellectual disaster.
Add to this that even most philosophy courses either dodge the issue or deal with it briefly and superficially and there's little chance of students getting this crap out of their system.
Oh, yeah, and here's another aggravating factor: all philosophers think they know how to refute relativism, but few really do. It's a specialized sub-area just like any other, and most philosophers no more understand relativism than I understand perdurantism. So now in addition to the superficial treatments of it out there, you get a bunch of sustained treatments that are ineffectual.
What a damn mess.
Sounds like someone needs to write a book about it...
Point taken.
Winston,
Do you have any good resources anti-relativist resources that you use with freshmen? The textbook we have for our ethics class has a pretty lame section on it.
What ineffectual refutations did you have in mind?
This post is awesome, and I will be directing many people here to read it.
---Myca
Aw, thanks, Myca.
Spencer--
You know, I didn't have any specific ones in mind. As for bad arguments *against* relativism *in general* I might have to cite Plato's argument in the _Theaetetus_. As for bad arguments against specifically moral relativism--I dunno. Perhaps the fairly common argument that merely insists without proof that any specifically moral obligation is by definition universal. Blech.
The best arguments against cultural moral relativism, IMHO, involve (1) clearly identifying the view as a species of anti-realist culturalism (see post) distinct from nihilism, skepticism, fallibilism, etc.; (2) noting that, as such, CMR is a positive view, and, consequently (to the extent that there is a burden of proof in philosophy), it has the BoP, and cannot gain any support merely by questioning realism/objectivism (that can only lead to nihilism or skepticism, not any species of relativism); (3) nothing that none of the actual arguments *for* CMR work, and (4) nothing that rejecting CMR in favor of some non-relativist view (which, note, could be a species of realism/objectivism, skepticism, or nihilism) carries with it a number of theoretical advantages. (Not enumerated here).
Another (possibly supplementary) way to go is (as I assert without argument in the post) to note that CMR is either a substantive doctrine with substantive implications at the level of normative ethics, or it is not (that's a disagreement that arises about metatheoretical views all the time). If it DOES have normative-level implications, then they are identical with the implications of straight-forward culturalism--if a bunch of people do something over and over again, then this (IN AND OF ITSELF) obligates others to do likewise. And that is as absurd as a consequence can get. It might as well be a self-contradiction. It makes CMR a straight-forward instance of the Ad Populum fallacy. On the other hand, if CMR has no normative-level implications, then we might as well ignore it in all non-philosophical discussions, including all political ones.
Plus some other stuff.
Oh, actually, I do have a generic favorite kind of bad argument against CMR, viz.: any argument that tries to refute CMR by arguing in support of some specific version of realism/objectivism. It's not that such a strategy couldn't work (though it isn't clear that it would in and of itself constitute a refutation, since it'd probably have to be supplemented with an argument that the two views can't both be true), but rather that it's way too hard, and allows the CMRist to shift the BoP onto his critics.
Very, very dumb move, tactically speaking.
Yeah, you should write the book on the subject. I'd read it. As it is now, the most vivid memory I have of my Relativism class in college was of the professor chastising us for not having read the article on the sociology of knowledge.
Sounds like a crappy class. You should ask for your money back.
Oh, and: anti-relativist resources...not much out there that I'm super fond of. R. Shafer-Landau (sp?)'s book _Whatever Happened to Good and Evil_ is pretty good and very clear and easy. Norman Melchert's Hackett dialog _Who's To Say?_ is o.k. I'm writing an introductory dialog along side the real book. I'll send a copy if you want to see it, and I'd certainly like to get your feedback.
This was a good post. But nobody in America says every traditions are good and shouldnt be changed. That's what they call a Straw Man. I don't want gay marrage, but nobody should stop you from visiting your boy friend in the hospital if he's sick, gays are people too. And what they did to that girl makes me want to shoot someone. We dont even get angry any more we just write about it. We're pathetic.
Well, I think most of the people writing about it are writing about it *because* they are angry about it.
And:
Nope, no sane person believes that repetition can ground rightness. But that's what CMR comes to when you draw all of the relevant distinctions and boil it down to its essence.
Amen, WS.
The problem in a "discussion" such as the one you link to is that a zillion issues get raised, and all you get from that is cacophony. A real discussion would have to involve structuring the arguments and taking them a couple at a time. Can I add another preorder for your book?
In this case, I couldn't stand reading long enough to find anyone who defended the mob's lynching of the girl - how dare she have a vagina! I could imagine such a defense, probably by a provocateur or satirist rather than a serious defender, but even a serious defender is possible. Whatever people do someone will defend, no matter how heinous. There are people who defend Hitler, Stalin, and Mao. There are still Khmer Rouge out there.
I did learn that even inside the Somali Islamic culture, some people tried to stop the atrocity. That suggests even that culture has not settled its view of the legitimacy of murder as punishment for being a victim.
Clearly, there are acts for which culture is no excuse, and that's your counter to extreme relativism. Moral intuition is good enough for me to say that; a reasoned argument would be better, of course (and yes, does exist).
On the other extreme are these Somalis, the Taliban, and American Christianists who believe one true moral path and can only settle each other's hash by violence or threat of it.
Liberals oppose both extremes. Respect for other cultures in general can't translate to respect for specific evils. Your reductio is not only cute but on point.
Liberals also recognize limits to our knowledge and wisdom. There are likely many just ways to organize a society. It's sound reasoning to acknowledge that a parliamentary system may (or may not) be better than the American separation of powers, at least for some challenges.
The real argument in American politics is how much blending to do with new immigrants and how much imposing on them of the traditional American way is right. Conservatives want for nothing to change; they hate Europe but they'd rather have European immigrants. Liberals are willing to gain new things from new peoples, at least up to a point.
So, the real dispute is between our cultural absolutists (God, guns, and no gays) and the culturally open-minded. The absolutists want to tar the open-minded with every abuse from every culture. Sorry, not guilty.
The structure of conservative argument on this is transparently specious:
- X is evil.
- X occurred in culture Y.
- Culture Y is evil.
If you try to show them intuitively that our culture contains evil (past slavery, torture, child sexual abuse), they will claim you're calling our culture evil, but they will not admit their reasoning is fallacious.
Conservatives also make an irrational meta-argument:
- Defense of culture Y is defense of evil X.
- Some liberals defend culture Y.
- All liberals are evil.
There are useful idiots on the liberal side who help them with both these arguments but not many.
Wow, you're so wonderful, liberal. All I did was vote. American Christianists who believe one true moral path and can only settle each other's hash by violence or threat of it. What crap.
I think that you are oversimplifying, lovable liberal. Here is my first post in a two part response.
I am not sure what conservatives you have in mind, but I am not sure I've come across many who put forward your construction of the argument (1. x is evil; 2. x ocurred in culture y; :. Culture y is evil).
However, I would say that it is not only valid but sound to make the following argument.
1. X is evil.
2. X is sanctioned by culture Y.
:. 3. To the degree that culture y sanctions x, culture y is evil.
Let us take the Islam of al-Qaeda, for example. (The word "culture" is a nebulous one, but it seems acceptable to use it in this case to refer to this specific subset. Note: I am not talking about Islam as a general phenomenon.)
A significant component of this flavor of Islam is the "Death to the infidel" tendency. Al-Qaeda style Islam sanctions murder in various ways. But murder is evil. Therefore, Al-Qaeda style Islam is evil to the degree that it sanctions murder.
To the degree that a person defends this culturally sanctioning of evil, it also seems fair to ascribe to that person moral guilt (putting aside, for the moment, possible mitigating factors).
One need not deny that there American culture is and has been evil to the degree that it sanctions the various evils that you mentioned - one need not deny this in order to make the above argument.
Of course, all of this depends on the premise that there are some things which are evil regardless of their cultural situation. But your appeal to moral intuition admits as much, so any disagreement between us on this argument will not owe itself to a difficulty in the premise.
Oh, I must have not hit "submit" for part 2. Part 2 was: "Oh, I reread your post and realized you were saying something different from what I originally thought you were saying."
Hey, Spencer, you made me stop and think about examples of the first conservative silly-gism above. So this isn't argument aimed at you, it's just clarification.
I don't have links at the moment, but every time there's an atrocity in the Islamic world broadly defined, there are wingnut commentators, some of whom have paid gigs, who say something like, "See, this is what Muslims do. This is why we're in Iraq." They believe the whole clash of civilizations needs to be solved with frankly genocidal war.
If you tell them that they sound like al Qaeda in that regard, they'll argue that Muslims want to kill all of us so we have to beat them to it, which admits to your charge. Then they'll accuse you of supporting al Qaeda, even though you plainly used al Qaeda's evil to impeach the wingnuts. Then they'll graduate to the second silly-gism. By doing that, they essentially agree that your accusations are true, but they say that their definitions of right and wrong have nothing whatsoever to do with the golden rule or the equality and mutual responsibility of moral actors.
The whole obliteration of logic and thousands of years of moral reasoning is pretty flabbergasting.
Here's an example of the bigoted anti-Islam generalization. Not a paid pundit, just an amateur like so many of us, but it's a commonplace argument.
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