Hi, thanks for all the very interesting comments on the discussion forum for my lecture about the status of 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 bit 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's [INAUDIBLE] objective. But nonetheless which had different applications in different contexts, and 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 judgements that we all almost universally agree about. But when we try to find their basis, we disagree. So, And, again, whether that undermined the distinction between objectivism and relativism. So, just as some examples. So, an example of the first kind of thing. You might think that, some of 'em might say, look. Here's some evidence of relativism. Women ought to wear head scarves in public or men ought to take off their hats indoors. There 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 objectives might come back and say, no, no no, there's a universal moral principle. Roughly something like the when in Rome, do as the Romans do principle. And that just applies differently in different contexts, so if you find yourself in a culture where women wear headscarves, you should do that, but in another culture, you don't have to do that. That's no evidence for relativism, so that would be kind of an example of a universal principle that has differing applications in different contexts. Or an example going in the other directions 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 it's 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 is this have, what does this tell us about the debate between relativists and objectavists? And I guess my opinion is that in some sense, these examples are real examples. And they tell in favor the kind of objectiveness view if the evidence or relativism is disagreement, but you can locate the source of that disagreement in agreement on some higher order principal. I think it applies differently in a different context Then that's some reason for thinking that, objectivism's true rather than relativism. I think what these examples illustrate, and what this issue illustrates, is that there might be to senses of objective that are at play in this debate. So there's one sense of objective where it means something like, independent of us. The objective facts. Like, the facts you might discover in science. There's another sense of objective where it means something like universal, or applies to all people. And so I guess it's important to distinguish those two senses of objective. When someone says they are an objectivist about morality, they might mean either one. I think when relativists say that they're relativists they really mean to only be denying the second one. That there's some moral principles that. Or maybe all moral principles that applied to everyone equally. They can agree with the first sentence that the moral principles are some how independent of us. Out there like scientific facts. So that was one issue that I wanted to raise. Second issue that I want to raise is deeply related. Is the discussion that several people ask. So what should we even think morality is? And more specifically with respect to the theories that I outlined in the lecture. Could morality be, may be some sort of dis-unified thing, where objectivism is true about some moral principles, relativism is true about other moral principles, and emotivism's true about still other moral principles. So you might have thought like, I was asking in the lecture which of these was the best theory and I was asking Who's best, Bayern Munich that Miami Heat, or Serena Williams? Bayern Munich won the Champion's League. The Miami Heat won the NBA Finals, and Serena Williams' the top rated player in the Women's Tennis Association. But you might think it's kind of, those are three different things. There's, they're kind of incomparable. You don't really ask which is the best. In that sense. So what, what's my asking which is the best theory. Objectivism or relativism, or motivism. sort of like that. Well I want to admit that I think moral judgments often come from different places. 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 sort of politician, are you in a particular policy is the best morally the best policy to engage in,you might be thinking about the, 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 sort of an inconsistent reason to act for. And that would be something different. And still other people. Our, made 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 they we get morality and, and these kind of different domains and maybe still other domains. Still the idea that a lot of lawsuits have had is that morality kind of hangs together as a subject, or as a, as a domain in at least two respects. One respect is what philosophers call agent neutrality. So the idea is that the reasons that Rowdy 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 there age and neutral in that way. Not relative to a particular person's circumstances. And the second idea that fosters sometimes appeal to unified morality. Is that moral reasons are overriding. So the thought is that, look when you're trying to decide what to do. There might be all sorts of reasons. There's reasons for You know, this would be good for your family. There's reasons this would be good for, to make some money. This might, feel good. Or this might, be a beautiful act, something like that. But, if, If we're talking about morality, whatever the reasons are, they override everything else. And so morality's, in that sense, overriding. So, the thought is if, and I don't know if this true. This is a big if. But if morality is. Distinguished by these two features. That the reasons that provides our agent neutral and overriding then you would expect there to be some unified domain. and, then, so, it would be a little bit weird if relativism was true about part of that domain and objectivism was true about another part of that domain and [INAUDIBLE] holds true about that third part of that domain. Reasons that are both agent neutral and overriding seem like they demand one unified explanation. That's just a sort of theoretical hunch, it's not an argument, but that was the theoretical hunch that was behind 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 is probably completely right. Each of them need refinement. And there may only be some successor theory that's the right theory. But still I would find it theoretically dissatisfying if there wasn't one theory that covered this domain. Because I think I'm working from this idea that there is a unified domain that provide age-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.
