So we're talking about the status of morality. That is the status of judgments like Genocide is morally abhorrent or Polygamy is morally dubious. What are we doing when we make judgments like this? And to think about that question, I've put forward three questions that we can think about. First, are these judgments the sorts of things that can be true or false? Are they mere opinion? If they are the sorts of things that can be true or false. What makes them true? And finally, if they are true, are they objectively true? These three questions, are questions about the status of morality. What I'm going to do next is, to consider three theories, or broad approaches that philosophers have taken to these questions. So the first three that I want to talk about is objectivism. So the basic idea of objectivism is that our moral judgments are the sorts of things that can be true or false, and what makes them true or false are facts that are generally independent of who we are or what cultural groups we belong to. They're objective moral facts. That's the basic idea in objectivism. To get a feeling for objectivism, let's consider again our empirical judgments. So remember the example, the earth rotates around the sun. This seems to be a judgment about some objective matter of fact. it was a, at times a controversial judgment, and earlier times in human history, people didn't even believe it. But now we've come to think that, this is the truth about the relative trajectory of the Earth and the sun. it's, truth is, it's, truth is made true not by who we are or our cultures, but about, by something independent of us, the way the planets rotate, in the universe. so that's a kind of paradigm objective judgement. Of course, we should recognize that when it comes to grand scientific theories like Neutonian Physics or Darwinian Theory of Evolution that issues get much more complicated in thinking about objectivity but focus just on the single judgement, the earth rotates around the sun. If someone thought, no the Earth doesn't rotate around the Sun, we're quite happy to say, oh they're just wrong. We might be able to explain why they think that but but the, their judgment's wrong. The judgement that the Earth does rotate around the Sun is right, and it is made right by the relative trajectory of the Earth and the Sun, which are things completely independent of human, practice or taste or anything like that. So that's kind of a paradigm example of an objective judgement, objective empirical judgement. It's examples like the first one we've been considering. Genocide is morally abhorrent. That lead some philosophers to think that moral judgements are just as objective as empirical judgements. This seems like the sort of view that Is, the sort of claim that is possible being true or false, and not only is it possible being true or false, it seems to be objectively true that genocide is morally abhorrent. If someone thought genocide's not morally abhorrent, we think they must just be mistaken. We might be able to explain how they got that crazy idea, but but their idea would be wrong. genocide is morally abhorrent. On the other hand it's examples like our second example, polygamy is morally dubious, that have led some philosophers to question objectivism. They think, well, I think polygamy is morally dubious, but this is widely practiced in many cultures around the world. is it not some kind of cultural chauvinism to impose the, the view that polygamy's morally dubious on everybody? maybe it's not objectively true or false that polygamy's morally dubious. so, this is the type of case that, leading people away from objectivism. So our objective is, they say well, we can explain very well, how it's possible that people disagree about moral matters. There's some object matter of fact, when one person says it's this way, another person says no, it's that way. Then there's something they're objectively disagreeing about. but they have a hard time explaining these type of cases. where we sometimes think, maybe if there isn't an objective matter of fact. So, the two cases, genocide's morally abhorrent and, polygamy is morally dubious, provide two kind of good test case on either side of the for and against objectivism. The second view I want to talk about, or approach to the status of morality is called relativism. So the basic idea behind relativism is that our moral judgements are indeed the sorts of things that can be true or false, but they're only true or false relative to something that varies from person to person or culture to culture. So, to get an idea of what the relativist has in mind, consider a non moral example, consider the statement of one must drive on the left. So, if this statement is said in Britain it's true, if it's said in America it's false. so it looks like it's a sort of statement that can be true or false, but it's not true or false objectively. There's not objective facts about which side on the road to drive on. there is a driving law on Britain that says driving on the left and a driving law in America which says driving on the right and these are two non overlapping jurisdictions, so you could say that the statement one must drive on the left is true relative to British driving customs and, are law, and false to American driving customers are law. so that's the kind of, model that the relatives uses. But, now, let's go back to our moral example. So, think about the judgments, polygamy is morally dubious. What's the relatives going to say about this. They're going to say yes this is the sort of thing that can be true or false. But, it's not objectively true or false. it might be true relative to one person, or culture, and false relative to another person or culture. What do you think? Do you think polygamy is morally dubious? Or consider a different example. consider the example of Oedipus sleeping with his mother Jocosta. So, I said, I thought that was morally bad. Of course, Oedipus didn't know that that's what he was doing. are all cases of incest, even if the person doesn't know it's incest, morally dubious or morally bad, you might think yes, you might think no. the relativist says, this kind of judgment is true or false, but it's only true or false relative to something else. Okay, what sort of thing might it be relative to? Well, as another kind of rough analogy, think about the statement okra is yummy. So I like okra, I say okra is yummy. You dislike okra, you say that okra is not yummy, okra's gross. what, what's going on in, in these two claims? Well, you might think the first, when I say okra's yummy, I'm just describing my taste. Something I like and when you say okra is not yummy or okra's gross, you're describing your taste. So, the first statement's true for me and the second statement's true for you. this kind of idea is the idea behind an extreme form of relativism called subjectivism. The subjectivist idea, the basic idea behind subjectivism Says our moral judgments are indeed true or false, but they're only true or false relative to the subjective feelings of a particular person, the person who makes them. So, it's almost like when I say X is bad, I'm saying I morally disapprove of X. So that's the subjective of physchia. The subjectivist has nice, there's a nice feature to subjectivism that it can explain the way our moral judgments are intimately tied up with how we are motivated to act. So if I dislike something I'll be motivated to avoid it or to not promote it. Or if I like something or approve of something I'll be motivated to, promote it or or drawn towards it. so the subjectivist has that nice explanation of the connection between morality and our motivations. On the other hand, subjectivism has a hard time explaining disagreement. So, go back to the case of polygamy is morally du-, dubious. There it doesn't seem like it's merely a description of, different peoples taste when two cultures come into contact. One of which practices polygamy and the other one doesn't. There seems to be a real issue at disagreement between those who think it is morally dubious and those who think it's not. And the subjectivist has a hard time explaining that. This is what leads to the, a more, a less aggressive form of relativism called cultural relativism. So the basic idea behind cultural relativism is that our moral judgments are indeed true or false. but they're only true or false relative to the culture of the person who makes them. so the, a judgment like x is bad, morally bad, morally wrong might be thought of as almost like I'm saying x is disapproved of or forbidden by my culture. and so you can see how one person saying moral polygamy is morally dubious, it could be true for him because in his culture it is morally dubious, whereas a person saying polygamy is morally dubious it's false for him because it's not morally devious in his culture. So that's the basic idea behind cultural relativism, which is a less aggressive or less strong form of relativism. but so subjectivism and cultural relativism are both forms of relativism, and the basic idea behind relativism is that, unlike the objective, well, like the objectivist, the relativist things our moral judgments are the sorts of things that can be true or false. But, unlike the objectivitist, the relativist thinks that the truth or falsity of our moral judgment is only relative to something that can vary from person to person. The third approach to these questions about the status of morality that I want to discuss is called emotivism. So the basic idea in emotivisim is that our moral judgments are not the source of things that can be true or false, neither objectively true or false, nor true or false relative to some, person's feelings or some culture. They are the direct expression of our emo-, of our emotive reactions to the world. so to get the basic idea of, of why somebody might endorse emotivism, remember our example of okra. Someone says okra is gross. You might think well, they're not actually describing their feelings they're just expressing their feelings. So the emotivist thinks something similar about, the example of moral judgments generally but for example polygamy is morally dubious. So they think what I say polygamy is morally dubious, I am expressing my negative feelings towards polygamy. Its almost as if I said boo for polygamy, or someone said charity is morally good it's as if you are saying hooray for charity. so in these direct expressions of our emotions, we're not describing some objective matter of fact. Or describing some feeling or cultural practice. We're directly expressing our emotions. That's the idea behind emotivism. Now, the emotivists, like the subjectivists, can explain the tight connection between some moral judgments and our motivations to action, because we're often motivated to act based on the way we feel about things. but the subjectives have the problem of it not being able to explain very well disagreement. if when I say polygamy is morally dubious, it's just describing my feelings, and when you say it's not morally dubious you're just describing your feelings it's not clear that there is any disagreement. the emotivist also thinks there is no factual disagreement, there's no belief that we both disagree about, but there could be disagreement in attitudes. We are expressing disagreeing attitudes is the emotivist's idea. Of course you might worry that we often call moral judgments true or false. So I say, polygamy is morally dubious, and you might agree with me by saying, what Matthew said was true. Now, the emotivist system denied that we do this, but they'll have to say that this is a loose se-, sense of true or false. And, strictly speaking, moral judgments Are the sort of thing that can be true or false, because they're, the direct expression of emotions, that's the emotivist idea. So we've been talking about the status of morality and in particular, three questions. The first question is, are our moral judgements the sorts of thing that can be true or false? Or are they mere opinions? The second question is, if they are the sorts of things that can be true or false, what makes them true or false? And the third question is, if they are true, are they objectively true? We've discussed three views about these questions, or about the status of morality. The first view is, objectivism. So if the objectivist says yes, moral judgement are the sorts of things that can be true or false. and indeed they're objectively true because they're made true by objective moral facts, by the wrongness of genocide or the goodness of charity. The second view I've discussed is relativism. The relative's idea is that our moral judgments are the sorts of things that can be true or false. But they are only true or false relative to something, like somebody's subjected feelings or some culture practice. The final view I've discussed is emotivism. The idea behind emotivism is that no, our moral judgments are not the sorts of things that can be true or false. They are the direct expressions of our emotions or our mode of reactions to the way we take the world to be. So this is the three views or three broad approaches to the status and morality that I wanted to introduce.
