Even academics strawman moral relativism

1.0 Twitter Oxford University Press Tuesday

“Twitter Tuesdays” are my longest running series on this blog. In these posts, I usually critique tweets (and on rare occasions have something positive to say about them). The most common critiques focus on bad arguments for moral realism or against moral antirealism. One might dismiss the relevance of criticizing tweets: “who cares what a bunch of random shitposters have to say about Super Serious™ philosophical topics”, after all. This objection might have some merit, since one certainly shouldn’t judge the fruits of a field by what an uninformed person vomits out on social media. However:

1. Usually the tweets I focus on reflect recurring patterns of thought in popular discourse. Even if academics have matters sorted in the literature, popular misunderstandings can still have significant negative consequences. 

For example, even though evolutionary biologists have very good explanations for how natural selection works, how life on earth evolved, and so on, there is an endless fusillade of misinformed remarks about evolution. Improving public understanding of science is a worthwhile cause: it increases the pool of potential future scientists, enhances public support for scientific efforts, influences educational and other policies, and can ultimately lead to more funding for scientific research. Through such circuitous paths, popular understanding of science contributes to improving the quality of science. Why should it be any different for public perceptions of philosophy?

2. Often the tweets I focus on are from academics, so they directly reflect views within the field.

I have seen some professional philosophers characterize relativism this way, but I haven’t started to systematically document such instances in print. Usually the bad objections, misleading framings, and general bad takes on moral relativism and antirealism more generally appear in podcasts, YouTube clips, TikTok, and the like. However, a colleague recently provided me with an example of an author presenting relativism in a way that repeats many of common tropes and bad objections I’ve covered on this blog previously. The offending source is this book, by Lewis Vaughn:

I have no particular gripe with this author or the book. I’m not familiar with the author, and the book may be magnificent in literally every other respect than its coverage of relativism. Unfortunately, Vaughn’s coverage of relativism is whatever the opposite of magnificent is. Maleficent? My only focus will be on the characterization of moral relativism. Alright, let’s get into it!

2.1 Presumption of folk realism

The commonsense view of morality and moral standards is this: There are moral norms or principles that are valid or true for everyone. This claim is known as moral objectivism. (Vaughn, p. 13)

Here we have the claim that moral realism is “the” commonsense view. 

It’s not at all clear what this even means. What exactly is a “commonsense” view? Is it the view all reasonable people hold? The view most people typically hold? If so, which people? For any given philosophical issue, is there only one commonsense view, or can there be more than one? The use of the would indicate there’s only supposed to be one. Is this an empirical claim about how people think? If so, when was it established that this is the commonsense view? Based on what evidence? If not, what sort of claim is it?

If this is intended to be an empirical claim about how people typically think, i.e., “most people think that moral realism is true,” why should we believe this is true? Philosophers often make this claim, but rarely provide substantive empirical evidence that it’s true. The reason for this is simple: they don’t have substantive empirical evidence that it’s true. It’s something philosophers have just asserted, for decades, without ever actually doing the work to show it’s true. As I’ve argued on this blog many times, the empirical evidence at present does not support the contention that most people are moral realists.

Note that this is a remark that appears in an academic text from Oxford University Press from a professional philosopher. It’s not a tweet. Academics really do make exactly the sorts of claims people make online; indeed, that people make such claims online, and often do so with considerable confidence, is likely because such remarks are often made by academics. This is important: the dubious claims moral realists make online aren’t just popular misconceptions; they’re entrenched in academia as well.

2.2 Conflations & lack of terminological precision

Another problem readers familiar with my commentary on matter may recognize is the poor characterization of “moral objectivism.” We’re told it's the view that “There are moral norms or principles that are valid or true for everyone.” This lack of terminological precision is frustrating. “Valid,” in philosophy, is often used specifically to refer to the structure of arguments in logic. It presumably doesn’t mean that here, since that wouldn’t make any sense. So what does it mean? I don’t think this is clear: not just to me, but in a general sense. “Valid” is just not a helpful term to use in this context. 

The bigger issue here is that moral objectivism, or moral realism, is typically construed as the view that there are stance-independent moral facts. That is, there are moral facts, and those facts are not made true by our stances. Here we’re told that the view is that there are facts or principles that are “true for everyone.” 

Again, this just isn’t clear. This could mean that there is a single set of stance-independent moral facts that are true independent of what people think about them. If so, then this characterization is roughly accurate, but poorly-phrased because the language is (as I’ll show) very ambiguous. I say “roughly” because there are two distinctions in play here: the scope of a moral norm, i.e., who it applies to or who is subject to it, and the truth-makers of a moral norm, i.e., what factors make the moral claim true. A moral realist could think there are stance-independent moral facts, but that different sets of stance-independent moral rules or norms apply to different people. One therefore has to disambiguate stance-independence from scope. Vaughn’s language doesn’t disambiguate the two, so it remains unclear what, exactly, the position is. 

What makes matters worse is that the language could favor the scope interpretation rather than the stance-independence interpretation, leading people to think that moral objectivism is the view that, whatever the moral rules are, they apply to everyone, rather than just some people and not others. That’s a different distinction from the view that moral realism are stance-independently true. I tend to call a view according to which there’s a single set of moral rules that apply to everyone moral universalism. So is moral objectivism, on Vaughn’s characterization, expressing moral realism, moral universalism, both, or neither? I don’t know; it’s hard to say. Given the way the view is contrasted with agent relativism, Vaughn may have in mind scope and moral universalism in particular, whether or not this view is also supposed to refer to realism/stance-independence as well. Efforts to distinguish objectivism from absolutism likewise reinforce that the view is about scope and applicability rather than truth-makers. So it remains unclear what position “moral objectivism” is supposed to pick out and whether that position reflects contemporary characterizations of moral realism.

2.3 Implied false dichotomies

Next, Vaughn says:

Most people probably assume some form of moral objectivism and would not take seriously any claim implying that valid moral norms can be whatever we want them to be. (p. 13)

Once again, note the claim that “most people probably assume some form of moral objectivism [...].” No references or citations are given. This is simply asserted.

This is coupled with the claim that such people would not take seriously the notion that “valid moral norms” (whatever those are) can be “whatever we want them to be.” This makes it seem like one’s only options are either realism or the idea that there are “valid moral norms” and that they are “whatever we want them to be.” There’s an implied false dichotomy here: realism or a strawman antirealist view. Compare if I, as an antirealist said:

Most people probably assume that moral facts depend in some way on our standards or values and would not take seriously any claim implying that moral facts are mystical autonomous entities floating in a philosophical heaven.

Remarks like this give the misleading impression that if one doesn’t accept the position the author is batting for, that one’s only or primary alternative is something stupid and objectionable. 

Simply put, Vaughn’s alternative isn’t your only option if you’re not a moral realist. The latter remark is vague and nonspecific, too. I stand by my moral values. That doesn’t mean I think your moral values are “valid” and “whatever you want them to be” in a way I’m obligated to care about. The implication here seems to be that if you reject realism, you’re stuck with a specific form of agent relativism where you can act on your values, but are somehow bound to respect everyone else’s, because they’re equally “valid.” Valid relative to what standard? Theirs, mine, or some external standard? If someone else’s values are valid relative to their values, well, why should I care about that? If they’re valid relative to their own but not relative to mine, and I act based on my values, I’m not going to care at all what their values are. If they conflict with mine, too bad for that person. This is closer to something like appraiser relativism, which I address below. If they’re valid according to some special standard we’re both obligated to endorse, this is functionally quite close in some ways to moral realism: namely, in that standards other than your own bind and constrain your own actions, shackling you with obligations that mandate you act ways that are inconsistent with your values and preferences. Again, more on this below.

2.4 Relativism doesn’t mean morality is a matter of “whatever you want it to be”

The notion that moral values are “whatever you want them to be” also falsely implies that an antirealist or a relativist is committed to an especially flippant, arbitrary conception of morality. Do you just choose what your moral preferences are like choosing the color of an outfit? I don’t. I can’t help but regard certain actions as horrific, others as heroic, and others as outside the realm of morality. Nothing about the notion that moral values are true or false relative to the standards of individuals or cultures requires that one think that one’s standards are arbitrary, or adopted on a whim, or subject to total voluntary control.

Compare to other domains of preference and value: I like peanut butter. I didn’t wake up one morning and decide to like it, and I couldn’t wake up tomorrow morning and decide not to. Maybe I could condition myself to hate it, but that would take a lot of work, and I’d only do that if I had some reason to do so. So, could I condition myself to not value human wellbeing and just not care if people suffered? I don’t think I could. But let’s suppose I could. How easy would that be? I suspect it’d be very difficult. The point here is that even if moral truth depended on our values or preferences, that doesn’t mean our values are volatile, readily subject to change, that we’d simply choose self-serving moral values, or be readily disposed to think things like “it’s okay when I steal and manipulate others, but not when they do.” Moral relativism is often depicted as though it licenses one to take a selfish, frenetic, devil-may-care attitude towards morality: stealing is wrong one minute, but permissible the next. This is not, in any way, a logical entailment of relativism. It is completely consistent with relativism to be as stubborn and as incorrigible about one’s moral values as a moral realist.

Flip this on its head, for a moment: if a moral realist felt some motivation to comply with whatever they believed the stance-independent moral facts were, one might even expect the realist’s moral values to be less stable. What’s easier to do? Convince a moral relativist to change their preferences, or convince a realist to change their beliefs about what’s morally right or wrong? How does one even argue for alternative preferences? It might prove very challenging. Beliefs, on the other hand, are precisely the sorts of psychological states that are especially vulnerable to change.

Critics of relativism often depict the position as one of instability, whimsy, and a license for discord. This is complete bullshit. For a relativist, the axis if one’s moral concern turns on their values or the views of their culture. The axis of moral change for realists, in contrast, are their beliefs in what’s morally right or wrong. While preferences can and do change, it’s not at all obvious that they’re more prone to change than the beliefs of a moral realist. The relative volatility of each is, as you can probably guess I’m going to say next, an empirical question. Realists are not entitled to simply declare relativism to be this ridiculous, volatile position, where the relativist is untrustworthy because they could decide on a whim tomorrow that actually punching you and stealing your lunch money is totally morally okay, while a realist wouldn’t think this. 

While there may be contingent psychological associations between one’s metaethical views about realism and antirealism on the one hand, the stability of their moral preferences/beliefs on the other, metaethical views don’t logically entail stability or instability. Thus, even if it were true that relativists had less stable moral views, this would be a fact about human psychology, not a fact about relativism itself. And such a discovery would have little to do with whether relativism were true or false. The fact that we found moral instability undesirability is not any direct or good evidence that moral realism is true. It could very well be that accepting certain truths has bad consequences.

In short: relativism is a view about moral truth and/or about moral semantics. Nothing about moral relativism entails that morality is “whatever you want it to be.” Such a notion involves substantive psychological claims, and nothing about relativism requires that one think that people are in a position to decide that their moral values are “whatever they want them to be.” Such a remark gives the highly misleading impression that relativism commitments one to a volatile and arbitrary view of moral values. This isn’t an entailment of relativism and, if anything, is probably psychologically unrealistic (at least for humans).

2.5 Undermining ethics itself

Next, Vaughn claims that:

“[...] moral objectivism is directly challenged by a doctrine that some find extremely appealing and that, if true, would undermine ethics itself: ethical relativism. (p. 13, bold original)

Note the use of the term “doctrine.” Doctrine in this context may carry negative connotations of an undesirable or doctrinaire position, subtly implying there’s something bad about it. The other issue is the claim that ethical relativism would “undermine ethics itself.” There’s nothing subtle about this: that sounds bad!

Is it true, though? How, exactly, would ethical relativism undermine ethics? We’ll get to that, but for now, I’ll say this: I don’t think that it does at all, but I highlight this remark because I think it tells us something about how Vaughn is framing the issue. This isn’t another position on the table to consider, but, it seems to me, a threat to be eliminated. That, at least, is how I think this way of characterizing it makes it seem.

2.6 Conflates agent and appraiser relativism

One of the most common misrepresentations of antirealist positions in the literature is the way critics handle metaethical relativism. I’ve routinely pointed out on this blog that there is an important distinction between agent and appraiser relativism.

Appraiser relativism holds that moral facts are determined by the evaluative standard of whoever is appraising an act, or the standards of the culture of whoever is praising an act. If we consider an action like stealing, the statement:

Stealing is morally wrong.

…would have no determinate truth value when considered in isolation. Instead, it can only be evaluated relative to the standards of different appraisers. If I consider it wrong, then it is wrong relative to my standards, while if someone else does not think it’s wrong, then it isn’t wrong relative to their standards. On this view, statements like “Stealing is morally wrong” are best understood convey the speaker’s standards or the standards of their culture; they mean something like:

Stealing is inconsistent with my (or my culture’s) moral standards.

Such statements can be true or false, but they carry no normative implications for anyone else. If someone came up to you and said:

Hand over your wallet. Stealing isn’t morally wrong.

This would mean something like:

Hand over your wallet. I don’t consider stealing wrong.

Well, so what if they don’t consider stealing wrong? This carries no implications for how you must act. This type of relativism doesn’t carry deep moral implications. The truth or falsehood of moral claims is indexed to the standards of different agents, but this doesn’t “create” any special moral obligations for anyone else. I don’t find anything especially repugnant or scary about this form of relativism. It is simply a way of unpacking what’s going on when someone makes a moral claim: they’re telling you something about their values. If a person goes around saying that they think it’s “morally okay to torture babies” all this amounts to is them telling you that they approve of torturing babies, or don’t consider it wrong, or whatever. That’s horrifying, to be sure, but it’d be just as horrifying if this form of relativism weren’t true. The truth of this form of relativism amounts to little more than an account of the meaning of moral claims. It just doesn’t carry the bite that agent relativism carries: it doesn’t require you to respect the baby torturer’s values any more than you’d be required to respect them if relativism weren’t true. 

There may be problems with this form of relativism, but it doesn’t carry the implication that you have to let other people commit atrocities. Conveniently, critics of “relativism” almost never focus on this form of relativism, and instead direct their objections to another form of relativism: agent relativism.

Agent relativism holds that the moral facts are fixed by the standards of the agent or the culture of an agent. If Alex thinks stealing is wrong, and Sam thinks stealing is not wrong, then it’s wrong for Alex to steal and it isn’t wrong for Sam to steal. Alex has no business interfering if Sam goes around stealing, since it isn’t wrong for Sam to steal, while Sam has no reason to think Alex is failing to do what’s acceptable by not stealing since, after all, Alex thinks it’s wrong to steal, and so it is wrong for Alex to steal.

This is a super weird type of “relativism.” Each person individually legislates what is right or wrong for them (or their culture does), in such a way as to create a moral obligation everyone else ought, morally, to respect. Think about that last point for a moment: everyone else thereby acquires a moral obligation independent of their own goals, standards, or values that mandates how they must act. If someone runs up to you and demands your wallet, and they sincerely believe it’s okay to mug you, then it is okay for them to mug you. Hand over your wallet, fool!

While all such moral facts are technically made true by a stance, making this a form of moral antirealism, it’s a type of moral antirealism that is objectionable precisely insofar as it mandates that we do things independent of our own goals, standards, and values. This is really repugnant and undesirable because it means if someone wants to commit genocide or eat babies because they think it’s morally good to do so, we are morally obligated to stand aside while they do so. This type of relativism ties our hands when it comes to what (relative to our own values) would be atrocities. Naturally, this is taken to be a horrifying and repugnant conclusion, and a reason to reject agent relativism. So its most objectionable element is, ironically, that it’s too much like moral realism. I half-jokingly call agent relativism à la carte realism, since it functions, in practice, more like a weird form of moral realism where there are moral facts we must comport with, but different rules apply to each person or member of a particular culture.

If you’re like me, this seems a bit silly. If I’m already inclined to deny that there are stance-independent moral facts about how I and other people must act independent of our goals and standards, why would I think there are facts about how I must act with respect to others that are determined by their standards (or the standards of their culture) rather than mine? Both involve the demand that I comply with moral standards that aren’t mine and don’t reflect my values and preferences. Agent relativism is half a step towards realism: it still shackles one with a host of external impositions on one’s actions. It’s just a super weird type of “antirealism” that functions, in practice, like a bizarre quasi-realist morality where everyone is obligated (whether they like it or not, and whether it reflects their own values or not) to comply with everyone else’s moral standards and values.

Critics of “relativism” almost always characterize it in terms of agent relativism. I suspect such weak criticisms of “relativism” are widespread among professional philosophers, who often express open contempt for relativism. Vaughn provides an excellent example of this, exclusively characterizing relativism as though it were agent relativism:

According to this view moral standards are not objective but are relative to what individuals or cultures believe. There simply are not objective moral truths, only relative ones. An action is morally right if endorsed by a person or culture and morally wrong if endorsed by a person or culture. So euthanasia is right for person A if he approves of it but wrong for person B  if she disapproves of it, and the same would go for cultures with similarly diverging views on the subject. In this way, moral norms are not discovered but made; the individual or culture makes right or wrong. (p. 13)

Note the last remark: morality is not discovered but “made,” an individual or culture “makes” right or wrong. Note the potential equivocation here: a person can “make” something right or wrong in the sense that their values are what “make it the case” or serve as “truth-makers” for the moral truths, but this sense of “make” is different from the sense of “make” whereby one crafts, or constructs something, e.g., making a cake or a bridge. The way math works “makes” it the case that 2+2=4, but it’s not like a pair of twos literally craft or create a 4. While relativism does entail that individuals or cultures “make” moral truths, this doesn’t mean that individuals construct, or craft them. The latter sense of “making” moral truths suggests a deliberative, voluntary act: imagine a person sitting down to make a chair or bake a cake. I don’t know about you, but I never sat down, absent any moral standards or values, and simply thought:

Hmm, what kind of values would I like to have? Should I be for or against baby torture?

I didn’t just choose my personal values on a whim. Compare to your favorite color or your favorite food: do you just “create” your food preferences? I don’t, and I doubt most people do. These are far closer, in practice, to something we discover about ourselves than something we fashion on a whim. Just so, while moral relativism (in both its agent and appraiser forms) may entail that our values “make” moral facts true, that doesn’t mean we make those values in the sense of choosing or creating them. Vaughn uses these two phrases as though he’s reiterating or reinforcing a point, almost as if these mean the same thing:

moral norms are not discovered but made; the individual or culture makes right or wrong.

The sense of “made”, by contrasting it with discovered, suggests the “crafting” sense of making, while the use of “makes” is ambiguous: does this mean individuals or cultures craft right or wrong, or that their values determine the truth status of moral claims? Moral relativists are only committed to the latter, and are not required to acknowledge any specific means by which one’s values or the standards of one’s culture “fix” the moral facts: if it turns out that, as a matter of psychological fact, we have no control over our moral values at all, but rather discover what we care about in the way we discover our food preferences, this wouldn’t make relativism false. After all, if it turns out I can’t choose my food preferences, does that mean gastronomic realism is true? Consider a claim like:

Pineapple on pizza is delicious.

If all people are either innately disposed to like or dislike pineapple on pizza, and claims like this express the preferences of the speaker, then this claim will be true when some people say it and false when others say. The truth of these claims is determined by each individual’s preferences, but individuals don’t create their preferences by deciding whether they like pineapple on pizza: they can’t! Rather, people discover whether they like pineapple on pizza, perhaps by trying it. Relativism does not entail that morality is “made” rather than “discovered.” It is perfectly compatible with discovery: it’s just that one discovers something about their preferences or their culture’s standards rather than discovering what the stance-independent moral facts are.

2.7 Falsely implies relativism doesn’t require serious thinking

Next, Vaughn says:

In some ways, subjective relativism is a comforting position. It relieves the burden of serious critical reasoning about morality. After all, determining right from wrong is a matter of inventorying one’s beliefs, and any sincerely held beliefs will do. (p. 13)

This is just an insult presented as if it were a legitimate critique. First, Vaughn implies that proponents of moral relativism are motivated to hold the position because they find it comforting, and not because they think the philosophical case for it is simply stronger than rival positions. This suggests that proponents of the view are insincere, biased, and motivated reasoners, so we should take relativism less seriously. There’s a hint of a lament and compassionate understanding on the author’s part, something along the lines of:

“I can understand why someone might be attracted to this view…”

This is then immediately followed by suggesting that much of that comfort comes from abdicating one’s responsibility to engage in serious philosophical thought. In short, this remark suggests that relativism attracts people because they are biased, seeking comfort because they are psychologically weak, and that they are intellectually lazy and are drawn to the position so they don’t have to hurt their poor brains thinking too hard.

This is ridiculous. How does this even appear in a serious academic publication like the Oxford University Press? Vaughn’s remarks are little more than speculative psychologizing of the motivations people might have for adhering to a philosophical position, rather than a serious and sober examination of the intellectual merits (or lack thereof) of the position itself. One could imagine inverting the roles, with an antirealist describing moral realism in an academic publication:

In some ways, moral realism is a comforting position. It gives the realist the reassuring sense that their personal values are aligned with truths that transcend personal biases and cultural upbringing, as though the universe itself approves of their actions.

This might even be true. Should we reject moral realism because moral realists might find the view comforting? And this might bias them towards the view? Maybe. First, though, this is just as much a bit of armchair psychological speculation as Vaugh’s remarks, and I don’t have any substantive empirical evidence it’s true. Second, it’s at best a fairly weak point against moral realism. Sure, okay, so the view might be appealing in ways that bias people towards it. That’s hardly a reason to discredit the position. Most importantly, to make such a remark in such a way without a parallel remark speculating about the motives of antirealists suggests a partisan bias in favor of a particular metaethical stance.

Furthermore, what, exactly, is the objection here? Let’s suppose the truth of relativism would entail that much normative moral theorizing were a big waste of time, so that, in effect, it really did “[relieve] the burden of serious critical reasoning about morality.” Is this supposed to be an objection to the view? That certainly seems to be the implication. If so, it’s a bad objection. Simply because a particular position would mean there’s little to think about or do with respect to some potential domain of inquiry, doesn’t necessarily mean the view is mistaken. I don’t think astrology provides knowledge about personalities or tells us the future. As a result, there is little reason for me to engage in serious critical reasoning about astrology.

Disbelief in the efficacy of astrology relieves one of the burden of serious critical reasoning about how the location of stars and planets influence our behavior and reveal our futures.

This is true. It’s also a good thing, because astrology is a bunch of nonsense. Even if a relativist thought serious critical reasoning about morality was a big waste of time, well, maybe it is. Not only is this objection more of an insult than a serious criticism, it’s not even a particularly good criticism, either.

Also, it’s not at all clear it’s even true relativism makes it any easier to engage in serious critical reasoning about morality. Simply because you’re a relativist, that doesn’t mean you can’t engage in normative moral theorizing. First, a moral relativist may find that they are not in a state of reflective equilibrium, and may find that they have various biases that, on reflection, they wish to override in order to refine their moral views. This constructive procedure involves reflecting on and refining one’s personal (relativistic) moral standards. Moral theorizing thus becomes, in part, a process of self-discovery, rather than a process of discovering something about the stance-independent moral facts. I see no good reason to think such a process doesn’t involve serious critical reasoning about morality. One can ask questions such as:

What kind of person do I want to be?

What kinds of norms and institutions would best realize my personal moral values?

I hold two positions that seem to conflict with one another, how can I resolve this tension?

…and so on. The paths of moral reflection and inquiry are completely open to relativists.

Moral relativists also typically have moral goals, values, and interests, and they have an interest in how others behave and how society functions. If you’re a moral relativist, and you don’t believe there are any stance-independent moral facts, that doesn’t mean your only choice is to toss out your Kant and Mill and stop doing normative moral philosophy. Instead, you may stop attempting to demonstrate that one or another moral theories is stance-independently correct, and move towards attempting to show that one or another competing normative moral theories better accords with most people’s considered reflective judgments on entirely intersubjective grounds. You might think, for instance, that on reflection most people would realize that utilitarianism best reflects their own considered values, and you may go about attempting to convince people that they’re probably also implicit utilitarians, or would be on reflection. 

After all, suppose you have a set of moral values, {A, B, C}. You want others to adhere to these values. Many don’t. What do you do? Do you just not care? Maybe. But you might also want to convince others to comply with these moral values to the greatest extent that you can. Or you may seek compromise with them: Get a bit more {A} in exchange for granting them a bit of {D}. Moral theorizing can become a process of diplomacy and negotiation. 

Lastly, note that there are already domains we might think people aren’t realists about: food, music, art, and so on. Supposing we’re relativists about the taste of food and drink, does this mean that one can’t engage in serious critical reasoning about the culinary arts? Absolutely not. Acknowledging that food and drink is ultimately a matter of taste in no way limits one from thinking seriously about the nature of food, how to make better food, and so on. The notion that relativism would somehow undermine serious critical reasoning about morality is just mistaken, and reveals a lack of imagination on Vaughn’s part. Take that final remark from Vaughn:

After all, determining right from wrong is a matter of inventorying one’s beliefs, and any sincerely held beliefs will do. (p. 13)

While one can view morality in a superficial and shallow way, this isn’t a requirement of relativism. People can and do reflect on the lives they want to live, the careers they want to pursue, the kinds of people they want to be, and so on. Our personal standards are often opaque to us, or we struggle when thinking about who we want to be or what we think we should do, even if we don’t think there’s a stance-independent fact of the matter. People don’t just look up a list of their moral beliefs and go “ahh, here they are.” We often face considerable internal struggle, tension, and conflict. Vaughn’s remarks give the impression that our own minds and values are fully transparent, straightforward, and simple. For many, if not most of us, this simply isn’t true, and, in any case, isn’t an entailment of relativism.

Vaughn continues to press this point, claiming that:

Subjective relativism also helps people short-circuit the unpleasantness of moral debate.

This may be true, and some people may find it attractive for this reason. This isn’t a reason to think relativism is false though. It’s just a worry that it may be appealing for reasons unconnected to its truth. The same is true of moral realism.

2.8 Depicts relativists as inconsistent

Next, Vaughn says:

The doctrine, however, is difficult to maintain consistently. On issues that the relativist cares little about (the moral rightness of gambling, say), she may b e content to point out that moral norms are relative to each individual and “to each his own.” But on more momentous topics (such as genocide in Africa or the Middle East), she may slip back into objectivism and declare that genocide is morally wrong—not just wrong for her  but wrong period. (p. 14)

Note that Vaughn says that they may slip back into objectivism, as though objectivism is some kind of default position they’d be in if they weren’t a relativist. This is a presumption that Vaughn has not sustained and echoes the common, and probably false notion that most people are moral realists and that realism is “the commonsense view.”

Vaughn also suggests that it’s difficult to consistently maintain one’s commitment to relativism. Once again, this isn’t true. It may be true if one both (a) endorses a form of agent relativism or other views which mandate that one must tolerate and regard as morally good practices one personally finds abhorrent but (b) doesn’t want to tolerate such practices, but again, this is only an issue if you’re an agent relativism, or you hold specific normative views. It isn’t a problem at all for appraiser relativism. Once again, these objections largely seem to stem from focusing exclusively on agent relativism and normative standards often associated with relativism, but such objections are irrelevant to appraiser relativism.

Vaughn continues to press this point about commonsense: 

Such inconsistencies hint that there may be something amiss with subjectivism relativism, and indeed there is: It seems to conflict violently with commonsense realities of the moral life. (p. 14)

First, does it? Is everyone animated all the time to impose their moral standards on every other society? How much are people troubled by the lack of civil rights in other nations? How much are members of those societies concerned with interfering or imposing their standards on everyone else? Sure some, perhaps many people are concerned, but many people aren’t. Perhaps this is due to a sense of helplessness or overriding principles, e.g., that interference would do more harm than good, but perhaps in many cases people actually are just pretty damn tolerant of other cultures engaging in practices they don’t approve of. 

Second, again, this is only a concern for agent relativism and not appraiser relativism. If you’re an appraiser relativist, there’s nothing stopping you from judging other societies according to your own moral standards and acting accordingly.

2.9 Subjectivism doesn’t entail or imply infallibility

To build on how relativism supposedly violates commonsense, Vaughn adds:

For one thing, the doctrine implies that each person is morally infallible. An action is morally right for someone if he approves of it—if he sincerely believes it to be right. (p. 14)

No it doesn’t. Agent relativism holds that moral facts are fixed by the standards of agents or their cultures. Absolutely nothing about agent relativism or any other standard form of relativism specifically includes psychological claims about how transparent our own values are to us. Specific claims about human psychology simply aren’t a part of these theories. 

Furthermore, even if our fundamental moral values were readily accessible to us, there’s still no good reason to think we’re infallible. For comparison, suppose we said that people were infallible judges of their own food preferences. Even this is highly questionable: someone may claim they “hate fish,” but discover later on that they only ever ate fish cooked by a family member who was bad at preparing fish. Simply put: we’re not infallible judges of our own food preferences. Why should there be infallible judges of our moral values?

But let’s suppose you are infallible with respect to your fundamental moral values. And let’s suppose you’re a relativist and you believe we should do whatever would maximize happiness or promote human rights. This still doesn't mean you're an infallible judge with respect to how to go about doing this. Relativism may at best only involve infallibility with respect to introspective access to one’s values; it doesn’t entail infallibility with respect to the best means of achieving one’s values.

In addition, there may be many instances in practice where you know what your moral aims are, but don’t know how best to balance different moral considerations or how to act in practice. Should you tell your friend the truth, or not? Even if you know that you value both honesty and you value compassion for their feelings, it may not be obvious how to weigh these against each other, or what action would yield the best outcome in a particular situation. Once again, relativists still face serious moral dilemmas that require thought and deliberation. Vaughn suggests you just consult your personal values. Yet this example shows that this simply isn’t enough in many real world cases. Vaughn has offered us a profoundly impoverished conception of what it is actually like to think about and act in accord with one’s subjective goals: it’s not easy, and it doesn’t short-circuit serious thinking.

So, firstly, we probably aren’t infallible with respect to our own values. Second, even if we were, this wouldn’t make us infallible in many respects important to moral deliberation. Third, and finally, the suggestion that it somehow violates “commonsense” notions to suggest that we’re “infallible” is misleading because it relies on failing to unpack what it is we’d be infallible about.

Suppose I told you:

People are infallible judges of what they approve and disapprove of.

Does that seem plausible to you? If you think yes, well, then what’s so implausible about the relativist saying we’re infallible judges of what’s morally right and wrong? All this means is that we’re infallible judges of what we approve and disapprove of. So if you agree we’re infallible judges in that regard, and if relativism just is the view that what’s right or wrong is what we approve or disapprove of, then boom, we’re infallible judges of what’s right and wrong.

If, on the other hand, you don’t think we’re infallible judges of what we approve or disapprove of, then you wouldn’t even agree with Vaughn’s suggestion that relativism implies we’re infallible in the first place.

In the former case, the critic themselves would be committed to our infallibility in the relevant respect, conditional on the truth of relativism, so they’d have little business saying it’s implausible. In the latter case, they wouldn’t even agree with the initial presumption. In both cases, Vaughn’s point fails.

The reason it might look plausible is by putting distance between this claim:

1. We’re infallible judges of what’s morally right and wrong

…and these claims:

2. What’s morally right and wrong is whatever we approve and disapprove of

3. We’re infallible judges of what we approve and disapprove of

(1), taken in isolation, may look absurd. But it only looks absurd if you don’t think that what’s morally right and wrong is determined by what we approve and disapprove of, i.e., it only looks absurd if you already think relativism looks absurd; that you’d be infallible as a relativism doesn’t make the relativist position any more absurd.

2.10 Claims disagreement is a problem of relativism

Vaughn presents another common objection to relativism as well:

Subjective relativism also implies that another commonplace of the moral life is an illusion: moral disagreement.

The idea here is supposed to be that if when people make moral claims, they all legislate morality for themselves, then when Alex says that stealing is wrong, stealing is wrong for Alex, and when Sam says stealing isn’t wrong, stealing isn’t wrong for Sam, so they couldn’t really disagree with one another about what’s true: both claims are true. Since we observe people apparently arguing about what’s morally right or wrong, they’re probably not committed to agent relativism.

There’s a difference between the claim that most people speak and think like agent relativists, and the claim that agent relativism is true. What is it that’s supposed to be true, a semantic thesis about how ordinary people speak, or a metaphysical thesis about the nature of moral truth, or both? 

What I find weird about objections like these is that they are implicitly or explicitly intended to show something like “it’s not the case that when people make moral claims they’re speaking like agent relativists.” Such claims are empirical, yet philosophers try to settle the matter nonempirically. Why do this? Why not just gather empirical data on how people speak and think about moral issues?

At any rate, if the claim is that most people don’t speak like agent relativists…well, I agree with that, at least. There are better ways to handle this than suggesting that relativists can’t account for “disagreement” though. What relativists couldn’t account for are disagreements about what the stance-independent moral facts are, since they don’t think there are such things and, if they thought people were implicitly agent relativists, they would probably not think people thought or spoke like there were stance-independent moral facts.

The standard reasoning might go that because there is moral disagreement, and this is inconsistent with relativism, that relativism must be false. Yet this requires the implicit presumption that if relativism were true, people couldn’t have moral disagreements. Insofar as moral disagreements are stipulated to be the sorts of disagreements that are inconsistent with agent relativism, this is trivially true. If, instead, the nature of a “disagreement” is open to challenge, the relativist could argue that “disagreement” doesn’t require disputes about what is stance-independently right or wrong. That is, the activities we observe and consider “disagreements” don’t necessarily involve the sorts of “disagreements” that would be impossible if people were relativists. Instead, it could be that disagreements could involve states of affairs consistent with relativism.

In short, the relativist could argue that the disagreements we often observe are not, in fact, the kind of thing that is inconsistent with relativism. I discuss this here. Since I already addressed this issue at length in that article, I won’t repeat those points here.

2.11 Relativism and moral progress

The article goes on to claim that relativism struggles to account for moral progress. Once again, this simply isn’t true. If one insists that moral progress just is progress with respect to some nonrelative standard: sure, relativism can’t account for progress. But if one doesn’t maintain that progress must be nonrelative, then there’s no inconsistency with making progress relative to some standard. This might be a bit weird or difficult to manage for agent relativists of specific forms, but it is no problem at all for the appraiser relativist.

Consider: can one make progress in painting? In cooking? In achieving their goals? In all of these cases, we can make progress relative to some standard. Nothing about relativism is inconsistent with or prohibits one from making progress relative to a goal. 

Like many objections, the “relativism can’t account for progress” objection derives much of its force from failing to disambiguate key terms in the objection, and by a covert but still brute appeal to the critic’s presumptive commitment to realism. It’s just another bad objection that recapitulates the presumption that people are implicit realists. Some of us just aren’t. Take myself: I think the idea of nonrelative moral progress to be preposterous, ridiculous on a level its difficult to fathom. If I’m prepared to deny moral realism, why would I waver in denying realist-exclusive notions of moral progress? Simple: I wouldn’t. 

Such objections sound to me like if someone were to say that it counts against atheism that the atheist denies the efficacy of prayer. Since praying to God works, this is a problem for atheism. Few atheists are going to deny theism but still think praying to God works. Just so, if someone is prepared to deny there are stance-independent moral facts, I see little reason why they wouldn’t also deny that there’s such a thing as “moral progress” in a realist-exclusive sense (i.e., with respect to stance-independent norms).

3.0 Conclusion

I have little to add beyond the commentary above. I’m not sure why academics focus exclusively on agent relativism and don’t address appraiser relativism. Maybe agent relativism and its kin are common among students and are really annoying to deal with. Whatever the reason, the merits of a metaethical stance shouldn’t be judged by its worst forms or most unprepared representatives. Picking on a half-baked agent relativism expressed by students is a weird way to criticize a philosophical stance, when there are philosophers who could defend forms of it that are less vulnerable to the objections raised here. Yet instead of seeing a back and forth with a serious and sharp relativist perspective, relativism is depicted as something only a lazy, unreflective idiot would favor. Vaughn’s objections may even be entirely legitimate when directed against such views, but this hardly serves as a compelling critique of relativism proper. For comparison, if I were to rip into the metaethical views of undergraduates at a Bible college that mostly claimed to be moral realists, and exposed problems and inconsistencies in their views, would this somehow refute moral realism? No; that would be ridiculous. The same holds here. Even if Vaughn is on point in at least some objections to certain forms of agent relativism, this is not enough to dispense with non-agentic moral relativism.

References

Vaughn, L. (2022). Bioethics: Principles, issues, and cases (5th ed.). Oxford University Press.