Monologue with a Moral Relativist

Your statement, if true, means your statement is inconsequential. You have shot yourself in the foot.

On the other hand, if your statement is false, and there are objective moral rules, then I am allowed to think (even if courtesy will not let me say) that someone who says ‘Morals are not objective’ is a damned liar; that lies are wrong; and that such a someone offends the moral order of the universe, the Golden Rule, common sense, not to mention the rules of logic, by uttering so foolhardy, vile and ignoble a sentiment. In other words, if the statement is false, it also is evil.

I hope you will forgive my harsh language. I do not mean to insult you, because I like you just fine. But what is coming out of your mouth is defiling you.

You could perhaps report, as a matter of fact, that the statement ‘Morals are objective’ is false. But, in the absence of a moral imperative to love truth and hate lies, this report of yours is merely a bland and meaningless fact. My eyes are hazel. That is a fact. It has no imperative associated with it. If I say ‘Morals are Objective’ and you say I am uttering a falsehood, the fact that it is a falsehood is meaningless. It has no imperative associated with it. If I have no moral duty to say or think or follow the truth, telling me my sentence is untrue is as pointless as telling me my sentence stars with an ‘M’. So what?

You could perhaps report that it is inefficient to utter untruths, or make reference to some other disguised or indirect form a moral imperative. Unfortunately, without a foundational moral imperative no disguised or indirect form of moral imperative can exist. The fact that lying is inefficient, again, is a brute fact with no imperative associated with it. If I have no moral duty to be efficient, telling me my untruth is inefficient is as pointless as telling me my sentence stars with an ‘M’. So what?

Once you say ‘morals are not objective’ you eliminate the moral foundation for all things, including this conversation. Why should I listen to you, or concede if proven wrong? Because of an imperative to be courteous? Because of an imperative to be intellectual honest? Because of an imperative to follow the truth wherever it leads?

No, sir. A duty of honesty is something we both assume before a conversation can even start. Neither would waste our breath if it were not for this unspoken and mutually binding imperative. If you will not be honest with me in this discussion, or if I cannot convince you I will be honest with you, the conversation never begins.

Let us draw this abstract conversation back to a particular example:

Myself, I hold it to be self-evident that all men are created equal, and are endowed with certain inalienable rights. I mean that literally: I think the statement, merely by being uttered, as a matter of logic, is a sufficient warrant for its own affirmation.

Now, is this an objective statement, or merely a matter of preference, as if I said, “I like women to wear skirts; also, I like laws that judge men without injustice, bias or favoritism.”?

Do you think men are born with equal rights? If not, on what grounds, then, you do rest any notions of justice or social justice, any ideas of how men should arrange their political affairs?

Is preferring liberty to tyranny, life to genocide, happiness to slavery merely a matter of taste, like preferring pie to cake?

Is the peaceful religious practice of the Quakers a morally superior, morally inferior, or neither superior nor inferior to the religious practice of the bloodthirsty Aztecs? Are you seriously going to tell me you would not register even the slightest moral objection to the Aztec practice of human sacrifice, steaming pyramids red with the slaughter of thousands at a time? That is just a matter of personal taste?

As for the other comments:

“…your point of view is reminiscent of the early protestants…”

The parallel you draw between moral absolutism and Christian Reformers is strained at best. The dispute between Catholic and Protestant was not a dispute between moral relativists and moral absolutists.

“The people you criticise as being reckless experimentalists very likely see themselves as rectifying unjust laws in order to grant the people their self-evident rights. In short, they think very much like you.”

Dear friend, I can only judge ideologues by what they say. I take them seriously. When they say that they mean to experiment, that they mean to overthrow Capitalism and smash the Bourgeoisie, that they have no fixed rules, no ideals, and that man produces his own morality from nothing by an act of Nietzschean will-power, I take them at their word. You might see a parallel between what they believe, and what I believe, but the whole point of nihilism, Marxism, behaviorism, Nazism, and Moral Relativism is that there is no objective moral code which applies to all people at all time. I believe the opposite. You claim that they believe in an absolute moral code, but their own writings and actions dispute this. We would need to refer to some evidence to clear this point up. At the moment, I can do no more than say: I have not met or read ideologues, socialists, Marxists, fascists, and so on, who were not firm believers that logic was not universal, and firm believers that morals were not universal.

“Even if all the people in the world wanted to fashion their societies according unchanging, rational, objective laws, there would be the problem that everyone and his mother has his own idea of what’s unchanging, rational, and objective.”

I understand your comment but I do not see your point. What are you driving at?

Two geometers might have a dispute about the soundness of a proof in mathematics, and likewise two astronomers might have an argument about steady-state theory as opposed to Big Bang theory.

I agree there would be a problem in finding a compromise consensus needed for a civilization to operate. If there is an objective moral code built into the logic of the universe, then the problem is soluble; if all morals are merely matters of opinion, the problem is insoluble.

In any case, there mere fact that a dispute exists, that everyone and his mother have different opinions, does not prove one way or the other that the jury of your Reason must be a hung jury on the issue. Nothing prevents you from comparing the arguments of every man and his mother, and coming to a defensible conclusion.

Indeed, if you were unable to come to a defensible conclusion, you would not be able to come to a conclusion like “No moral statement is a proposition” and then defend it.

The mere fact that you debate with me shows that you think that the mere fact that we come to different conclusions does not, in your estimation, forestall the possibility that you might be able to persuade me or someone else reading your words of the truth of your conclusion.