How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a
leg? Answer, four.
Calling a tail a leg does not make it a leg.
Attributed to Abraham Lincoln
Protagoras, c.490-421 B.C., a Greek philosopher. was one of the leading Sophists, and is most famous for the saying "Man is the measure of all things." He held that all truth is relative to the individual who holds it. This implies that morality is relative as well. His statement may be the earliest known one promoting moral relativism.*
After Albert Einstein came up with the theory of relativity people in the social sciences such as the German sociologist Max Weber, again applied the concept of relativity to concepts such as morality. This Thus appeared the concept of moral relativism in which morality simply becomes what a particular society believes is moral. If we consider cannibalism immoral, the argument goes, than it is immoral for us to be cannibals but if another culture considers cannibalism a noble form of human sacrifice then it is moral for people from that culture to be cannibals. Albert Einstein would probably have been horrified at this sort of reasoning but it has stuck. The prevalence of this sort of reasoning and some of its negative consequences have been discussed by Paul Eidelberg.
There is in my opinion no justification to assume that relativity applies to morality but if for a moment we are to assume that it does we should consider the theory of relativity more closely. The theory of relativity says that everything is relative...to a constant, the speed of light. The theory of relativity implies a universal constant. Applied to morality, one could argue that this implies that there is a universal morality, independent of the culture.
Although I believe there is a universal morality, I do not believe that we necessarily know what that universal morality is. Although I believe we have an intrinsic knowledge of right or wrong, I also believe that we can be mistaken about it. Most of us have had times when we did what we thought was right and later realized that what we did was wrong.
Free speech, is key to our being closest to an accurate perception of what is moral and what is not since it makes available to us all sides of an issue, and democracy is key in giving us the power to act in a moral way. In a democracy the majority rules and although it is possible for the majority to be wrong it is more likely that an individual will be wrong. In addition it is more likely that the majority will be more concerned with their welfare than an individual will be.
One of the reasons Free Speech is important is that different opinions can be heard so that conclusions as to what is right and wrong will be as accurate as possible.
John Kekes gave a great speech in which he discussed the problems of moral relativism (frontpagemag.com 4/2/04). Here is an excerpt.
Suppose for the moment that relativism is right: all beliefs are cultural artifacts and they do not conform to objective facts; they merely reflect how a culture views the world, not how the world is. Two consequences follow, each devastating for relativists. First, if what relativists claim holds for all beliefs, then it holds for relativism as well. It too is a cultural artifact and it does not conform to objective facts. Relativism, then, tells us nothing about the truth; it tells us merely what relativists have been culturally conditioned to believe about the truth. People who believe that relativism is false because some beliefs do conform to objective facts are also culturally conditioned. In that case, however, there is no more reason to be a relativist than to be an anti-relativist, since neither is a matter of reason at all. Both depend on the cultural conditioning to which people have been subject. It would, then, be just as wrong for relativists to try to impose their views on defenders of “Western civ,” the canon, the classics, the objectivity of science, and the authority of teachers over students as relativists say it is wrong for anti-relativists to impose their views. If relativists attempt to defend their position by claiming that it is not culturally conditioned but actually true, then they cannot consistently maintain their central claim that the truth does not exist. It must exist if they have found it.
* There was an interesting dialog between Socrates and Protagoras about the concept of truth being relative. The dialog is given below.
Protagoras: Truth is relative. It is only a matter of opinion.
Socrates: You mean that truth is mere subjective opinion?
Protagoras: Exactly. What is true for you is true for you, and what is true for me, is true for me. Truth is subjective.
Socrates: Do you really mean that? That my opinion is true by virtue of its being my opinion?
Protagoras: Indeed I do.
Socrates: My opinion is: Truth is absolute, not opinion, and that you, Mr. Protagoras, are absolutely in error. Since this is my opinion, then you must grant that it is true according to your philosophy.
Protagoras: You are quite correct, Socrates.
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