The
article “Folk Moral Relativism” attempts to use empirical means
to show that previous studies, which concluded that most were moral objectivists, arrived at that conclusion by looking at the same
culture as the respondents, and that by expanding the study to
include other cultures they hoped to show that people hold a
relativistic view of morality. However,
while their studies may show that there is a common tendency to view
that cultures hold different moral standards, the inequality of
justifications of standards suggests objectivism is the folk norm.
Before
examining the article, it would be useful to understand the meaning
of Moral Relativism (MR), and Moral Objectivism (MO) in this context.
MR claims that the correctness of any given moral action needs to be
evaluated in the context of a culture, sometimes resulting in
contradictory conclusions being correct.1
MO claims that there is only one truth about morality in a similar
manner as there is only one truth about empirical claims.2
If there are two competing notions of the rightness of a given
action, one “is surely mistaken”.3
Previous studies show that a majority of people hold MO to be correct, but this study set out to demonstrate that the findings were skewed by methodology, and that the truth was far more complicated.4 By pointing out that there are external facts which have a bearing on the truth of any claim, like the seasons being relative to the hemisphere, considering moral claims with reference to other cultures leads to relativistic conclusions; the more extreme the difference in cultures, the greater likelihood neither stance is viewed as wrong.5
The
first study demonstrated this by surveying students from Baruch
College, New York City, on the moral correctness of two actions,
killing a child based on appearance, and testing the sharpness of a
knife by random stabbings. Conflicting opinions were reported of
judges from wildly different cultures, two from their own culture
(specifically one from their own immediate collective), one from an
isolated warrior tribe, and one from an alien culture.6
The results showed that the closer to their own culture, the more
likely the students would say at least one of the conflicting
opinions was wrong, but that is less true as people think about
different cultures.7
To
isolate the contradiction, a series of six studies was conducted
using variations on the first study. The second differed only in
that it was conducted at the National University of Singapore, to
factor out “the idiosyncrasies of contemporary American culture.”8
It, along with the other studies, showed the same trend, a high level
of confidence in the objectivity of one's cultural norms decreasing
as the cultures considered diverged. Note that it focused on the
judges' reactions and assumed that an answer with a low agreement was
an expression of MR.
The
sixth study attempted to isolate whether people were taking the
questions to mean the judge had
justifications for believing as they did.9
By including
non-moral facts, the researchers were able to compare the reactions
“between intuitions about truth and intuitions about
justifications”.10
The results showed confidence about the truth of non-moral facts,
and low confidence in moral truth, contrasted with agreement that “at
least one judge had 'no good reason' in the moral condition”,
indicating that intuitions acknowledge cultural norms exist without
any being specifically wrong, but a lower willingness to agree that
all norms are equally justified.11
This seems to partially support a relativistic conclusion.
If
it is the case that people really do hold that different cultures not
only have different moral norms, but that disagreements do not
constitute a contradiction, we would be mistaken saying people are
fundamentally moral objectivists. It may be people recognize that
different cultures require sets of behaviors, and by considering
different norms, people become
less sure that their own culture's behaviors would be acceptable,
and an apt expression of that might be the idiom, “when
in Rome, do as the Romans do.” With idioms like this present in
the vernacular, it would almost seem that this belief is part of a
folk understanding of MR by linguistically encoding the basic notion
into common phrases. Of course, the soundness of this remains firmly
in the realm of empirical testing, and further studies that better
isolate any psychological leanings would be necessary to confirm this
conclusion.
One
key assumption in the new hypothesis is that non-moral facts have
bearing on the truth of moral statement, in the same way that
non-seasonal facts bear on statements about seasons. This could be
called “context sensitivity”, the rightness of an action will
have differing truth values based on non-moral facts.12
The argument for the new hypothesis rests completely upon this
notion and the studies seems to confirm that intuitions run in a
context sensitive way. If that is all that is necessary to conclude
the common belief in MR, then it would appear that the hypothesis has
been confirmed.
Affirming
context sensitivity is far from sufficient to affirm MR, and they are
by no means equivalent. Being aware of states of affairs beyond the
simple actions in question uncontroversially sheds light on the moral
status of simple actions, regardless if MO or MR is true. An expert
swimmer that chooses to not attempt an easy rescue of a drowning
child has likely failed to meet a moral obligation, in a way that
another person that is unable to swim would not have.13
This does not mean that in all situations where facts about the
world play roles in the moral rightness or wrongness of rescue acts,
they count as examples of MR. Like non-seasonal facts bearing on
season statements, the state of affairs must be carefully examined
and a large number of facts must be known before an absolute
statement could be justified.
It
is completely unsurprising that people would smooth over any
ambiguity of omitted facts (like what hemisphere is in question, or
the behavioral norms that govern a hypothetical question) by
supplying their own from the things they are most familiar, their own
lives. The perceived uniformity of the same-culture conditions,
which was most likely misidentified as MO, tells us nothing more than
the seemingly relativistic conclusion of the new hypothesis. The
study suggests that common intuitive thinking acknowledges
differences exist between cultures, but that no two culture's
justifications are equally supported. It is not that they feel that
it is
both
right and wrong for the agents to perform the actions in question,
but that each culture views it differently, and one of those views is
better supported than the other.
Notice,
this completely leaves the question of what makes the action right or
wrong, and asks a question that might be the equivalent of, “do
different cultures have different beliefs, and are those beliefs as
well justified as your own?” That hardly seems to be asking the
right question. If we are to confirm that people are relativists, we
would need to show that people think cultures are at least roughly
equally justified even when they conflict.
While
the studies do show that people make a clear distinction between the
truth of a moral judgment from another culture, it is unclear if that
distinction counts as confirming that people are moral relativists.
Instead, it is likely that they are expressing a form of context
sensitivity when they are less willing to say that a judge from a
different culture is wrong about moral norms, but they still believe
that justifications of those norms are not equal among the cultures.
Seeing that under moral relativism, it is the justified norms which
make actions right or wrong, doubt of the justifications is doubt of
the entire system.
Sarkissian, Hagop and John Park, David Tien, Jennifer Wright, Joshua Knobe. 2011. “Folk Moral Relitivism.” Mind & Language 26: 482-505
Timmons, Mark. 2013. Moral Theory: An Introduction. Plymouth: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
1 Sarkissian
2011, 482-3.
2 Sarkissian
2011, 482.
3 Sarkissian
2011, 484.
4 Sarkissian
2011, 483-5.
5 Sarkissian
2011, 485-6.
6 Sarkissian
2011, 486-8.
7 Sarkissian
2011, 489.
8 Sarkissian
2011, 489.
9 Sarkissian
2011, 497.
10 Sarkissian
2011, 498-9.
11 Sarkissian
2011, 497-500.
12 Timmons
2013, 45-6.
13 Timmons
2013, 45.
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