It seems to me that I see you saying that moral relativists do not see that there is "any" action that is morally wrong. Perhaps I am misapprehending what you are saying. I cannot believe that I am the only one that knows people who believe some reprehensible things are perfectly acceptable like murdering pre-born humans while other wrong things are in fact wrong like the death penalty or euthanasia. That's the thing that hurts my brain when I am trying to have a conversation with someone whose morals are relative. It is especially frustrating when the person is highly intelligent and well-educated and has a wide variety of life experiences and still has a way of thinking that in my opinion is unintelligent, illogical and lacking in common sense. I guess that is what the definition of moral relativity is though. It's relative. Each person makes up what seems right and wrong to him or her. And the same thing can be right and wrong at the same time if two different people think two different things.
Good question, they do believe that actions can be morally wrong, but that there are no absolute (universal) wrongs. Here is a formal definition of Metaethical Moral Relativism from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: "The truth or falsity of moral judgments, or their justification, is not absolute or universal, but is relative to the traditions, convictions, or practices of a group of persons." In our Equipped for Life Course Podcast (now available on iTunes and YouTube) we discuss how moral relativism is declining in popularity during the first episode "When They Bite the Bullet" beginning around timestamp 55:40. I suggest listening to this episode because we discuss a bit how to dialogue with people who think this way. :) We also have a lesson on it in the Equipped for Life Course.
Try asking the big boss what he thinks about your article. Josh, Tim, and the ERI team will not treat you or any other advocate for legal abortion like that. They are fair and they try to think rather than snapping out one-line sentences. Also, they have every member of their organisation sign a statement saying they are personally opposed to "pro-life terrorism." I am glad you came here.
I had a look at that article. I will be honest about my thoughts, some of which you will agree with, and some of which you will disagree. I will only share some of what I think though because if I wrote out everything it would be a much longer comment than it is now. I don't believe abortion is something to celebrate, to be honest. Anything that takes an innocent human life is an occasion for mourning, not festivity. I can understand in a way why it is done - the celebration of empowerment. However, I can't agree with it, and I must call the hashtag what it is - morally unacceptable. In fact, such a thing grieves me greatly, not because I am against women being empowered, but because of the lives lost in the process. However, although I can understand the frustration and anger of some prolifers at ShoutYourAbortion, I strongly dislike the way these women are being treated over what they said and did. Despite my beliefs about the hashtag itself, I cannot sympathise with death and rape threats, harassment, calls for suicide, and name-calling, not even for women who have had abortions. I don't deem such writings appropriate behaviour for prolifers because, before anything else, it is intrinsically wrong to treat people that way. Also, it is not going to get prolifers anywhere and it will alienate people from what being prolife is all about. "It doesn't really matter what the topic being discussed happens to be; as sure as the sun will rise, women will find themselves on the receiving end of threats, lewd messages, and just general awfulness." http://www.upworthy.com/after-tweeting-on-the-shoutyourabortion-hashtag-these-women-got-an-earful?g=2 That grieves me also, because our online culture does not treat women with respect. I myself have been on the receiving end of sexual harassment and name-calling online so I can sympathise with the way these women feel; it would be terrifying and painful to be told things like that. I do not know why prolifers cannot say, "We strongly deplore your actions but we love you, the people, regardless, and we will be there for you if you need help." In short, while I consider it morally correct to object to the hashtag itself, I strongly stand against women being harassed and threatened on the Internet as well. It's time our online society changed the way it treats its female contributors.
Hi, I'm a pro-life utilitarian. I think this article would benefit from saying that you don't need to address a deeper difference in you and your conversational partners' reasoning unless you feel it's necessary for the abortion conversation, or you want to discuss the other topic for its own sake. For example, I'm an atheist, but when people give their belief in God as rationale for their position, I usually say, "well, I'm an atheist, but I think if I believed in God, I would justify my position from my belief in God by saying [xyz]". It's very difficult to change people's minds about the existence of God, I don't see it as important for its own sake, and it's not a necessary foundation of my argument. On the other hand, I have a friend who's pro-choice, and also disagrees with me on a number of issues of children's rights. I very much prefer to discuss the children's rights issues with her than abortion. I think it would be much easier to change her mind on those issues, I think they are important issues in their own right, and I think she would be much more open to my pro-life position if I convinced her of those things. Obviously, I wouldn't see any difficulty in arguing the pro-life position from a utilitarian perspective. But I feel like your response to moral relativism is also somewhat ineffective. Most people who are moral relativists nonetheless have what we (i.e., moral absolutists) would call moral beliefs. Indeed, I have had several people who call themselves moral relativists try to persuade me that banning abortion is wrong! I think instead of trying to dissuade them of their moral relativist beliefs (a frustrating and probably irrelevant task), I would ask them what sort of situation would compel them to take action on behalf of others, and reframe my arguments so that I'm "speaking their language" based on the answer to that question.
You are right. Many so called relativists still behave as if there are moral absolutes. This shows when they try to tell us that banning abortion is wrong. I think moral relativism is self refuting and think morality can be described as a practical thing. I'm also pro-life atheist BTW. I don't think that someone abandons morality by not believing in god because that hasn't been my experience.
Thanks for your perspective, Argent. I don't think the way I respond to relativists is "irrelevant" because I've seen people abandon relativism during the conversation in which I use the strategies I linked to if I have enough time with them. That being said, I think your way would sometimes work as well. Just depends on the person. That's why I like having multiple tools in my toolbox, so I can try to figure out what will be the most helpful to the person in front of me.
It is, without DOUBT, their worldview that gets in the way. They honestly believe the unborn person is not a person in the same way you and I are, due to no sentience and sapience, and its unwanted presence in its mother's body. I wasn't exactly aware of the utilitarian connection though. But you can be prolife and utilitarian at the same time if you believe the unborn persons are people that need to be protected from death. From a prolife utilitarian POV you could argue that since the unborn are persons it is the greatest amount of good for the greatest amount of people, including the future generations, that makes you want to illegalise abortion. Utilitarianism also includes the principle of "is an action going to do harm to someone, and if it is, don't engage in it." You could try talking about it from that angle, rather than completely dismantling their worldview; I don't know.
In my experience utilitarians are very suspicious of rights-talk in general. They are what's called "consequentialists." Which means they understand the moral quality of an act in terms of the consequences of the act. They'll use the term "right" but they understand from within the context of their normative framework (i.e. utilitarianism). For them it doesn't denote a categorical imperative. There's no "duties" per se. "Duties" are deontological. Where "deon" means duty literally. As far as I know there's no logical entailment from being a utilitarian to having a desires-based approach to rights-talk. However, Singer comes to mind when I think of utilitarianism. He's the more contemporary utilitarian relevant to talks about abortion and infanticide. Noncontemporary advocates would be Bentham and Mill. Utilitarians are sympathetic to desires-based approaches to "rights." They understand a violation of a "right" as a frustration of a desire of the subject. So, for instance, I can take your car without your permission which frustrates your desire to not have me take your car. I violated a property right you have. If you didn't care about the car one way or the other then I wouldn't have violated your rights by taking the car. They extend this desire approach to the right to life. So, for them, you cannot violate a right to life unless there is a corresponding desire in the subject to continue living. There are obvious problems with this conception of a right to life that deal with instances where consensus belief is that it's not OK to kill the temporarily unconscious, the indoctrinated, or the treatable suicidal person. Michael Tooley actually abandoned his desire-based approach due to these difficulties. As far as I know Singer still continues to advocate for it despite these difficulties. Singer has since attempted to "fix up" his account in light of these issues. Now, for Singer it has to be an "ideal" and "dispositional," or "habitual," desire that is frustrated. Now we cannot kill the temporarily unconscious because they have a dispositional desire to continue to live. Now we cannot kill the indoctrinated because if their desires were "ideal," in other words, corrected for all false beliefs, then they would desire to live. Matthew Flannagan, a theologian and blogger, has a paper on Singer's view and I think Flannagan and Marquis have both presented a counter-example dilemma for Singer. Marquis presented the counter-example of the indoctrinated individual that has been brainwashed into desiring to die. Singer avoids this counter-example by relying on the "ideal" desire. Singer has, however, bit the bullet in response to Flannagan's counter-example. Flannagan presented an illustration of someone that doesn't want to live but only desires to live because he believes if he kills himself then he will be sent to hell in the after life. The consensus belief seems to be that it is not OK to kill this person. However, it would be "ideal" from Singer's point of view for the desire to be such that the person wants to die since, assuming there is no hell or no rule against suicide, then it would be permissible to kill the person. Singer has admitted that at the level of theory Flannagan is correct in this assessment. Singer cannot however switch back and forth between the ideal account and the actual desire account. So he must, as he does, say it's permissible to kill this person. So under Singer's view an unwanted infant has less of a right to life than a pig and also we can kill people that would want to die if their desire to want to live is based on some false belief. Of course there are other difficulties with the desire approach. It's easy for me to conceive of an enlightened being with no desires at all. As Kaczor points out, enlightened beings that do nothing but sit on the shores and watch the stars. These beings may or may not exist but it certainly would seem wrong to kill them. Their existence doesn't seem impossible. Therefore, this is a conceptual problem for the desire approach. There's lots of critiques of these desire accounts in the literature. Basically I look at it in a G.E. Moore kind of way: Which seems more plausible? Do the premises establishing this abstract ethical theory with lots of problems and results in killing babies being OK seem more plausible? Or, does it seem more plausible that it's wrong to kill babies? I think it's clear that it's more plausible that it's wrong to kill babies than the premises that establish this abstract ethical theory with all these problems being true. This is a method known as a "moorean shift." The justification for it can be furthered argued for in epistemology. Basically, I think it's wrong to kill babies. I think if this isn't a moorean fact it's as close as one can get to one. Any premise to establish any abstract ethical theory that results in killing babies being OK is going to seem much less plausible than the very clear fact, to me, that it's wrong to kill babies.
I like the use of the Mooreian shift when looking at infanticide. It's controversial for some, but I don't think it should be. You might enjoy this piece, one of my Biola classmates wrote it a while ago. http://liveactionnews.org/abortion-infants-and-the-moorean-shift/ You should also consider reading Chisholm's The Problem of the Criterion, if you haven't already.
Thanks a lot I'll check it out. Yes I've definitely read Chisholm. That was a great piece. I think I read that from Huemer's collection of essays in "Epistemology: Contemporary Readings."
Perhaps I am misapprehending what you are saying. I cannot believe that I am the only one that knows people who believe some reprehensible things are perfectly acceptable like murdering pre-born humans while other wrong things are in fact wrong like the death penalty or euthanasia.
That's the thing that hurts my brain when I am trying to have a conversation with someone whose morals are relative. It is especially frustrating when the person is highly intelligent and well-educated and has a wide variety of life experiences and still has a way of thinking that in my opinion is unintelligent, illogical and lacking in common sense.
I guess that is what the definition of moral relativity is though. It's relative. Each person makes up what seems right and wrong to him or her. And the same thing can be right and wrong at the same time if two different people think two different things.
In our Equipped for Life Course Podcast (now available on iTunes and YouTube) we discuss how moral relativism is declining in popularity during the first episode "When They Bite the Bullet" beginning around timestamp 55:40. I suggest listening to this episode because we discuss a bit how to dialogue with people who think this way. :) We also have a lesson on it in the Equipped for Life Course.
Josh, Tim, and the ERI team will not treat you or any other advocate for legal abortion like that. They are fair and they try to think rather than snapping out one-line sentences. Also, they have every member of their organisation sign a statement saying they are personally opposed to "pro-life terrorism."
I am glad you came here.
I don't believe abortion is something to celebrate, to be honest. Anything that takes an innocent human life is an occasion for mourning, not festivity. I can understand in a way why it is done - the celebration of empowerment. However, I can't agree with it, and I must call the hashtag what it is - morally unacceptable. In fact, such a thing grieves me greatly, not because I am against women being empowered, but because of the lives lost in the process.
However, although I can understand the frustration and anger of some prolifers at ShoutYourAbortion, I strongly dislike the way these women are being treated over what they said and did. Despite my beliefs about the hashtag itself, I cannot sympathise with death and rape threats, harassment, calls for suicide, and name-calling, not even for women who have had abortions. I don't deem such writings appropriate behaviour for prolifers because, before anything else, it is intrinsically wrong to treat people that way. Also, it is not going to get prolifers anywhere and it will alienate people from what being prolife is all about.
"It doesn't really matter what the topic being discussed happens to be;
as sure as the sun will rise, women will find themselves on the
receiving end of threats, lewd messages, and just general awfulness."
http://www.upworthy.com/after-tweeting-on-the-shoutyourabortion-hashtag-these-women-got-an-earful?g=2
That grieves me also, because our online culture does not treat women with respect. I myself have been on the receiving end of sexual harassment and name-calling online so I can sympathise with the way these women feel; it would be terrifying and painful to be told things like that. I do not know why prolifers cannot say, "We strongly deplore your actions but we love you, the people, regardless, and we will be there for you if you need help."
In short, while I consider it morally correct to object to the hashtag itself, I strongly stand against women being harassed and threatened on the Internet as well. It's time our online society changed the way it treats its female contributors.
What I was doing was pondering on how you could be prolife and utilitarian at the same time.
I think this article would benefit from saying that you don't need to address a deeper difference in you and your conversational partners' reasoning unless you feel it's necessary for the abortion conversation, or you want to discuss the other topic for its own sake.
For example, I'm an atheist, but when people give their belief in God as rationale for their position, I usually say, "well, I'm an atheist, but I think if I believed in God, I would justify my position from my belief in God by saying [xyz]". It's very difficult to change people's minds about the existence of God, I don't see it as important for its own sake, and it's not a necessary foundation of my argument.
On the other hand, I have a friend who's pro-choice, and also disagrees with me on a number of issues of children's rights. I very much prefer to discuss the children's rights issues with her than abortion. I think it would be much easier to change her mind on those issues, I think they are important issues in their own right, and I think she would be much more open to my pro-life position if I convinced her of those things.
Obviously, I wouldn't see any difficulty in arguing the pro-life position from a utilitarian perspective. But I feel like your response to moral relativism is also somewhat ineffective. Most people who are moral relativists nonetheless have what we (i.e., moral absolutists) would call moral beliefs. Indeed, I have had several people who call themselves moral relativists try to persuade me that banning abortion is wrong! I think instead of trying to dissuade them of their moral relativist beliefs (a frustrating and probably irrelevant task), I would ask them what sort of situation would compel them to take action on behalf of others, and reframe my arguments so that I'm "speaking their language" based on the answer to that question.
They honestly believe the unborn person is not a person in the same way you and I are, due to no sentience and sapience, and its unwanted presence in its mother's body. I wasn't exactly aware of the utilitarian connection though. But you can be prolife and utilitarian at the same time if you believe the unborn persons are people that need to be protected from death. From a prolife utilitarian POV you could argue that since the unborn are persons it is the greatest amount of good for the greatest amount of people, including the future generations, that makes you want to illegalise abortion. Utilitarianism also includes the principle of "is an action going to do harm to someone, and if it is, don't engage in it." You could try talking about it from that angle, rather than completely dismantling their worldview; I don't know.
They'll use the term "right" but they understand from within the context of their normative framework (i.e. utilitarianism).
For them it doesn't denote a categorical imperative. There's no "duties" per se. "Duties" are deontological. Where "deon" means duty literally.
As far as I know there's no logical entailment from being a utilitarian to having a desires-based approach to rights-talk. However, Singer comes to mind when I think of utilitarianism. He's the more contemporary utilitarian relevant to talks about abortion and infanticide. Noncontemporary advocates would be Bentham and Mill.
Utilitarians are sympathetic to desires-based approaches to "rights." They understand a violation of a "right" as a frustration of a desire of the subject. So, for instance, I can take your car without your permission which frustrates your desire to not have me take your car. I violated a property right you have.
If you didn't care about the car one way or the other then I wouldn't have violated your rights by taking the car.
They extend this desire approach to the right to life. So, for them, you cannot violate a right to life unless there is a corresponding desire in the subject to continue living.
There are obvious problems with this conception of a right to life that deal with instances where consensus belief is that it's not OK to kill the temporarily unconscious, the indoctrinated, or the treatable suicidal person.
Michael Tooley actually abandoned his desire-based approach due to these difficulties. As far as I know Singer still continues to advocate for it despite these difficulties. Singer has since attempted to "fix up" his account in light of these issues.
Now, for Singer it has to be an "ideal" and "dispositional," or "habitual," desire that is frustrated. Now we cannot kill the temporarily unconscious because they have a dispositional desire to continue to live. Now we cannot kill the indoctrinated because if their desires were "ideal," in other words, corrected for all false beliefs, then they would desire to live.
Matthew Flannagan, a theologian and blogger, has a paper on Singer's view and I think Flannagan and Marquis have both presented a counter-example dilemma for Singer.
Marquis presented the counter-example of the indoctrinated individual that has been brainwashed into desiring to die. Singer avoids this counter-example by relying on the "ideal" desire.
Singer has, however, bit the bullet in response to Flannagan's counter-example. Flannagan presented an illustration of someone that doesn't want to live but only desires to live because he believes if he kills himself then he will be sent to hell in the after life. The consensus belief seems to be that it is not OK to kill this person. However, it would be "ideal" from Singer's point of view for the desire to be such that the person wants to die since, assuming there is no hell or no rule against suicide, then it would be permissible to kill the person.
Singer has admitted that at the level of theory Flannagan is correct in this assessment.
Singer cannot however switch back and forth between the ideal account and the actual desire account. So he must, as he does, say it's permissible to kill this person.
So under Singer's view an unwanted infant has less of a right to life than a pig and also we can kill people that would want to die if their desire to want to live is based on some false belief.
Of course there are other difficulties with the desire approach. It's easy for me to conceive of an enlightened being with no desires at all. As Kaczor points out, enlightened beings that do nothing but sit on the shores and watch the stars. These beings may or may not exist but it certainly would seem wrong to kill them. Their existence doesn't seem impossible. Therefore, this is a conceptual problem for the desire approach.
There's lots of critiques of these desire accounts in the literature.
Basically I look at it in a G.E. Moore kind of way:
Which seems more plausible? Do the premises establishing this abstract ethical theory with lots of problems and results in killing babies being OK seem more plausible? Or, does it seem more plausible that it's wrong to kill babies?
I think it's clear that it's more plausible that it's wrong to kill babies than the premises that establish this abstract ethical theory with all these problems being true.
This is a method known as a "moorean shift." The justification for it can be furthered argued for in epistemology.
Basically, I think it's wrong to kill babies. I think if this isn't a moorean fact it's as close as one can get to one. Any premise to establish any abstract ethical theory that results in killing babies being OK is going to seem much less plausible than the very clear fact, to me, that it's wrong to kill babies.
You might enjoy this piece, one of my Biola classmates wrote it a while ago.
http://liveactionnews.org/abortion-infants-and-the-moorean-shift/
You should also consider reading Chisholm's The Problem of the Criterion, if you haven't already.