Mentioned in W04 Factory-Farmed Meat:

MORAL RELATIVISM: No such thing as what’s right or wrong ‘absolutely’, only what’s right- or wrong-for-something.

(Analogy: “Being to the left” is a relative property. There is no such thing as being to the left absolutely, only, being to-the-left-of-something.)

Now, technically, Moral Relativism is not a topic in the module. But since it was alluded to in the Norcross reading, I should say something about it for those who are interested, having also promised to in the lecture. This post is mainly about making sure that you understand what that concept amounts to–because it is often confused with a bunch of other close by notions. Whether Moral Relativism is true or “hard to swallow” will be a longer and more complicated story.

The context is Norcross, p. 235:

Perhaps, though, there is something that separates puppies, even marginal puppies (and marginal humans) from farm animals—our sympathy. Puppies count more than other animals, because we care more about them. We are outraged to hear of puppies abused in scientific experiments, but unconcerned at the treatment of laboratory rats or animals on factory farms. Before the 2002 World Cup, several members of the England team sent a letter to the government of South Korea protesting the treatment of dogs and cats raised for food in that country. The same players have not protested the treatment of animals on factory farms in England. This example, while clearly illustrating the difference in attitudes towards cats and dogs on the one hand, and farm animals on the other, also reveals one of the problems with this approach to the question of moral status. Although the English footballers, and the English (and US) public in general, clearly care far more about the treatment of cats and dogs than of farm animals, the South Koreans, just as clearly, do not. Are we to conclude that Fred’s behavior would not be abominable were he living in South Korea, where dogs and cats are routinely abused for the sake of gustatory pleasure? Such relativism is, to put it mildly, hard to swallow.

But let’s begin with a much simpler case, and work towards the situation in the Norcross quote.

Sometimes, people have different opinions on an issue:

DIFFERENT OPINIONS

A: It’s morally permissible to eat dogs.

B: Some factory-farmed animals are much cuter than dogs.

C: Utilitarianism implies that it is wrong to buy dogs to eat them.

But for the cases of concern, those opinions can’t just be different. They should be such that they can’t all be true at the same time. (If you scrutinize A, B, and C’s opinions, you will see that they can all be true at once.) In other words, we need a case of a  disagreement:

DISAGREEMENT IN OPINION

A: It is morally impermissible to eat dogs.

B: It is morally permissible to eat dogs.

Now let’s say that A is a member of the English soccer team, and B is a person from South Korea (using the example in the Norcross quote). We don’t have any interesting relativism yet–not even when we recognize that both A and B firmly believe in what they each said, and are each able to come up with reasons for what they each believes. All we have is a disagreement. For relativism to be in play, we need the additional idea that each person’s view is right-relative-to-something, rather than absolutely. But what does that mean?

Think of these two ideas “tall”, and “right-angled”. The second idea is an “absolute” or “non-relative” one (assuming a standard Euclidean space)–something is either right-angled or it is not. And if it is right-angled, it is right-angled absolutely, or non-relatively. In contrast, if something is tall, a context of comparison is always involved. Nothing is tall absolutely, but only with reference to a comparison class. Yao Ming is tall–that is, when we are thinking of human beings as the comparison class. He isn’t tall at all if your reference class are giraffes. This means the attribute “tall” is secretly (or not so secretly) relative. There’s no such thing as being tall absolutely, only tall-relative-to-X (where X identifies the comparison class).

Now back to those moral views espoused by A and B.

Moral Relativism is the doctrine saying that they are (secretly) relative, rather than absolute. The idea that it is morally permissible or impermissible to eat dogs isn’t right or wrong absolutely, only right-relative-to-something or wrong-relative-to-something. Going back to Norcross’ example:

MORAL RELATIVISM

A: It is morally impermissible-for-Englishmen to eat dogs.

B: It is morally permissible-for-South Koreans to eat dogs.

Do not confuse Moral Relativism with mere Disagreement in Opinions or Different Opinions. The point here isn’t that people have different, even opposing views, that each believes in strongly, etc. In fact, given Moral Relativism, there is no longer any disagreement left. A and B’s claims can both be true–just as “Yao Ming is tall-relative-to-humans” and “Yao Ming is not tall-relative-to-giraffes” can be (and are) both true.

Back to Norcross. His point is that if we adopt an “ethics of care” position on the permissibility of eating factory-farmed animals vs. the impermissibility of eating our pets, then we have to adopt Moral Relativism. Since people care about different animals, what’s really happening is that:

MORAL RELATIVISM OF CARE

A: It is morally impermissible-for-someone-who-cares-about-dogs to eat dogs.

B: It is morally permissible-for-who-doesn’t-care-about-dogs to eat dogs.

The two positions are no longer in disagreement. To think that A is disagreeing with B is as meaningful as to think that someone who believes Yao Ming is tall-relative-to-humans disagrees with someone who believes that Yao Ming is not tall-relative-to-giraffes. This means that there can’t be an issue left for A to, e.g., blame B for doing something morally wrong, or for B to defend her action against the charges from A.

To see why this is a bit weird as a framework for moral issues in general, let’s switch to another example:

DISAGREEMENT OVER SLAVERY

C: It is morally impermissible for one human being to own another as a piece of property (i.e., as a slave), for his use, abuse, enjoyment or destruction.

D: It is morally permissible for one human being to own another as a piece of property (i.e., as a slave), for his use, abuse, enjoyment or destruction.

When someone gets upset with other people–including people in the past–who held that it is morally ok to own slaves and use them as they would property and acted so, she is assuming that the other person has a wrong view of things. Period. That is, not just wrong-relative-to-someone, but just wrong. The example doesn’t prove that Moral Relativism is false; but it helps you appreciate why Norcorss thought that relativism about the morality is “hard to swallow”.