Thursday, June 24, 2021

Does objective universal morality exist?

 Or to put it in terms of the level of individual moral statements, and in terms of an equivalent to epistemology and modern philosophical discussion of that, is there such a thing as justified true moral belief?

This Nautilus piece makes the case for moral realism. It's not bad, overall, but, despite its length, it's missing one important issue.

That is, if moral realism is correct, what is the scope of correctly holdable universal moral stances? 

Take familial sexual relations between consenting adults. Is there anything immoral about first-cousin relations? What about brother-sister, per both the pharaohs and the Inka (technically, the title of the king of the people to whom the name became extrapolated).

What about murder? It's arguable that there is a universal moral about that — but ONLY with a fair amount of heavy lifting on defining just what constitutes murder, versus, say manslaughter. And, while that definitional lifting plays out most, in the modern world, in courts of law, it plays out in everyday life, too.

Just war is another biggie.

That failing aside, to his credit, William Fitzpatrick also asks whether, IF justified true moral belief exists, at least in the ideal, whether we can meet it in the real.

I am currently reading Walter Sinnott-Armstrong's "Moral Skepticisms" and expect to have a much more in-depth piece on this in the future.

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Note: Contra a commenter and guest poster at A Tippling Philosopher, moral relativism is NOT moral nihilism.

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