this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2025
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Can both points not be true? There will be local morals and social morals that differ from place to place with overarching morals that tend to be everywhere.
Not all morals or beliefs have to be unshakable or viewed as morally reprehensible for disagreement.
Unless they mean all their ethics are held that way in which case that's just the whole asshole in a different deck chair joke.
I'm sure both are true for some people, but I think the irony he's pointing out is that this belief system recognizes that every individual/culture has different morals, while simultaneously treating individual/cultural differences as reprehensible.
Sounds like someone who was raised in an echo chamber. They recognize other chambers exist, but hate that they do. We're back to tribalism.
Or someone with strong morals? I think LGBT people deserve to live. I understand that other people do not based on their own moral arguments. I would not want to associate with them. I don't live in an echo chamber. I recognize and interact with people with different beliefs (even on LGBT issues), but there are certain moral beliefs that make me not desire to interact with people. Is that tribalism or my morality? If I don't wanna hang out with nazis, I guess that's tribalism and the outgroup is nazis? Should I stop living in an echo chamber and hang out with more nazis?
The concept of an echo chamber when used in this casual way is so reductive. "People hang out with other who and consume media that aligns with their beliefs". That's not inherently a bad thing. It becomes bad when they are unable to recognize other beliefs exist and unable to accept at least some of them as valid alternative perspectives.
But the point is that, if you follow moral relativism (which the hypothetical students in the post do, as they insist morality is relative), then you must acquiesce that cultures which hate queer people are valid and acceptable, because doing otherwise would not be moral relativism. Or, take another example, slavery. Is it okay for any culture to practice slavery?
And if you don't agree that it is valid and acceptable on a philosophical level, well, you can just follow a form moral universalism. Which is more appropriate if you do think some sets of morals are simply more ethical than others, such as, for example, not allowing slavery
It's not so much about whether different moral standards exist or not, but more whether different standards for morals in and of themselves are acceptable/ethical.
The fact that they didn't use "moral relativism" explicitly suggests to me that like most general philosophy classes, they are probably moral realists and the OP is just being cheeky about it, or legitimately for some reason completely unable to present moral realism as a subject of discussion.
I don't agree with your characterization of moral universalism here, but regardless it's clear that they are either bad at their job or posting for the memes because it's literally their job to be able to establish what a cohesive view would be and why that is important, so it's weird to act like clowning on their students for having a selfcontradictory view is anything but an admission of failure on their end.
The context is important - “morals” covers both “I think drinking is/isn’t an inherently morally irresponsible activity” and “I want to gas minorities”, and one of those has slightly higher stakes. You can understand the latter often happens because small town america might not have ever met minority groups, or somehow figures the small immigrant community with delicious food is “one of the few good ones” - that doesn’t make their “morals” any less reprehensible.
I think we agree/are saying the same thing? I'm saying that talking in absolutes about echo chambers being bad is reductive. To me, the important distinction between an actual echo chamber and being a normal person with beliefs and opinions, is the ability to recognize that sometimes others have different beliefs/opinions and that those may be equally valid. Like I said I'm anti nazi, but also that normal people (which I'm sometimes classified as) are able to accept some differences. So I'm not ok with nazis, but I think it's ok to fast for lent if you want even if I don't. So, we're both saying context is important?
If you agree that morals are relative and culturally constructed, then you shouldn't reject differences in morals of others as immoral.
That's basically just taking a position where you want to be able to change your mind on what's "moral", and expect everyone else to follow your opinion on it.
I don't think acknowledging morals as relative to the culture they exist within exempts decrees of immorality. Relative to their culture, it is. Should they speak from the point of view of a culture that they don't understand? I personally think it's a sliding scale where, to the extent it harms other people, it needs to be viewed more objectively just, and where it doesn't harm, it's fine being a difference in opinion. The only downside to this is that sometimes you don't know enough about a topic to know there are victims, and so your prescriptive thoughts can change very quickly about the morality of it. Perspective is important and should always be maximized to avoid this problem.
I wish I could have phrased it that well.
I said that some are but it seems cultures share a couple of them in common like not killing without cause. So in that system there are local morals and global/regional morals.
The tweet suggests the sample group disagrees with this statement.
I think you're expressing the general consensus: people get a lot of their morals from their environment, but there's some stuff that's universal/non-negotiable; and we should be able to find common ground with that.
At least, I think that's the general consensus. I've gotten into trouble with that assumption though.