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An ethics professor at Cambridge talks about teaching ethics in 2025 (lemmy.world)

submitted 3 days ago by The_Picard_Maneuver@lemmy.world to c/whitepeopletwitter@sh.itjust.works

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[–] JacksonLamb@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

In moral philosophy cultural relativism isn't merely an empirical observation about how morality develops, though. It's a value judgment about moral soundness that posits that all forms of morality are sound in context.

(When he says "entirely relative" that signals cultural relativism).

To use your chess example a cultural relativist would hold buckle and thong to the argument that if most people in your chess club habitually play scholars mate and bongcloud then those are the soundest openings, full stop, and that you are objectively right to think that.

Of course chess is a problematic analogy because there are proven known optimums, so tha analogy is biased on the side of objective morality.

[–] Septimaeus@infosec.pub 1 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

Sorry for my delay. I’m with you, and it’s possible these undergrads could be considered cultural relativists.

I suspect all they’re equipped to express is something like the prime directive from Star Trek due, potentially, to their knowledge of the troubled history of deploying foreign (e.g. colonial) mores in non-native contexts. If pressed, I wouldn’t expect any of them to truly support every moral schema without reservation.

Of course chess is a problematic analogy because there are proven known optimums, so the analogy is biased on the side of objective morality.

This confusion was my point, actually. The only proven optimums in chess relate to end game positions, as I mentioned above, due to computational complexity. For moves elsewhere in the game, such as openers, we have convincing anecdotal evidence of optimality, but we definitely cannot prove them without onerous assumptions about the opponent’s behavior.

As a moral relativist myself, I’m obligated to point out that this prompts the question of what constitutes the end game in the moral context. That is, in what situation are the extended effects of any morally relevant action known to a given moral agent? If we can find an example, only then can we begin defining a truly objective moral construct.

Until then, however, “convincing anecdotal evidence of optimality” must suffice, to the chagrin of moral absolutists everywhere.

Edit: swype errors