moral objectivism essay

Your complimentary articles

You’ve read one of your four complimentary articles for this month.

You can read four articles free per month. To have complete access to the thousands of philosophy articles on this site, please

Our Morality: A Defense of Moral Objectivism

After our recent ‘death of morality’ issue, mitchell silver replies to the amoralists..

Philosophers who aspire to describe reality without resort to myth, too often remain in thrall to the myth of absolute neutrality. Myths are not without their proper uses, and belief in absolute neutrality can be a useful, even an indispensable premise in the practices of science, jurisprudence, sports refereeing, and a host of other activities in which we want to discourage corrupting biases. Still, absolute neutrality is a myth, one memorably formulated by Thomas Nagel as ‘the view from nowhere’. There is no ‘view from nowhere’, and any philosophical practice which pretends to occupy that mythical perspective sows confusion.

In this article I will describe and defend my kind of moral viewpoint (not my specific viewpoint). The label I will use for this kind of viewpoint is ‘moral objectivism’, because this creates a stark contrast with ‘moral subjectivism’ and ‘moral relativism’ – the views that no coherent morality is better than any other coherent morality, which along with ‘moral nihilism’ – the denial of any morality – present the most philosophically popular moral perspectives that are not of my kind.

Moral objectivism, as I use the term, is the view that a single set of principles determines the permissibility of any action, and the correctness of any judgment regarding an action’s permissibility . Does this view deserve the label ‘moral objectivism?’ I think it does. Although it doesn’t claim that moral principles exist independent of the people who hold them, or that moral properties such as justice exist independently of moral principles, it forthrightly states that some actions are right and some are wrong, regardless of the judgments others may make about them. In making that claim, I am in conflict with the relativists and nihilists, both of whom assert that moral objectivism is poorly grounded compared to alternative metaethics. (A metaethic is a view about the nature of morality. It is not a particular moral view.) These philosophers maintain that moral objectivism requires that we can only validate an action’s moral status or a judgment’s moral correctness by resorting to some beyond-human authority – some moral reality external to people which serves as the source of whatever set of principles a moral objectivist believes determines moral values and correctness. These relativists and nihilists claim that objectivism needs something like God, but they disbelieve there is anything like God, so they conclude that moral objectivism requires something which does not exist.

I share the relativist/nihilist rejection of any form of supernaturalism. I do not believe in God, or in any other external authority that grounds moral objectivism. Indeed, I do not think morality can be grounded in any external source. Yet I am a moral objectivist, and I think there is a good chance you are too. In what follows I do not defend the content of my moral beliefs, nor make any presumptions about the content of yours. I do, however presume that many of you take the content your moral beliefs as seriously as I do mine. I will seek to persuade you that moral o bjectivism is at least as rational, as well-grounded, and as consistent with reality, as any alternative metaethic. The fundamental error of relativist and nihilist arguments against objectivism is the implicit claim that morality can be judged from nowhere.

Categorical Permissibility Rules: The Form of Morality

The nature of motivation is the province of psychologists, who study it empirically. However, without stirring from our armchairs, we can safely say that people are sometimes motivated by rules that they have accepted, such as ‘move chess bishops only along the diagonals’, or ‘floss daily’. Acceptance of a rule can, in part, constitute motives for actions.

Not only can rules motivate actions, they also influence judgments about the correctness of actions. The rule about chess bishops underlies my judgment that it is incorrect to move a bishop along the horizontal. While there are no precise criteria for whether or not a person has accepted a rule, or for measuring the degree of acceptance, ‘acceptance’ implies that the rule has some motivational force and influence on judgments. It would be nonsensical to say, “Silver accepts the rule forbidding moving bishops horizontally, although he is not in the least inclined to follow the rule, nor does he see anything at all incorrect about moving bishops horizontally.”

Among the rules that can motivate actions and determine judgments are those that classify all possible actions as either permissible or impermissible. I call such rules ‘categorical permissibility rules’ (henceforth, simply ‘permissibility rules’). Common examples of permissibility rules include: it is always impermissible to act in a way that will not increase overall happiness or reduce overall suffering (John Stuart Mill promoted that one); it is always impermissible to treat someone merely as a means (a favorite of Immanuel Kant’s); never do to others that which is hateful to you (the Talmudic version of a commonplace in religious ethics); always obey whatever the priest tells you God has commanded (another commonplace in religious traditions); and, never act against self-interest (Ayn Rand). Less common, but equally possible permissibility rules include: never run for a bus (Mel Brooks); and, never act against Mitchell Silver’s interests (no one, alas). There are an endless number of possible permissibility rules.

If you accept, or stand ready to accept either implicitly or explicitly, a set of permissibility rules as determining the correctness of all possible actions, then you are a moral objectivist. Someone who accepts, say, the permissibility rule ‘everyone should pursue wealth above all else’ and judges all people and actions accordingly, relates to that rule as moral people relate to morality. It has the form of a moral rule, and anyone who accepts it is a moral objectivist, for she accepts a specific permissibility rule. For any objectivist, the content of her permissibility rules constitutes what she takes to be morality. Someone who accepts t he ‘everyone should pursue wealth above all else’ rule thereby takes the pursuit of wealth to be the essence of morality. I do not accept that rule, so I judge it a mistake to believe that it has moral authority. I judge those who accept that rule to be in moral error; but still, they are, like me, moral objectivists.

Of course, you don’t have to know you are an objectivist to be one. Perhaps you simply have never indulged in metaethics, or perhaps you are self-deceived, or lack self-knowledge, and do not realize that you accept a specific set of permissibility rules.

Clearly, many people do accept categorical permissibility rules, including me, maybe you, and very likely your mother. Permissibility rules exist, and anyone who has genuinely accepted a specific set of them must thus judge that morality exists. Moreover, the acceptance of permissibility rules (and thus morality) is a natural phenomenon. There is nothing mysterious or spooky about the rules, their acceptance by people, or about the motivational forces they produce. Accepting a permissibility rule is compatible with all of the following: understanding the scientific explanations of the causes of one’s acceptance; believing that you do not understand all of the implications of the rule you have accepted; believing that you could come to reform or abandon the rule you currently accept; failing sometimes, maybe often, and perhaps always, to act in accordance with the rule; and finally, knowing that others adhere to different permissibility rules.

Explaining Morality

The acceptance of permissibility rules has many causes, as does determination of the specific content of the rules. Among the most notable causes of content are other people’s permissibility rules, and other people’s reactions to yours. It’s easier to live with those who agree with you about the rules of permissible behavior. Moreover, we are influenced by what others, such as our parents, promote as the basic rules. In addition, most of us wish to be seen by others as decent members of society, who abide by commonly-accepted permissibility rules (ie, standards). Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) vividly pointed out that we all want to prosper, and we all represent a threat to each other, therefore, as prudent, self-interested animals, we naturally seek enforceable rules to promote prosperity and reduce the mutual threat. Other philosophers have argued that the most acceptable rules likely to emerge from this human condition will enshrine fairness and equality at their center. The social and life sciences have also weighed in: economists have shown how permissibility rules grease commerce, psychologists how they emerge from our emotions, sociologists how they stabilize communities, and evolutionary biologists how they enhance fitness.

The drive to organize our judgments of actions into a logical structure, the urge to rationalize or justify them, is surely one significant explanation of the existence of permissibility rules. Those who value reason and psychic harmony will likely be attracted to rules that justify their gut feelings. If you feel that bull-fighting is wrong, and you like to have reasons for your feelings, you will be open to a rule that implies bull-fighting is wrong. But the causal chain can also go in the opposite direction. An inclination for rational orderliness may cause your moral feelings to align with your current theoretical commitments. Some who have no pre-theoretical moral dislike of bull-fighting may well come to have a moral dislike of it because a rule they accept brands it as wrong. Many a philosopher has become a vegetarian not out of any sympathy for animals, but from a love of consistency and acceptance of a permissibility rule that forbids causing gratuitous suffering.

Justifying Moral Judgments

An explanation provides an account of what something is or how something came about, and in theory anything can be explained; but an explanation is not a justification: a justification gives an account of why something is right, or why it’s right to believe something. Little Mary’s belief that she will receive a Christmas gift is explained by her belief in Santa, but it is justified by her parents’ reliable generosity. Similarly, the above considerations go a long way to explaining the widespread acceptance of certain kinds of permissibility rules, but none of them justifies any permissibility rule. My charitable acts, such as they are, are explained by my upbringing; but if the acts are justified, it is due to a principle that recommends charity, or at least allows it. Only some things, such as beliefs, statements and actions, are candidates for justification. Explanations too are candidates for justification, for an explanation can be right or wrong. Since explanations can be justified, and justifications can be explained, it is easy to conflate the two. Nevertheless, explanation and justification are separate (albeit overlapping) processes, and by itself no amount of explanation ever justifies anything.

The permissibility rules you accept are for you neither justified nor unjustified: they justify. As the sources of moral justification, permissibility rules are similar to the sources of non-moral justification: no adequate reason can be given for accepting or rejecting the sources that does not beg the question. We can justify beliefs; but we can justify the principles we employ to justify beliefs only with circular reasoning. Likewise, we can justify actions, but we cannot without circularity or indefinite regress justify the principles we employ to justify actions. The justification of principles would require a resort to other justifying principles, which would themselves be unjustified. As Hume taught us, the belief that the future will resemble the past is unjustifiable, but we label those who disbelieve the sun will rise tomorrow ‘irrational’. For most of us, inductive reasoning [reasoning from experience, eg of rising suns] is an essential tool for justifying beliefs. It does a fairly good job of justifying beliefs we feel ought to be justified, in spite of the fact that its implications are not always clear or beyond dispute. Moreover, the principle of induction is compatible with the other principles most of us have in our belief-justifying-tool-kit. Of course there are those who reject the entire tool-kit. We call them ‘mad’, or ‘illogical’. Analogously, we call those who truly reject our central permissibility rules ‘monstrous’ or ‘morally obtuse’. For example, without us having justified the underlying moral principle which rationalizes the judgment, we label ‘immoral’ those who disbelieve that genocide is wrong. This is not simple name-calling, it is categorization according to the epistemological and moral principles we accept.

As long as a set of permissibility rules does not require impossible actions (cure cancer, fly to Mars, eat your cake and have it, never die), or posit non-existing entities (the tooth fairy, the Devil, the eternal incorporeal commander), there are no epistemic or practical reasons for rejecting or it, just as there are none for accepting it. Hume famously, and correctly, said that you cannot derive ‘ought’ from ‘is’. It is equally important to note that you cannot derive ‘ought not to accept oughts’ from ‘is’. The rejection of all permissibility rules has no more justification than the acceptance of a specific permissibility rule. The consequences of accepting or rejecting permissibility rules are another matter entirely; but whatever they are, by themselves consequences cannot constitute a justification. Relativists and nihilists sometimes attempt to justify their anti-objectivism by invoking what they assert are the effects of belief in moral objectivism: arrogance, smugness, intolerance, and widespread suffering. I dispute that those are the dominant effects of all objectivisms: a liberal, sensitive, egalitarian consequentialist (a species of objectivist), ever mindful of the fallibility of her judgments, can humbly try to foresee suffering, and minimize it. However, even granting the relativist/ nihilist assessment of the empirical effects of all and any objectivism, without a permissibility principle requiring avoidance of those effects, the relativist/nihilist has provided no grounds for rejecting objectivism. Railing against objectivism for the harms it causes is like protesting that the Constitution is unconstitutional.

To say that a permissibility rule is unjustified is not to say that it is arbitrary, it’s only to say that it is contingent – that, like the historical and personal facts on which it is based, it might have been other than what it is. No permissibility rule is true of necessity. If I wasn’t who I am, I might well have had other permissibility rules, or none. But the fact that our permissibility rules are expressions of who we are makes them the opposite of arbitrary – not accidental attachments to us, but rather organic elements of us. Although we cannot justify them, we can be proud of them, loyal to them, and pleased with their effects. We can note how well they perform certain functions, and we can be pleased that their acceptance violates no norms of knowledge nor requires belief in metaphysical oddities. Still, these feelings and observations do not justify our rules.

Metaethics and Moral Disagreement

Although it brings all possible actions under a single standard, a permissibility rule can be complex, and its application sensitive to circumstances. A permissibility rule may require that the time, place, effects, and the nature of the people involved be considered when evaluating an action. It may even take into account the acceptance of different permissibility rules by other people. (Indeed, objectivity demands the incorporation of information from as many perspectives as possible.) Information about other peoples’ rules should shape a moral perspective, but it doesn’t undermine its validity. For instance, I know that there are people who categorically accept the rule that one should never mistreat their holy scriptures. I accept no such rule, but my awareness of others’ acceptance of the rule, combined with a rule I do accept, that everyone should show respect for others’ feelings, results in me not mistreating others’ holy scriptures. I do not respect the ‘holy scripture rule’ in itself; but I respect the holders of that rule, and in doing so I must often respect their rule. But this derivative respect for their permissibility rules does not mean I accept their rules to make my moral judgments.

Your metaethics depends on whether you genuinely accept a permissibility rule. If you have genuinely accepted specific permissibility rules, in accordance with that acceptance, then you must judge that there are rules which categorize any action’s permissibility, ie, its morality, and you are a moral objectivist. If in addition you accept the same permissibility rules as I do, we agree about the essential substance of morality. Nonetheless, we may yet disagree about the correct classification of a particular action, or kind of action. These disagreements can stem from disputes about concepts (how shall we define ‘pain’?), facts (does an eighteen-week-old fetus feel pain?), or logic (does ‘we ought not perform abortions’ follow from ‘we ought never inflict pain unnecessarily’?). Common acceptance of specific permissibility rules leaves room for differences of particular judgments.

Your specific permissibility rules constitute what you take to be morality, but they are likely to permit inconsistent courses of action: permission is not the same as direction. For example, a rule that implies you should not eat animals allows that the daily consumption of carrots is moral and that the refusal to ever eat carrots is also moral. Indeed that rule permits you to starve yourself to death. You remain a moral objectivist even if the permissibility rule(s) you accept allow you to do almost anything. S ome permissibility rules allow an infinite number of morally permissible acts. The only requirement for your moral objectivist status is that the rules you accept classify some actions as morally out-of-bounds. And objectivism is not totalitarianism: even if you believe there are some things that no one ought to do, you can believe that there are many ways to lead an overall good life, and many situations that permit different courses of action. Hence a moral objectivist can be an ethical pluralist.

There may be people who share your permissibility rules, but also accept additional permissibility rules you do not accept. Maybe, like you, they think it immoral to eat animals, but unlike you, they also believe it is immoral to eat carrots. What are you to make of these people? You must judge that these people misclassify many actions as immoral. You must judge that they have mistaken what are matters of custom, convention, or personal taste, for matters of moral import. You may well judge that two parties, both of whom take themselves to be in serious moral conflict – one says it is immoral to eat carrots, the other that it is immoral not to eat carrots – are both correct that their preferred course of action is morally permissible, and are both incorrect that the other’s preference is morally forbidden . Their passionate belief that they are in moral disagreement does not mean you must, from your perspective, take them to be in moral disagreement.

Your assessment of other people’s morality depends on which specific permissibility rules you genuinely accept. If you really accept as categorical a rule that permits carrot eating, then you must conclude that others are simply morally incorrect to judge carrot eating immoral. You are not doubting the sincerity of their judgment; but acknowledging their sincerity is not the same as acknowledging their correctness.

Now if your permissibility rules conflict with the rules I accept, we are both objectivists, but we’re in fundamental moral conflict. To remain true to my acceptance of rules that allow but do not demand carrot eating, I must conclude that you are mistaken to think eating carrots is immoral. True to your different permissibility rules, you must judge my moral indifference to carrot consumption morally incorrect. Anyone tempted to take a perspective above the fray will either have permissibility rules from which she can judge which of us is correct (if either), or she has not accepted any permissibility rules. If she has accepted permissibility rules, they will either allow or disallow carrot eating. She is an objectivist, just like us, and can weigh in on our dispute. If she accepts no permissibility rules whatsoever, the very idea of moral permissibility has no claim on her, and she has nothing relevant to offer those of us who do feel the pull of permissibility rules. She is not an objectivist, and both you and I (albeit by virtue of different rules) must conclude that she is without morals. Hardly someone we should ask to arbitrate our moral dispute over carrot eating.

Relativists, Nihilists, Amoralists and Objectivists

If you, dear reader, claim in perfectly good faith not to accept any permissibility rules, then I could in haste judge that you are without morals. But not to worry; I believe that your moral nihilism is probably only a theoretical posture, inconsistent with your actual acceptance of permissibility rules, as reflected in your actual judgments of particular actions. Although your acceptance of permissibility rules implies that you accept that those rules are applicable to all actions and judgments, including your own theoretical judgments , your permissibility rules may allow you (as mine do me) to temporarily pretend that you do not accept them, in order to see what might in theory follow from their non-acceptance. But temporarily playing the amoralist in order to try and imagine how the world looks from that perspective, is not genuine amorality.

The assertion of a robust moral relativism means adopting a perspective from which all permissibility rules are viewed as equally valid. It is important (and often difficult) to keep in mind that moral relativism is not the descriptive claim that people have different and conflicting moral judgments; rather it is the normative claim that no moral judgment is more or less correct than any other. To become a sincere moral relativist one must abandon one’s permissibility rules without embracing other permissibility rules. A relativist could consistently act in accordance with any permissibility rule, but she cannot consistently believe there are any justifications for these actions.

If you sincerely and fully, even if only in theory, accept, say, a rule that it’s immoral to torture people, a rule that it’s immoral not to torture people, and another rule that torture is morally indifferent, then you’ve taken an incoherent theoretical position that’s equivalent to the denial of morality – moral nihilism. The other way to go, the non-acceptance of all permissibility rules, is not the mythical stance of neutrality, it is the particular viewpoint of amorality . It is not the discovery that no rules apply to all possible actions; it is a failure to apply any such rules. It is not an undistorted perspective which reveals morality’s non-existence: it is simply an amoral perspective. This is not how I see things, and I suspect it is not how you see things. I am, and you probably are, a moral objectivist.

Moral objectivism requires only the acceptance of a set of permissibility rules. This involves no metaphysical delusions. Your permissibility rules may be tolerant, liberal, modest, tentative and undogmatic, or the opposite. So long as they’re truly yours, you are a moral objectivist. So are you?

© Mitchell Silver 2011

Mitchell Silver is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts/Boston and the author of books on secular religious identity and secular understandings of theology. He is currently writing a book on moral objectivism.

This site uses cookies to recognize users and allow us to analyse site usage. By continuing to browse the site with cookies enabled in your browser, you consent to the use of cookies in accordance with our privacy policy . X

Moral Objectivism

By michael huemer, 1. what is the issue, 1.1. "objectivism" and "relativism", 1.2. what is 'morality', 1.3. "values are subjective" = "all values are subjective", 1.4. three ways of being non-'objective', 1.5. several relativist theories, 1.6. what the issue is not, 2. the consequences of relativism, 3. arguments for subjectivism, 3.1. cultural variance of moral codes.

[I]t is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each discipline just so far as the nature of the subject admits; it is evidently equally foolish to accept probable reasoning from a mathematician and to demand from a rhetorician scientific proofs. (2)

3.2. Simplicity

If anything, we should say that the burden of proof is on the moral relativist, for advancing a claim contrary to common sense.

3.3. Where does moral knowledge come from?

3.4. the political argument, 4. several versions of relativism refuted, 4.1. value judgements as universally false, 4.2. moral judgements as expressions of sentiment.

I can return this book to the library. I borrowed this book from the library. This book exists. I have not returned this book to the library. etc.

4.3. "x is good" as synonymous with "I like x"

4.4. "x is good" as a synonym for "x is ordained by my society", 4.5. moral judgements as projection, 4.6. morals as a matter of convention, 4.7. the argument generalized.

For all of these reasons, I conclude that relativism is both pernicious and logically untenable.

• school Campus Bookshelves
• menu_book Bookshelves
• perm_media Learning Objects
• login Login
• how_to_reg Request Instructor Account
• hub Instructor Commons

Margin Size

• Download Page (PDF)
• Download Full Book (PDF)
• Periodic Table
• Physics Constants
• Scientific Calculator
• Reference & Cite
• Tools expand_more
• Readability

selected template will load here

This action is not available.

5.1: Moral Philosophy – Concepts and Distinctions

• Last updated
• Save as PDF
• Page ID 86935

\( \newcommand{\vecs}[1]{\overset { \scriptstyle \rightharpoonup} {\mathbf{#1}} } \)

\( \newcommand{\vecd}[1]{\overset{-\!-\!\rightharpoonup}{\vphantom{a}\smash {#1}}} \)

\( \newcommand{\id}{\mathrm{id}}\) \( \newcommand{\Span}{\mathrm{span}}\)

( \newcommand{\kernel}{\mathrm{null}\,}\) \( \newcommand{\range}{\mathrm{range}\,}\)

\( \newcommand{\RealPart}{\mathrm{Re}}\) \( \newcommand{\ImaginaryPart}{\mathrm{Im}}\)

\( \newcommand{\Argument}{\mathrm{Arg}}\) \( \newcommand{\norm}[1]{\| #1 \|}\)

\( \newcommand{\inner}[2]{\langle #1, #2 \rangle}\)

\( \newcommand{\Span}{\mathrm{span}}\)

\( \newcommand{\id}{\mathrm{id}}\)

\( \newcommand{\kernel}{\mathrm{null}\,}\)

\( \newcommand{\range}{\mathrm{range}\,}\)

\( \newcommand{\RealPart}{\mathrm{Re}}\)

\( \newcommand{\ImaginaryPart}{\mathrm{Im}}\)

\( \newcommand{\Argument}{\mathrm{Arg}}\)

\( \newcommand{\norm}[1]{\| #1 \|}\)

\( \newcommand{\Span}{\mathrm{span}}\) \( \newcommand{\AA}{\unicode[.8,0]{x212B}}\)

\( \newcommand{\vectorA}[1]{\vec{#1}}      % arrow\)

\( \newcommand{\vectorAt}[1]{\vec{\text{#1}}}      % arrow\)

\( \newcommand{\vectorB}[1]{\overset { \scriptstyle \rightharpoonup} {\mathbf{#1}} } \)

\( \newcommand{\vectorC}[1]{\textbf{#1}} \)

\( \newcommand{\vectorD}[1]{\overrightarrow{#1}} \)

\( \newcommand{\vectorDt}[1]{\overrightarrow{\text{#1}}} \)

\( \newcommand{\vectE}[1]{\overset{-\!-\!\rightharpoonup}{\vphantom{a}\smash{\mathbf {#1}}}} \)

Before examining some standard theories of morality, it is important to understand basic terms and concepts that belong to the specialized language of ethical studies. The concepts and distinctions presented in this section will be useful for characterizing the major theories of right and wrong we will study in subsequent sections of this unit. The general area of concepts and foundations of ethics explained here is referred to as  meta-ethics .

5.1.1 The Language of Ethics

Ethics is about values, what is right and wrong, or better or worse. Ethics makes claims, or judgments, that establish values. Evaluative claims are referred to as  normative, or prescriptive, claims . Normative claims tell us, or affirm, what  ought  to be the case. Prescriptive claims need to be seen in contrast with  descriptive claims , which simply tell us, or affirm, what  is  the case, or at least what is believed to be the case.

For example, this claim is descriptive:, it describes what is the case:

“Low sugar consumption reduces risk of diabetes and heart failure.”

On the other hand, this claim is normative:

“Everyone ought to reduce consumption of sugar.”

This distinction between descriptive and normative (prescriptive) claims applies in everyday discourse in which we all engage. In ethics, however, normative claims have essential significance. A normative claim may, depending upon other considerations, be taken to be a “moral fact.”

Note:  Many philosophers agree that the truth of an “is” statement in itself does not infer an “ought” claim. The fact the low sugar consumption leads to better health does not imply, on its own, that everyone should reduce their sugar intake. A good logical argument would require further reasons (premises) to reach the “ought” conclusion/claim. An “ought” claim inferred directly from an “is” statement is referred to as the  naturalistic fallacy .

A supplemental resource is available (bottom of page) on the distinction between descriptive and normative claims.

5.1.2 How Are Moral Facts Real?

When we talk about “moral facts” typically we are referring to claims about values, duties, standards for behavior, and other evaluative prescriptions. The following concepts describe the sense in which moral facts are real in terms of:

• the degree of universality, or lack thereof, with which the moral claims are held, and
• the extent to which moral facts stand independently of other considerations.

Moral Objectivism

The view that moral facts exist, in the sense that they hold for everyone, is called moral (or ethical) objectivism. From the viewpoint of objectivism, moral facts do not merely represent the beliefs of the person making the claim, they are facts of the world. Furthermore, such moral facts/claims have no dependencies on other claims nor do they have any other contingencies.

Moral Subjectivism

Moral (or ethical) subjectivism holds that moral facts are not universal, they exist only in the sense that those who hold them believe them to exist. Such moral facts sometimes serve as useful devices to support practical purposes. According to the viewpoint of subjectivism, moral facts (values, duties, and so forth) are entirely dependent on the beliefs of those who hold them.

Moral Absolutism

Moral absolutism is an objectivist view that there is only one true moral system with specific moral rules (or facts) that always apply, can never be disregarded. At least some rules apply universally, transcending time, culture. and personal belief. Actions of a specific sort are always right (or wrong) independently of any further considerations, including their consequences.

Moral Relativism

Moral relativism is the view that there are no universal standards of moral value, that moral facts, values, and beliefs are relative to individuals or societies that hold them. The rightness of an action depends on the attitude taken toward it by the society or culture of the person doing the action.

• Moral relativism as it relates to an individual is a form of ethical subjectivism.
• As it relates to a society or culture, moral relativism is referred to as “cultural relativism” and is also subjectivist in that moral facts depend entirely on the beliefs of those who hold them, they are not universal.

Note  that some accounts of meta-ethical concepts do not use both “objectivism” and “absolutism” or use them interchangeably. The important relationship to keep in mind is that both objectivism and absolutism stand in contrast to relativism and subjectivism.

Here are several arguments in support of moral relativism. The “objection” following each one is an argument against moral relativism and in favor of moral objectivism.

• Objection: “Is” does not imply “ought.” Further, the fact that there are diverse cultural values does not necessarily imply that there are no objective values.
• Objection: That we cannot yet justify objective values does not mean that such a foundation could not be developed.
• Objection: This entails that we tolerate oppressive systems that are intolerant themselves. Further, this argument seems to confer objective value on “tolerance” and further still, “tolerance” is not the same as “respect.”

Here are some additional arguments against moral relativism:

• If values for right and wrong are relative to a specific moral standpoint or culture, anything can be justified, even practices that seem objectively unconscionable.
• Ethical relativism would diminish our possibility for making moral judgments of others and other societies. However, we do make moral judgments of others and believe we are justified in making these moral judgments.
• Ethical relativism says that moral values are determined by ‘the group’, but it is difficult to determine who ‘the group’ is. Anyone in the “group” who disagrees is immoral.
• If people were ethical relativists in practice (that is, if everyone was a ethical subjectivist), there would be moral chaos.

A supplemental resource is available (bottom of page) on moral relativism.

Do you think that there are objective moral values? Or do you believe that all moral values are relative to either cultures or individuals? Include your reasons.

Note:  Submit your response to the appropriate Assignments folder.

5.1.3 How Do We Know What is Right?

The question at hand is about moral epistemology. How do we know what is right or wrong? What prompts our moral sentiments, our values, our actions? Are our moral assessments made on a purely rational basis, or do they stem from our emotional nature? There are contemporary philosophers who support each position, but we will return to some “old” friends we met in our unit on epistemology, Immanuel Kant and David Hume. They were hardly on the “same page” when it came to how and if we can know anything at all, and it’s hardly surprising that we find them at odds on what motivates moral choices, how we know what is right.

When we met  Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)  in our study of epistemology, we read passages from his  Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysic  (1783). In that work, he applied a slightly less intricate and perplexing presentation of topics from his masterwork on metaphysics and epistemology, the  Critique of Pure Reason  (1781). His next project involved application of his same rigorous reasoning method to moral philosophy. In 1785, Kant published  Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of  Morals; it introduced concepts that he expanded subsequently in the  Critique of Practical Reason  (1788). The short excerpts that follow are from  Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals.

Recall that Kant’s epistemology required both reason and empirical experience, each in its proper role. Kant believed that human action could be evaluated only by the logical distinctions based in synthetic  a priori  judgments.

In the following excerpt, Kant explains that a clear understanding of the moral law is not to be found in the empirical world but is a matter of pure reason.

Everyone must admit that if a law is to have moral force, i.e., to be the basis of an obligation, it must carry with it absolute necessity; that, for example, the precept, “Thou shalt not lie,” is not valid for men alone, as if other rational beings had no need to observe it; and so with all the other moral laws properly so called; that, therefore, the basis of obligation must not be sought in the nature of man, or in the circumstances in the world in which he is placed, but a priori simply in the conception of pure reason; and although any other precept which is founded on principles of mere experience may be in certain respects universal, yet in as far as it rests even in the least degree on an empirical basis, perhaps only as to a motive, such a precept, while it may be a practical rule, can never be called a moral law. Thus not only are moral laws with their principles essentially distinguished from every other kind of practical knowledge in which there is anything empirical, but all moral philosophy rests wholly on its pure part.

However, there is some correspondence between the study of natural world and of ethics. Both have an empirical dimension as well as a rational one. When Kant speaks of “anthropology” he refers to the empirical study of human nature.

…there arises the idea of a twofold metaphysic- a metaphysic of nature and a metaphysic of morals. Physics will thus have an empirical and also a rational part. It is the same with Ethics; but here the empirical part might have the special name of practical anthropology, the name morality being appropriated to the rational part.

So, while the nature of moral duty must be sought  a priori  “in the conception of pure reason,” empirical knowledge of human nature has a supporting role in distinguishing how to apply moral laws and in dealing with “so many inclinations” – the confusing array of emotions, impulses, desires that bombard us and contradict the command of reason. Our emotions (inclinations) are hardly the source of moral knowledge; they interfere with the human capability for practical pure reason.

Thus not only are moral laws with their principles essentially distinguished from every other kind of practical knowledge in which there is anything empirical, but all moral philosophy rests wholly on its pure part.When applied to man, it does not borrow the least thing from the knowledge of man himself (anthropology), but gives laws a priori to him as a rational being. No doubt these laws require a judgment sharpened by experience, in order on the one hand to distinguish in what cases they are applicable, and on the other to procure for them access to the will of the man and effectual influence on conduct; since man is acted on by so many inclinations that, though capable of the idea of a practical pure reason, he is not so easily able to make it effective in concreto in his life.

Kant sees his project on moral law, or “practical reason,” to be a less complicated project than  Critique of Pure Reason,  his “critical examination of the pure speculative reason, already published.” According to Kant, “moral reasoning can easily be brought to a high degree of correctness and completeness”, whereas speculative reason is “dialectical” – laden with opposing forces. Furthermore, a complete “critique” of practical reason entails “a common principle” that can cover any situation – “for it can ultimately be only one and the same reason which has to be distinguished merely in its application.”

Intending to publish hereafter a metaphysic of morals, I issue in the first instance these fundamental principles. Indeed there is properly no other foundation for it than the critical examination of a pure practical reason; just as that of metaphysics is the critical examination of the pure speculative reason, already published. But in the first place the former is not so absolutely necessary as the latter, because in moral concerns human reason can easily be brought to a high degree of correctness and completeness, even in the commonest understanding, while on the contrary in its theoretic but pure use it is wholly dialectical; and in the second place if the critique of a pure practical Reason is to be complete, it must be possible at the same time to show its identity with the speculative reason in a common principle, for it can ultimately be only one and the same reason which has to be distinguished merely in its application.

In the next section of this unit, we will see where Kant goes with this project and its “common principle” the applies universally. For now, keep in mind that Kant sees moral judgment as a reason-based activity, and that emotions/inclinations diminish our moral judgments. Many philosophers agree that making moral judgments and taking moral actions are rationally contemplated undertakings.

David Hume (1711-1776) , as we learned in our epistemology unit, doubted that the principles of cause and effect and that induction could lead to truth about the natural world. Recall his picture of reason, his version of the distinction between  a prior  and  a posteriori  knowledge:

• Relations of ideas are beliefs grounded wholly on associations formed within the mind; they are capable of demonstration because they have no external referent.
• Matters of fact are beliefs that claim to report the nature of existing things; they are always contingent.

In both his  Treatise of Human Nature  (1739) and  An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals  (1751) relations-of-ideas and matters-of-fact figure in his position that human agency and moral obligation are best considered as functions of human passions rather than as the dictates of reason. The excerpts that follow are from the  Treatise (Book III, Part I, Sections I and II).

If reason were the source of moral sensibility, then either relations of ideas or matters-of-fact would need to be involved:

As the operations of human understanding divide themselves into two kinds, the comparing of ideas, and the inferring of matter of fact; were virtue discovered by the understanding; it must be an object of one of these operations, nor is there any third operation of the understanding. which can discover it.

Relations of ideas involve precision and certainty (as with geometry or algebra) that arise out of pure conceptual thought and logical operations. A relationship between “vice and virtue” cannot be demonstrated in this way.

There has been an opinion very industriously propagated by certain philosophers, that morality is susceptible of demonstration; and though no one has ever been able to advance a single step in those demonstrations; yet it is taken for granted, that this science may be brought to an equal certainty with geometry or algebra. Upon this supposition vice and virtue must consist in some relations; since it is allowed on all hands, that no matter of fact is capable of being demonstrated….. For as you make the very essence of morality to lie in the relations, and as there is no one of these relations but what is applicable… RESEMBLANCE, CONTRARIETY, DEGREES IN QUALITY, and PROPORTIONS IN QUANTITY AND NUMBER; all these relations belong as properly to matter, as to our actions, passions, and volitions. It is unquestionable, therefore, that morality lies not in any of these relations, nor the sense of it in their discovery.

Hume goes on to explain how moral distinctions do not arise from of matters of fact:

Take any action allowed to be vicious: Willful murder, for instance. Examine it in all lights, and see if you can find that matter of fact, or real existence, which you call vice. In which-ever way you take it, you find only certain passions, motives, volitions and thoughts. There is no other matter of fact in the case. The vice entirely escapes you, as long as you consider the object. You never can find it, till you turn your reflection into your own breast, and find a sentiment of disapprobation, which arises in you, towards this action. Here is a matter of fact; but it is the object of feeling, not of reason. It lies in yourself, not in the object.

And so, Hume concludes that moral distinctions are not derived from reason, rather they come from our feelings, or sentiments.

Thus the course of the argument leads us to conclude, that since vice and virtue are not discoverable merely by reason, or the comparison of ideas, it must be by means of some impression or sentiment they occasion, that we are able to mark the difference betwixt them……Morality, therefore, is more properly felt than judged of”

Hume’s view that our moral judgments and actions arise not from our rational capacities but from our emotional nature and sentiments, is contrary to several of the major normative theories we will explore. However, it is interesting to note that some present-day philosophers regard the domain of emotion as a primary source of moral action, and also that work in neuroscience suggests that Hume may have been on the right track.

Economist Jeremy Rifkin provides an absorbing and fast-moving chalk-talk on human empathy, as demonstrated by neuroscience. (10+ minutes) Note: Cartoon depictions of humans are unclothed  RSA Animate .  [CC-BY-NC-ND]

Optional Video

Trust, morality – and oxytocin? .  [CC-BY-NC-ND]  Neuro-economist Paul Zak believe he has identified the “moral molecule” in the brain. (16+ minutes)

An additional supplemental video (bottom of page) explores moral judgments and neuroscience even further.

What do you think about the connection between morality and the neurobiology of our brains? Do you think these findings affect arguments for or against ethical relativism?

Note:  Post your response in the appropriate Discussion topic.

5.1.4 Psychological Influences

Various psychological characterizations of human nature have had significant influence on views about morality. We will see in this Ethics unit and the next on Social and Political Philosophy that particular conceptions of human nature may be at the center of theories about moral actions of individuals and about ethical interaction among individuals in social communities.

Egoism is the view that by nature we are selfish, that our actions, even our ostensibly generous ones, are motivated by selfish desire.  Ethical egoism  is the belief that pursuing ones own happiness is the highest moral value, that moral decisions should be guided by self-interest.

Another view of human nature holds that the primary motivation for all of our actions is pleasure.  Hedonism  is the view that pleasure is the highest or only good worth seeking, that we should, in fact, seek pleasure.

A different take on human nature is that we have innate capacity for benevolence (empathy) toward other people. (Recall the the mirror neurons in the Jeremy Rifkin video.)  Altruism  is the view that moral decisions should be guided by consideration for the interests and well-being of other people rather than by self-interest.

5.1.5 The Meaning of “Good”

In Ethics, we refer to what is “good” as a general term of approval, for what is of value, for example, a particular action, a quality, a practice, a way of life. Among the aspects of “good” that philosophers discuss is whether a particular thing is valued because it is good in and of itself, or because it leads to some other “good.”

• An  intrinsic good  is something that is good in and of itself, not because of something else that may result from it. In ethics, a “value” possesses intrinsic worth. For example, with hedonism, pleasure is the only intrinsic good, or value. In some normative theories, a particular type of action may possess intrinsic worth, or good.
• An  instrumental good , on the other hand, is useful for attaining something else that is good. It is instrumental in that it that leads to another good, but it is not good is and of itself. For example, for an egoist, an action such as generosity to others can be seen as an instrumental good if it leads to to self-fulfillment, which is an intrinsic good valued in and of itself by an egoist.

As we look more closely at some major normative theories, the distinction between intrinsic and instrumental good will be among the considerations of interest. Understanding normative theories, also involves these questions:

• How do we determine what the right action is?
• What are the standards that we use to judge if a particular action is good or bad?

The following normative theories will be addressed:

• Deontology (from the Greek for “obligation, or duty”) is concerned rules and motives for actions.
• Utilitarianism, a consequentialist theory, is interested in the good outcomes of actions.
• Virtue Ethics values actions in terms of what a person of good character would do.

Supplemental Resources

Descriptive and Normative Claims

Fundamentals: Normative and Descriptive Claims . This 4-minute video is a quick review with examples, on the differences between descriptive and normative claims.

Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (IEP).  Moral Relativism . Read section “3. Arguments for Moral Relativism” and section “4. Objections to Moral Relativism.”

Moral Judgment and Neuroscience

The Neuroscience behind Moral Judgments . Alan Alda talks with an MIT neuroscientist about neurological connections with moral judgments. (5+ minutes)

• 5.1 Moral Philosophy - Concepts and Distinctions. Authored by : Kathy Eldred. Provided by : Pima Community College. License : CC BY: Attribution

• Works & Talks
• Newsletter Sign Up

The Objectivist Ethics

Based on a lecture delivered in February 1961 at the University of Wisconsin, this essay was first published in The Virtue of Selfishness (1964). Rand also delivered a version on radio and, in a separate radio program, answered questions on the subject. The radio address lasts 56 minutes and the Q&A lasts 36 minutes.

Since I am to speak on the Objectivist Ethics, I shall begin by quoting its best representative — John Galt, in Atlas Shrugged :

“Through centuries of scourges and disasters, brought about by your code of morality, you have cried that your code had been broken, that the scourges were punishment for breaking it, that men were too weak and too selfish to spill all the blood it required. You damned man, you damned existence, you damned this earth, but never dared to question your code. . . . You went on crying that your code was noble, but human nature was not good enough to practice it. And no one rose to ask the question: Good? — by what standard?

“You wanted to know John Galt’s identity. I am the man who has asked that question.

“Yes, this is an age of moral crisis. . . . Your moral code has reached its climax, the blind alley at the end of its course. And if you wish to go on living, what you now need is not to return to morality . . . but to discover it.”

What is morality, or ethics? It is a code of values to guide man’s choices and actions — the choices and actions that determine the purpose and the course of his life. Ethics, as a science, deals with discovering and defining such a code.

The first question that has to be answered, as a precondition of any attempt to define, to judge or to accept any specific system of ethics, is: Why does man need a code of values?

Let me stress this. The first question is not: What particular code of values should man accept? The first question is: Does man need values at all — and why?

Is the concept of value , of “good or evil” an arbitrary human invention, unrelated to, underived from and unsupported by any facts of reality — or is it based on a metaphysical fact, on an unalterable condition of man’s existence? (I use the word “metaphysical” to mean: that which pertains to reality, to the nature of things, to existence.) Does an arbitrary human convention, a mere custom, decree that man must guide his actions by a set of principles — or is there a fact of reality that demands it? Is ethics the province of whims : of personal emotions, social edicts and mystic revelations — or is it the province of reason ? Is ethics a subjective luxury — or an objective necessity?

In the sorry record of the history of mankind’s ethics — with a few rare, and unsuccessful, exceptions — moralists have regarded ethics as the province of whims, that is: of the irrational. Some of them did so explicitly, by intention — others implicitly, by default. A “whim” is a desire experienced by a person who does not know and does not care to discover its cause.

No philosopher has given a rational, objectively demonstrable, scientific answer to the question of why man needs a code of values. So long as that question remained unanswered, no rational, scientific, objective code of ethics could be discovered or defined. The greatest of all philosophers, Aristotle, did not regard ethics as an exact science; he based his ethical system on observations of what the noble and wise men of his time chose to do, leaving unanswered the questions of: why they chose to do it and why he evaluated them as noble and wise.

Most philosophers took the existence of ethics for granted, as the given, as a historical fact, and were not concerned with discovering its metaphysical cause or objective validation. Many of them attempted to break the traditional monopoly of mysticism in the field of ethics and, allegedly, to define a rational, scientific, nonreligious morality. But their attempts consisted of trying to justify them on social grounds, merely substituting society for God .

The avowed mystics held the arbitrary, unaccountable “will of God” as the standard of the good and as the validation of their ethics. The neomystics replaced it with “the good of society,” thus collapsing into the circularity of a definition such as “the standard of the good is that which is good for society.” This meant, in logic — and, today, in worldwide practice — that “society” stands above any principles of ethics, since it is the source, standard and criterion of ethics, since “the good” is whatever it wills, whatever it happens to assert as its own welfare and pleasure. This meant that “society” may do anything it pleases, since “the good” is whatever it chooses to do because it chooses to do it. And — since there is no such entity as “society,” since society is only a number of individual men — this meant that some men (the majority or any gang that claims to be its spokesman) are ethically entitled to pursue any whims (or any atrocities) they desire to pursue, while other men are ethically obliged to spend their lives in the service of that gang’s desires.

This could hardly be called rational, yet most philosophers have now decided to declare that reason has failed, that ethics is outside the power of reason, that no rational ethics can ever be defined, and that in the field of ethics — in the choice of his values, of his actions, of his pursuits, of his life’s goals — man must be guided by something other than reason. By what? Faith — instinct — intuition — revelation — feeling — taste — urge — wish — whim . Today, as in the past, most philosophers agree that the ultimate standard of ethics is whim (they call it “arbitrary postulate” or “subjective choice” or “emotional commitment”) — and the battle is only over the question of whose whim: one’s own or society’s or the dictator’s or God’s. Whatever else they may disagree about, today’s moralists agree that ethics is a subjective issue and that the three things barred from its field are: reason — mind — reality.

If you wonder why the world is now collapsing to a lower and ever lower rung of hell, this is the reason.

If you want to save civilization, it is this premise of modern ethics — and of all ethical history — that you must challenge.

To challenge the basic premise of any discipline, one must begin at the beginning. In ethics, one must begin by asking: What are values ? Why does man need them?

“Value” is that which one acts to gain and/or keep. The concept “value” is not a primary; it presupposes an answer to the question: of value to whom and for what ? It presupposes an entity capable of acting to achieve a goal in the face of an alternative. Where no alternative exists, no goals and no values are possible.

I quote from Galt’s speech: “There is only one fundamental alternative in the universe: existence or nonexistence — and it pertains to a single class of entities: to living organisms. The existence of inanimate matter is unconditional, the existence of life is not: it depends on a specific course of action. Matter is indestructible, it changes its forms, but it cannot cease to exist. It is only a living organism that faces a constant alternative: the issue of life or death. Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action. If an organism fails in that action, it dies; its chemical elements remain, but its life goes out of existence. It is only the concept of ‘Life’ that makes the concept of ‘Value’ possible. It is only to a living entity that things can be good or evil.”

To make this point fully clear, try to imagine an immortal, indestructible robot, an entity which moves and acts, but which cannot be affected by anything, which cannot be changed in any respect, which cannot be damaged, injured or destroyed. Such an entity would not be able to have any values; it would have nothing to gain or to lose; it could not regard anything as for or against it, as serving or threatening its welfare, as fulfilling or frustrating its interests. It could have no interests and no goals.

Only a living entity can have goals or can originate them. And it is only a living organism that has the capacity for self-generated, goal-directed action. On the physical level, the functions of all living organisms, from the simplest to the most complex — from the nutritive function in the single cell of an amoeba to the blood circulation in the body of a man — are actions generated by the organism itself and directed to a single goal: the maintenance of the organism’s life . 1 When applied to physical phenomena, such as the automatic functions of an organism, the term “goal-directed” is not to be taken to mean “purposive” (a concept applicable only to the actions of a consciousness) and is not to imply the existence of any teleological principle operating in insentient nature. I use the term “goal-directed,” in this context, to designate the fact that the automatic functions of living organisms are actions whose nature is such that they result in the preservation of an organism’s life.

An organism’s life depends on two factors: the material or fuel which it needs from the outside, from its physical background, and the action of its own body, the action of using that fuel properly . What standard determines what is proper in this context? The standard is the organism’s life, or: that which is required for the organism’s survival.

No choice is open to an organism in this issue: that which is required for its survival is determined by its nature , by the kind of entity it is . Many variations, many forms of adaptation to its background are possible to an organism, including the possibility of existing for a while in a crippled, disabled or diseased condition, but the fundamental alternative of its existence remains the same: if an organism fails in the basic functions required by its nature — if an amoeba’s protoplasm stops assimilating food, or if a man’s heart stops beating — the organism dies. In a fundamental sense, stillness is the antithesis of life. Life can be kept in existence only by a constant process of self-sustaining action. The goal of that action, the ultimate value which, to be kept, must be gained through its every moment, is the organism’s life .

An ultimate value is that final goal or end to which all lesser goals are the means — and it sets the standard by which all lesser goals are evaluated . An organism’s life is its standard of value : that which furthers its life is the good , that which threatens it is the evil .

Without an ultimate goal or end, there can be no lesser goals or means: a series of means going off into an infinite progression toward a nonexistent end is a metaphysical and epistemological impossibility. It is only an ultimate goal, an end in itself , that makes the existence of values possible. Metaphysically, life is the only phenomenon that is an end in itself: a value gained and kept by a constant process of action. Epistemologically, the concept of “value” is genetically dependent upon and derived from the antecedent concept of “life.” To speak of “value” as apart from “life” is worse than a contradiction in terms. “It is only the concept of ‘Life’ that makes the concept of ‘Value’ possible.”

In answer to those philosophers who claim that no relation can be established between ultimate ends or values and the facts of reality, let me stress that the fact that living entities exist and function necessitates the existence of values and of an ultimate value which for any given living entity is its own life. Thus the validation of value judgments is to be achieved by reference to the facts of reality. The fact that a living entity is , determines what it ought to do. So much for the issue of the relation between “ is ” and “ ought .”

Now in what manner does a human being discover the concept of “ value ”? By what means does he first become aware of the issue of “ good or evil ” in its simplest form? By means of the physical sensations of pleasure or pain . Just as sensations are the first step of the development of a human consciousness in the realm of cognition , so they are its first step in the realm of evaluation .

The capacity to experience pleasure or pain is innate in a man’s body; it is part of his nature , part of the kind of entity he is . He has no choice about it, and he has no choice about the standard that determines what will make him experience the physical sensation of pleasure or of pain. What is that standard? His life .

The pleasure-pain mechanism in the body of man — and in the bodies of all the living organisms that possess the faculty of consciousness — serves as an automatic guardian of the organism’s life. The physical sensation of pleasure is a signal indicating that the organism is pursuing the right course of action. The physical sensation of pain is a warning signal of danger, indicating that the organism is pursuing the wrong course of action, that something is impairing the proper function of its body, which requires action to correct it. The best illustration of this can be seen in the rare, freak cases of children who are born without the capacity to experience physical pain; such children do not survive for long; they have no means of discovering what can injure them, no warning signals, and thus a minor cut can develop into a deadly infection, or a major illness can remain undetected until it is too late to fight it.

Consciousness — for those living organisms which possess it — is the basic means of survival.

The simpler organisms, such as plants, can survive by means of their automatic physical functions. The higher organisms, such as animals and man, cannot: their needs are more complex and the range of their actions is wider. The physical functions of their bodies can perform automatically only the task of using fuel, but cannot obtain that fuel. To obtain it, the higher organisms need the faculty of consciousness. A plant can obtain its food from the soil in which it grows. An animal has to hunt for it. Man has to produce it.

A plant has no choice of action; the goals it pursues are automatic and innate, determined by its nature. Nourishment, water, sunlight are the values its nature has set it to seek. Its life is the standard of value directing its actions. There are alternatives in the conditions it encounters in its physical background — such as heat or frost, drought or flood — and there are certain actions which it is able to perform to combat adverse conditions, such as the ability of some plants to grow and crawl from under a rock to reach the sunlight. But whatever the conditions, there is no alternative in a plant’s function: it acts automatically to further its life, it cannot act for its own destruction.

The range of actions required for the survival of the higher organisms is wider: it is proportionate to the range of their consciousness . The lower of the conscious species possess only the faculty of sensation , which is sufficient to direct their actions and provide for their needs. A sensation is produced by the automatic reaction of a sense organ to a stimulus from the outside world; it lasts for the duration of the immediate moment, as long as the stimulus lasts and no longer. Sensations are an automatic response, an automatic form of knowledge, which a consciousness can neither seek nor evade. An organism that possesses only the faculty of sensation is guided by the pleasure-pain mechanism of its body, that is: by an automatic knowledge and an automatic code of values. Its life is the standard of value directing its actions. Within the range of action possible to it, it acts automatically to further its life and cannot act for its own destruction.

The higher organisms possess a much more potent form of consciousness: they possess the faculty of retaining sensations, which is the faculty of perception . A “perception” is a group of sensations automatically retained and integrated by the brain of a living organism, which gives it the ability to be aware, not of single stimuli, but of entities , of things. An animal is guided, not merely by immediate sensations, but by percepts . Its actions are not single, discrete responses to single, separate stimuli, but are directed by an integrated awareness of the perceptual reality confronting it. It is able to grasp the perceptual concretes immediately present and it is able to form automatic perceptual associations, but it can go no further. It is able to learn certain skills to deal with specific situations, such as hunting or hiding, which the parents of the higher animals teach their young. But an animal has no choice in the knowledge and the skills that it acquires; it can only repeat them generation after generation. And an animal has no choice in the standard of value directing its actions: its senses provide it with an automatic code of values, an automatic knowledge of what is good for it or evil, what benefits or endangers its life. An animal has no power to extend its knowledge or to evade it. In situations for which its knowledge is inadequate, it perishes — as, for instance, an animal that stands paralyzed on the track of a railroad in the path of a speeding train. But so long as it lives, an animal acts on its knowledge, with automatic safety and no power of choice: it cannot suspend its own consciousness — it cannot choose not to perceive — it cannot evade its own perceptions — it cannot ignore its own good, it cannot decide to choose the evil and act as its own destroyer.

Man has no automatic code of survival. He has no automatic course of action, no automatic set of values. His senses do not tell him automatically what is good for him or evil, what will benefit his life or endanger it, what goals he should pursue and what means will achieve them, what values his life depends on, what course of action it requires. His own consciousness has to discover the answers to all these questions — but his consciousness will not function automatically . Man, the highest living species on this earth — the being whose consciousness has a limitless capacity for gaining knowledge — man is the only living entity born without any guarantee of remaining conscious at all. Man’s particular distinction from all other living species is the fact that his consciousness is volitional .

Just as the automatic values directing the functions of a plant’s body are sufficient for its survival, but are not sufficient for an animal’s — so the automatic values provided by the sensory-perceptual mechanism of its consciousness are sufficient to guide an animal, but are not sufficient for man. Man’s actions and survival require the guidance of conceptual values derived from conceptual knowledge. But conceptual knowledge cannot be acquired automatically .

A “ concept ” is a mental integration of two or more perceptual concretes, which are isolated by a process of abstraction and united by means of a specific definition. Every word of man’s language, with the exception of proper names, denotes a concept , an abstraction that stands for an unlimited number of concretes of a specific kind. It is by organizing his perceptual material into concepts, and his concepts into wider and still wider concepts that man is able to grasp and retain, to identify and integrate an unlimited amount of knowledge, a knowledge extending beyond the immediate perceptions of any given, immediate moment. Man’s sense organs function automatically; man’s brain integrates his sense data into percepts automatically; but the process of integrating percepts into concepts — the process of abstraction and of concept-formation — is not automatic.

The process of concept-formation does not consist merely of grasping a few simple abstractions, such as “chair,” “table,” “hot,” “cold,” and of learning to speak. It consists of a method of using one’s consciousness, best designated by the term “conceptualizing.” It is not a passive state of registering random impressions. It is an actively sustained process of identifying one’s impressions in conceptual terms, of integrating every event and every observation into a conceptual context, of grasping relationships, differences, similarities in one’s perceptual material and of abstracting them into new concepts, of drawing inferences, of making deductions, of reaching conclusions, of asking new questions and discovering new answers and expanding one’s knowledge into an ever-growing sum. The faculty that directs this process, the faculty that works by means of concepts, is: reason . The process is thinking .

Reason is the faculty that identifies and integrates the material provided by man’s senses. It is a faculty that man has to exercise by choice . Thinking is not an automatic function. In any hour and issue of his life, man is free to think or to evade that effort. Thinking requires a state of full, focused awareness. The act of focusing one’s consciousness is volitional. Man can focus his mind to a full, active, purposefully directed awareness of reality — or he can unfocus it and let himself drift in a semiconscious daze, merely reacting to any chance stimulus of the immediate moment, at the mercy of his undirected sensory-perceptual mechanism and of any random, associational connections it might happen to make.

When man unfocuses his mind, he may be said to be conscious in a subhuman sense of the word, since he experiences sensations and perceptions. But in the sense of the word applicable to man — in the sense of a consciousness which is aware of reality and able to deal with it, a consciousness able to direct the actions and provide for the survival of a human being — an unfocused mind is not conscious.

Psychologically, the choice “to think or not” is the choice “to focus or not.” Existentially, the choice “to focus or not” is the choice “to be conscious or not.” Metaphysically, the choice “to be conscious or not” is the choice of life or death.

Consciousness — for those living organisms which possess it — is the basic means of survival. For man, the basic means of survival is reason . Man cannot survive, as animals do, by the guidance of mere percepts. A sensation of hunger will tell him that he needs food (if he has learned to identify it as “hunger”), but it will not tell him how to obtain his food and it will not tell him what food is good for him or poisonous. He cannot provide for his simplest physical needs without a process of thought. He needs a process of thought to discover how to plant and grow his food or how to make weapons for hunting. His percepts might lead him to a cave, if one is available — but to build the simplest shelter, he needs a process of thought. No percepts and no “instincts” will tell him how to light a fire, how to weave cloth, how to forge tools, how to make a wheel, how to make an airplane, how to perform an appendectomy, how to produce an electric light bulb or an electronic tube or a cyclotron or a box of matches. Yet his life depends on such knowledge — and only a volitional act of his consciousness, a process of thought, can provide it.

But man’s responsibility goes still further: a process of thought is not automatic nor “instinctive” nor involuntary — nor infallible . Man has to initiate it, to sustain it and to bear responsibility for its results. He has to discover how to tell what is true or false and how to correct his own errors; he has to discover how to validate his concepts, his conclusions, his knowledge; he has to discover the rules of thought, the laws of logic , to direct his thinking. Nature gives him no automatic guarantee of the efficacy of his mental effort.

Nothing is given to man on earth except a potential and the material on which to actualize it. The potential is a superlative machine: his consciousness; but it is a machine without a spark plug, a machine of which his own will has to be the spark plug, the self-starter and the driver; he has to discover how to use it and he has to keep it in constant action. The material is the whole of the universe, with no limits set to the knowledge he can acquire and to the enjoyment of life he can achieve. But everything he needs or desires has to be learned, discovered and produced by him — by his own choice, by his own effort, by his own mind.

A being who does not know automatically what is true or false, cannot know automatically what is right or wrong, what is good for him or evil. Yet he needs that knowledge in order to live. He is not exempt from the laws of reality, he is a specific organism of a specific nature that requires specific actions to sustain his life. He cannot achieve his survival by arbitrary means nor by random motions nor by blind urges nor by chance nor by whim. That which his survival requires is set by his nature and is not open to his choice. What is open to his choice is only whether he will discover it or not, whether he will choose the right goals and values or not. He is free to make the wrong choice, but not free to succeed with it. He is free to evade reality, he is free to unfocus his mind and stumble blindly down any road he pleases, but not free to avoid the abyss he refuses to see. Knowledge, for any conscious organism, is the means of survival; to a living consciousness, every “ is ” implies an “ ought .” Man is free to choose not to be conscious, but not free to escape the penalty of unconsciousness: destruction. Man is the only living species that has the power to act as his own destroyer — and that is the way he has acted through most of his history.

What, then, are the right goals for man to pursue? What are the values his survival requires? That is the question to be answered by the science of ethics . And this , ladies and gentlemen, is why man needs a code of ethics.

Now you can assess the meaning of the doctrines which tell you that ethics is the province of the irrational, that reason cannot guide man’s life, that his goals and values should be chosen by vote or by whim — that ethics has nothing to do with reality, with existence, with one’s practical actions and concerns — or that the goal of ethics is beyond the grave, that the dead need ethics, not the living.

Ethics is not a mystic fantasy — nor a social convention — nor a dispensable, subjective luxury, to be switched or discarded in any emergency. Ethics is an objective, metaphysical necessity of man’s survival — not by the grace of the supernatural nor of your neighbors nor of your whims, but by the grace of reality and the nature of life.

I quote from Galt’s speech: “Man has been called a rational being, but rationality is a matter of choice — and the alternative his nature offers him is: rational being or suicidal animal. Man has to be man — by choice; he has to hold his life as a value — by choice; he has to learn to sustain it — by choice; he has to discover the values it requires and practice his virtues — by choice. A code of values accepted by choice is a code of morality.”

The standard of value of the Objectivist ethics — the standard by which one judges what is good or evil — is man’s life , or: that which is required for man’s survival qua man.

Since reason is man’s basic means of survival, that which is proper to the life of a rational being is the good; that which negates, opposes or destroys it is the evil.

Since everything man needs has to be discovered by his own mind and produced by his own effort, the two essentials of the method of survival proper to a rational being are: thinking and productive work.

If some men do not choose to think, but survive by imitating and repeating, like trained animals, the routine of sounds and motions they learned from others, never making an effort to understand their own work, it still remains true that their survival is made possible only by those who did choose to think and to discover the motions they are repeating. The survival of such mental parasites depends on blind chance; their unfocused minds are unable to know whom to imitate, whose motions it is safe to follow. They are the men who march into the abyss, trailing after any destroyer who promises them to assume the responsibility they evade: the responsibility of being conscious.

If some men attempt to survive by means of brute force or fraud, by looting, robbing, cheating or enslaving the men who produce, it still remains true that their survival is made possible only by their victims, only by the men who choose to think and to produce the goods which they, the looters, are seizing. Such looters are parasites incapable of survival, who exist by destroying those who are capable, those who are pursuing a course of action proper to man.

The men who attempt to survive, not by means of reason, but by means of force, are attempting to survive by the method of animals. But just as animals would not be able to survive by attempting the method of plants, by rejecting locomotion and waiting for the soil to feed them — so men cannot survive by attempting the method of animals, by rejecting reason and counting on productive men to serve as their prey. Such looters may achieve their goals for the range of a moment, at the price of destruction: the destruction of their victims and their own. As evidence, I offer you any criminal or any dictatorship.

Man cannot survive, like an animal, by acting on the range of the moment. An animal’s life consists of a series of separate cycles, repeated over and over again, such as the cycle of breeding its young, or of storing food for the winter; an animal’s consciousness cannot integrate its entire lifespan; it can carry just so far, then the animal has to begin the cycle all over again, with no connection to the past. Man’s life is a continuous whole: for good or evil, every day, year and decade of his life holds the sum of all the days behind him. He can alter his choices, he is free to change the direction of his course, he is even free, in many cases, to atone for the consequences of his past — but he is not free to escape them, nor to live his life with impunity on the range of the moment, like an animal, a playboy or a thug. If he is to succeed at the task of survival, if his actions are not to be aimed at his own destruction, man has to choose his course, his goals, his values in the context and terms of a lifetime. No sensations, percepts, urges or “instincts” can do it; only a mind can.

Such is the meaning of the definition: that which is required for man’s survival qua man. It does not mean a momentary or a merely physical survival. It does not mean the momentary physical survival of a mindless brute, waiting for another brute to crush his skull. It does not mean the momentary physical survival of a crawling aggregate of muscles who is willing to accept any terms, obey any thug and surrender any values, for the sake of what is known as “survival at any price,” which may or may not last a week or a year. “Man’s survival qua man” means the terms, methods, conditions and goals required for the survival of a rational being through the whole of his lifespan — in all those aspects of existence which are open to his choice.

Man cannot survive as anything but man. He can abandon his means of survival, his mind, he can turn himself into a subhuman creature and he can turn his life into a brief span of agony — just as his body can exist for a while in the process of disintegration by disease. But he cannot succeed, as a subhuman, in achieving anything but the subhuman — as the ugly horror of the antirational periods of mankind’s history can demonstrate. Man has to be man by choice — and it is the task of ethics to teach him how to live like man.

The Objectivist ethics holds man’s life as the standard of value — and his own life as the ethical purpose of every individual man.

The difference between “standard” and “purpose” in this context is as follows: a “standard” is an abstract principle that serves as a measurement or gauge to guide a man’s choices in the achievement of a concrete, specific purpose. “That which is required for the survival of man qua man” is an abstract principle that applies to every individual man. The task of applying this principle to a concrete, specific purpose — the purpose of living a life proper to a rational being — belongs to every individual man, and the life he has to live is his own.

Man must choose his actions, values and goals by the standard of that which is proper to man — in order to achieve, maintain, fulfill and enjoy that ultimate value, that end in itself, which is his own life.

Value is that which one acts to gain and/or keep — virtue is the act by which one gains and/or keeps it. The three cardinal values of the Objectivist ethics — the three values which, together, are the means to and the realization of one’s ultimate value, one’s own life — are: Reason, Purpose, Self-Esteem, with their three corresponding virtues: Rationality, Productiveness, Pride.

Productive work is the central purpose of a rational man’s life, the central value that integrates and determines the hierarchy of all his other values. Reason is the source, the precondition of his productive work — pride is the result.

Rationality is man’s basic virtue, the source of all his other virtues. Man’s basic vice, the source of all his evils, is the act of unfocusing his mind, the suspension of his consciousness, which is not blindness, but the refusal to see, not ignorance, but the refusal to know. Irrationality is the rejection of man’s means of survival and, therefore, a commitment to a course of blind destruction; that which is anti-mind, is anti-life.

The virtue of Rationality means the recognition and acceptance of reason as one’s only source of knowledge, one’s only judge of values and one’s only guide to action. It means one’s total commitment to a state of full, conscious awareness, to the maintenance of a full mental focus in all issues, in all choices, in all of one’s waking hours. It means a commitment to the fullest perception of reality within one’s power and to the constant, active expansion of one’s perception, i.e. , of one’s knowledge. It means a commitment to the reality of one’s own existence, i.e. , to the principle that all of one’s goals, values and actions take place in reality and, therefore, that one must never place any value or consideration whatsoever above one’s perception of reality. It means a commitment to the principle that all of one’s convictions, values, goals, desires and actions must be based on, derived from, chosen and validated by a process of thought — as precise and scrupulous a process of thought, directed by as ruthlessly strict an application of logic, as one’s fullest capacity permits. It means one’s acceptance of the responsibility of forming one’s own judgments and of living by the work of one’s own mind (which is the virtue of Independence). It means that one must never sacrifice one’s convictions to the opinions or wishes of others (which is the virtue of Integrity)-that one must never attempt to fake reality in any manner (which is the virtue of Honesty)-that one must never seek or grant the unearned and undeserved, neither in matter nor in spirit (which is the virtue of Justice). It means that one must never desire effects without causes, and that one must never enact a cause without assuming full responsibility for its effects — that one must never act like a zombie, i.e. , without knowing one’s own purposes and motives — that one must never make any decisions, form any convictions or seek any values out of context, i.e. , apart from or against the total, integrated sum of one’s knowledge — and, above all, that one must never seek to get away with contradictions. It means the rejection of any form of mysticism , i.e. , any claim to some nonsensory, nonrational, nondefinable, supernatural source of knowledge. It means a commitment to reason, not in sporadic fits or on selected issues or in special emergencies, but as a permanent way of life.

The virtue of Productiveness is the recognition of the fact that productive work is the process by which man’s mind sustains his life, the process that sets man free of the necessity to adjust himself to his background, as all animals do, and gives him the power to adjust his background to himself. Productive work is the road of man’s unlimited achievement and calls upon the highest attributes of his character: his creative ability, his ambitiousness, his self-assertiveness, his refusal to bear uncontested disasters, his dedication to the goal of reshaping the earth in the image of his values. “Productive work” does not mean the unfocused performance of the motions of some job. It means the consciously chosen pursuit of a productive career, in any line of rational endeavor, great or modest, on any level of ability. It is not the degree of a man’s ability nor the scale of his work that is ethically relevant here, but the fullest and most purposeful use of his mind.

The virtue of Pride is the recognition of the fact “that as man must produce the physical values he needs to sustain his life, so he must acquire the values of character that make his life worth sustaining — that as man is a being of self-made wealth, so he is a being of self-made soul.” ( Atlas Shrugged .) The virtue of Pride can best be described by the term: “moral ambitiousness.” It means that one must earn the right to hold oneself as one’s own highest value by achieving one’s own moral perfection — which one achieves by never accepting any code of irrational virtues impossible to practice and by never failing to practice the virtues one knows to be rational — by never accepting an unearned guilt and never earning any, or, if one has earned it, never leaving it uncorrected — by never resigning oneself passively to any flaws in one’s character — by never placing any concern, wish, fear or mood of the moment above the reality of one’s own self-esteem. And, above all, it means one’s rejection of the role of a sacrificial animal, the rejection of any doctrine that preaches self-immolation as a moral virtue or duty.

The basic social principle of the Objectivist ethics is that just as life is an end in itself, so every living human being is an end in himself, not the means to the ends or the welfare of others — and, therefore, that man must live for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. To live for his own sake means that the achievement of his own happiness is man’s highest moral purpose .

In psychological terms, the issue of man’s survival does not confront his consciousness as an issue of “life or death,” but as an issue of “happiness or suffering.” Happiness is the successful state of life, suffering is the warning signal of failure, of death. Just as the pleasure-pain mechanism of man’s body is an automatic indicator of his body’s welfare or injury, a barometer of its basic alternative, life or death — so the emotional mechanism of man’s consciousness is geared to perform the same function, as a barometer that registers the same alternative by means of two basic emotions: joy or suffering. Emotions are the automatic results of man’s value judgments integrated by his subconscious; emotions are estimates of that which furthers man’s values or threatens them, that which is for him or against him — lightning calculators giving him the sum of his profit or loss.

But while the standard of value operating the physical pleasure-pain mechanism of man’s body is automatic and innate, determined by the nature of his body — the standard of value operating his emotional mechanism, is not . Since man has no automatic knowledge, he can have no automatic values; since he has no innate ideas, he can have no innate value judgments.

Man is born with an emotional mechanism, just as he is born with a cognitive mechanism; but, at birth, both are “tabula rasa.” It is man’s cognitive faculty, his mind, that determines the content of both. Man’s emotional mechanism is like an electronic computer, which his mind has to program — and the programming consists of the values his mind chooses.

But since the work of man’s mind is not automatic, his values, like all his premises, are the product either of his thinking or of his evasions: man chooses his values by a conscious process of thought — or accepts them by default, by subconscious associations, on faith, on someone’s authority, by some form of social osmosis or blind imitation. Emotions are produced by man’s premises, held consciously or subconsciously, explicitly or implicitly.

Man has no choice about his capacity to feel that something is good for him or evil, but what he will consider good or evil, what will give him joy or pain, what he will love or hate, desire or fear, depends on his standard of value. If he chooses irrational values, he switches his emotional mechanism from the role of his guardian to the role of his destroyer. The irrational is the impossible; it is that which contradicts the facts of reality; facts cannot be altered by a wish, but they can destroy the wisher. If a man desires and pursues contradictions — if he wants to have his cake and eat it, too — he disintegrates his consciousness; he turns his inner life into a civil war of blind forces engaged in dark, incoherent, pointless, meaningless conflicts (which, incidentally, is the inner state of most people today).

Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one’s values. If a man values productive work, his happiness is the measure of his success in the service of his life. But if a man values destruction, like a sadist — or self-torture, like a masochist — or life beyond the grave, like a mystic — or mindless “kicks,” like the driver of a hotrod car — his alleged happiness is the measure of his success in the service of his own destruction. It must be added that the emotional state of all those irrationalists cannot be properly designated as happiness or even as pleasure: it is merely a moment’s relief from their chronic state of terror.

Neither life nor happiness can be achieved by the pursuit of irrational whims. Just as man is free to attempt to survive by any random means, as a parasite, a moocher or a looter, but not free to succeed at it beyond the range of the moment — so he is free to seek his happiness in any irrational fraud, any whim, any delusion, any mindless escape from reality, but not free to succeed at it beyond the range of the moment nor to escape the consequences.

I quote from Galt’s speech: “Happiness is a state of non-contradictory joy — a joy without penalty or guilt, a joy that does not clash with any of your values and does not work for your own destruction. . . . Happiness is possible only to a rational man, the man who desires nothing but rational goals, seeks nothing but rational values and finds his joy in nothing but rational actions.”

The maintenance of life and the pursuit of happiness are not two separate issues. To hold one’s own life as one’s ultimate value, and one’s own happiness as one’s highest purpose are two aspects of the same achievement. Existentially, the activity of pursuing rational goals is the activity of maintaining one’s life; psychologically, its result, reward and concomitant is an emotional state of happiness. It is by experiencing happiness that one lives one’s life, in any hour, year or the whole of it. And when one experiences the kind of pure happiness that is an end in itself — the kind that makes one think: “ This is worth living for” — what one is greeting and affirming in emotional terms is the metaphysical fact that life is an end in itself.

But the relationship of cause to effect cannot be reversed. It is only by accepting “man’s life” as one’s primary and by pursuing the rational values it requires that one can achieve happiness — not by taking “happiness” as some undefined, irreducible primary and then attempting to live by its guidance. If you achieve that which is the good by a rational standard of value, it will necessarily make you happy; but that which makes you happy, by some undefined emotional standard, is not necessarily the good. To take “whatever makes one happy” as a guide to action means: to be guided by nothing but one’s emotional whims. Emotions are not tools of cognition; to be guided by whims — by desires whose source, nature and meaning one does not know — is to turn oneself into a blind robot, operated by unknowable demons (by one’s stale evasions), a robot knocking its stagnant brains out against the walls of reality which it refuses to see.

This is the fallacy inherent in hedonism — in any variant of ethical hedonism, personal or social, individual or collective. “Happiness” can properly be the purpose of ethics, but not the standard . The task of ethics is to define man’s proper code of values and thus to give him the means of achieving happiness. To declare, as the ethical hedonists do, that “the proper value is whatever gives you pleasure” is to declare that “the proper value is whatever you happen to value” — which is an act of intellectual and philosophical abdication, an act which merely proclaims the futility of ethics and invites all men to play it deuces wild.

The philosophers who attempted to devise an allegedly rational code of ethics gave mankind nothing but a choice of whims: the “selfish” pursuit of one’s own whims (such as the ethics of Nietzsche) — or “selfless” service to the whims of others (such as the ethics of Bentham, Mill, Comte and of all social hedonists, whether they allowed man to include his own whims among the millions of others or advised him to turn himself into a totally selfless “shmoo” that seeks to be eaten by others).

When a “desire,” regardless of its nature or cause, is taken as an ethical primary, and the gratification of any and all desires is taken as an ethical goal (such as “the greatest happiness of the greatest number”) — men have no choice but to hate, fear and fight one another, because their desires and their interests will necessarily clash. If “desire” is the ethical standard, then one man’s desire to produce and another man’s desire to rob him have equal ethical validity; one man’s desire to be free and another man’s desire to enslave him have equal ethical validity; one man’s desire to be loved and admired for his virtues and another man’s desire for undeserved love and unearned admiration have equal ethical validity. And if the frustration of any desire constitutes a sacrifice , then a man who owns an automobile and is robbed of it, is being sacrificed, but so is the man who wants or “aspires to” an automobile which the owner refuses to give him — and these two “sacrifices” have equal ethical status. If so, then man’s only choice is to rob or be robbed, to destroy or be destroyed, to sacrifice others to any desire of his own or to sacrifice himself to any desire of others; then man’s only ethical alternative is to be a sadist or a masochist.

The moral cannibalism of all hedonist and altruist doctrines lies in the premise that the happiness of one man necessitates the injury of another.

Today, most people hold this premise as an absolute not to be questioned. And when one speaks of man’s right to exist for his own sake, for his own rational self-interest, most people assume automatically that this means his right to sacrifice others. Such an assumption is a confession of their own belief that to injure, enslave, rob or murder others is in man’s self-interest — which he must selflessly renounce. The idea that man’s self-interest can be served only by a non-sacrificial relationship with others has never occurred to those humanitarian apostles of unselfishness, who proclaim their desire to achieve the brotherhood of men. And it will not occur to them, or to anyone, so long as the concept “rational” is omitted from the context of “values,” “desires,” “self-interest” and ethics .

The Objectivist ethics proudly advocates and upholds rational selfishness — which means: the values required for man’s survival qua man — which means: the values required for human survival — not the values produced by the desires, the emotions, the “aspirations,” the feelings, the whims or the needs of irrational brutes, who have never outgrown the primordial practice of human sacrifices, have never discovered an industrial society and can conceive of no self-interest but that of grabbing the loot of the moment.

The Objectivist ethics holds that human good does not require human sacrifices and cannot be achieved by the sacrifice of anyone to anyone. It holds that the rational interests of men do not clash — that there is no conflict of interests among men who do not desire the unearned, who do not make sacrifices nor accept them, who deal with one another as traders , giving value for value.

The principle of trade is the only rational ethical principle for all human relationships, personal and social, private and public, spiritual and material. It is the principle of justice .

A trader is a man who earns what he gets and does not give or take the undeserved. He does not treat men as masters or slaves, but as independent equals. He deals with men by means of a free, voluntary, unforced, uncoerced exchange — an exchange which benefits both parties by their own independent judgment. A trader does not expect to be paid for his defaults, only for his achievements. He does not switch to others the burden of his failures, and he does not mortgage his life into bondage to the failures of others.

In spiritual issues — (by “spiritual” I mean: “pertaining to man’s consciousness”) — the currency or medium of exchange is different, but the principle is the same. Love, friendship, respect, admiration are the emotional response of one man to the virtues of another, the spiritual payment given in exchange for the personal, selfish pleasure which one man derives from the virtues of another man’s character. Only a brute or an altruist would claim that the appreciation of another person’s virtues is an act of selflessness, that as far as one’s own selfish interest and pleasure are concerned, it makes no difference whether one deals with a genius or a fool, whether one meets a hero or a thug, whether one marries an ideal woman or a slut. In spiritual issues, a trader is a man who does not seek to be loved for his weaknesses or flaws, only for his virtues, and who does not grant his love to the weaknesses or the flaws of others, only to their virtues.

To love is to value. Only a rationally selfish man, a man of self-esteem , is capable of love — because he is the only man capable of holding firm, consistent, uncompromising, unbetrayed values. The man who does not value himself, cannot value anything or anyone.

It is only on the basis of rational selfishness — on the basis of justice — that men can be fit to live together in a free, peaceful, prosperous, benevolent, rational society.

Can man derive any personal benefit from living in a human society? Yes — if it is a human society. The two great values to be gained from social existence are: knowledge and trade. Man is the only species that can transmit and expand his store of knowledge from generation to generation; the knowledge potentially available to man is greater than any one man could begin to acquire in his own lifespan; every man gains an incalculable benefit from the knowledge discovered by others. The second great benefit is the division of labor: it enables a man to devote his effort to a particular field of work and to trade with others who specialize in other fields. This form of cooperation allows all men who take part in it to achieve a greater knowledge, skill and productive return on their effort than they could achieve if each had to produce everything he needs, on a desert island or on a self-sustaining farm.

But these very benefits indicate, delimit and define what kind of men can be of value to one another and in what kind of society: only rational, productive, independent men in a rational, productive, free society. Parasites, moochers, looters, brutes and thugs can be of no value to a human being — nor can he gain any benefit from living in a society geared to their needs, demands and protection, a society that treats him as a sacrificial animal and penalizes him for his virtues in order to reward them for their vices, which means: a society based on the ethics of altruism. No society can be of value to man’s life if the price is the surrender of his right to his life.

The basic political principle of the Objectivist ethics is: no man may initiate the use of physical force against others. No man — or group or society or government — has the right to assume the role of a criminal and initiate the use of physical compulsion against any man. Men have the right to use physical force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use. The ethical principle involved is simple and clear-cut: it is the difference between murder and self-defense. A holdup man seeks to gain a value, wealth, by killing his victim; the victim does not grow richer by killing a holdup man. The principle is: no man may obtain any values from others by resorting to physical force.

The only proper, moral purpose of a government is to protect man’s rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence — to protect his right to his own life, to his own liberty, to his own property and to the pursuit of his own happiness. Without property rights, no other rights are possible.

I will not attempt, in a brief lecture, to discuss the political theory of Objectivism. Those who are interested will find it presented in full detail in Atlas Shrugged . I will say only that every political system is based on and derived from a theory of ethics — and that the Objectivist ethics is the moral base needed by that politico-economic system which, today, is being destroyed all over the world, destroyed precisely for lack of a moral , philosophical defense and validation: the original American system, Capitalism . If it perishes, it will perish by default, undiscovered and unidentified: no other subject has ever been hidden by so many distortions, misconceptions and misrepresentations. Today, few people know what capitalism is, how it works and what was its actual history.

When I say “capitalism,” I mean a full, pure, uncontrolled, unregulated laissez-faire capitalism — with a separation of state and economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of state and church. A pure system of capitalism has never yet existed, not even in America; various degrees of government control had been undercutting and distorting it from the start. Capitalism is not the system of the past; it is the system of the future — if mankind is to have a future.

For those who are interested in the history and the psychological causes of the philosophers’ treason against capitalism, I will mention that I discuss them in the title essay of my book For the New Intellectual .

The present discussion has to be confined to the subject of ethics. I have presented the barest essentials of my system, but they are sufficient to indicate in what manner the Objectivist ethics is the morality of life — as against the three major schools of ethical theory, the mystic, the social, the subjective, which have brought the world to its present state and which represent the morality of death.

These three schools differ only in their method of approach, not in their content. In content, they are merely variants of altruism, the ethical theory which regards man as a sacrificial animal, which holds that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the only justification of his existence, and that self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty, virtue and value. The differences occur only over the question of who is to be sacrificed to whom. Altruism holds death as its ultimate goal and standard of value — and it is logical that renunciation, resignation, self-denial, and every other form of suffering, including self-destruction, are the virtues it advocates. And, logically, these are the only things that the practitioners of altruism have achieved and are achieving now.

Observe that these three schools of ethical theory are anti-life, not merely in content, but also in their method of approach.

The mystic theory of ethics is explicitly based on the premise that the standard of value of man’s ethics is set beyond the grave, by the laws or requirements of another, supernatural dimension, that ethics is impossible for man to practice, that it is unsuited for and opposed to man’s life on earth, and that man must take the blame for it and suffer through the whole of his earthly existence, to atone for the guilt of being unable to practice the impracticable. The Dark Ages and the Middle Ages are the existential monument to this theory of ethics.

The social theory of ethics substitutes “society” for God — and although it claims that its chief concern is life on earth, it is not the life of man, not the life of an individual, but the life of a disembodied entity, the collective , which, in relation to every individual, consists of everybody except himself. As far as the individual is concerned, his ethical duty is to be the selfless, voiceless, rightless slave of any need, claim or demand asserted by others. The motto “dog eat dog” — which is not applicable to capitalism nor to dogs — is applicable to the social theory of ethics. The existential monuments to this theory are Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia.

The subjectivist theory of ethics is, strictly speaking, not a theory, but a negation of ethics. And more: it is a negation of reality, a negation not merely of man’s existence, but of all existence. Only the concept of a fluid, plastic, indeterminate, Heraclitean universe could permit anyone to think or to preach that man needs no objective principles of action — that reality gives him a blank check on values — that anything he cares to pick as the good or the evil, will do — that a man’s whim is a valid moral standard, and that the only question is how to get away with it. The existential monument to this theory is the present state of our culture.

It is not men’s immorality that is responsible for the collapse now threatening to destroy the civilized world, but the kind of moralities men have been asked to practice. The responsibility belongs to the philosophers of altruism. They have no cause to be shocked by the spectacle of their own success, and no right to damn human nature: men have obeyed them and have brought their moral ideals into full reality.

It is philosophy that sets men’s goals and determines their course; it is only philosophy that can save them now. Today, the world is facing a choice: if civilization is to survive, it is the altruist morality that men have to reject.

I will close with the words of John Galt, which I address, as he did, to all the moralists of altruism, past or present: “You have been using fear as your weapon and have been bringing death to man as his punishment for rejecting your morality. We offer him life as his reward for accepting ours.”

“The Objectivist Ethics,” copyright The Virtue of Selfishness © 1961 by Ayn Rand, renewed © 1985, by Ayn Rand. Used by permission of Dutton Signet, a division of Penguin Group (USA), Inc. Reproduction in any form without permission prohibit

Citations & Notes

• 1 When applied to physical phenomena, such as the automatic functions of an organism, the term “goal-directed” is not to be taken to mean “purposive” (a concept applicable only to the actions of a consciousness) and is not to imply the existence of any teleological principle operating in insentient nature. I use the term “goal-directed,” in this context, to designate the fact that the automatic functions of living organisms are actions whose nature is such that they result in the preservation of an organism’s life.

About the Author

Related Materials

Buy The Book: The Virtue of Selfishness

The Foundations of the Objectivist Ethics: Egoism and the Nature of Value

Rand Summarizes Her Philosophy

• Privacy Policy
• Terms & Conditions
• Ayn Rand Global
• Ayn Rand Institute eStore
• Ayn Rand University app

Updates From ARI

Copyright © 1985 – 2024 The Ayn Rand Institute (ARI). Reproduction of content and images in whole or in part is prohibited. All rights reserved. ARI is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Contributions to ARI in the United States are tax-exempt to the extent provided by law. Objectivist Conferences (OCON), Ayn Rand Conference (ARC), Ayn Rand University (ARU) and the Ayn Rand Institute eStore are operated by ARI. Payments to OCON, ARC, ARU or the Ayn Rand Institute eStore do not qualify as tax-deductible contributions to the Ayn Rand Institute. AYN RAND, AYN RAND INSTITUTE, ARI, AYN RAND UNIVERSITY and the AYN RAND device are trademarks of the Ayn Rand Institute. All rights reserved.

Quick Links

Current Courses Don Berkich: Medical Ethics Philosophy of Love and Sex Resources Reading Philosophy Writing Philosophy

• This Semester
• Next Semester
• Past Semesters
• Descriptions
• Two-Year Rotation
• Double-Major
• Don Berkich
• Stefan Sencerz
• Glenn Tiller
• Administration
• Philosophy Club
• Finding Philosophy
• Reading Philosophy
• Writing Philosophy
• Philosophy Discussions
• The McClellan Award
• Undergraduate Journals
• Undergraduate Conferences

Ethical Objectivism

The philosopher David Hume said, "when you pronounce any action or character to be vicious, you mean nothing, but that from the constitution of your nature you have a feeling or sentiment of blame from the contemplation of it". What did he mean by this?

To understand Hume's assertion, we need to back up a bit and discuss the ways in which statements can be true. Suppose we have a statement like "Grass is green". Under what conditions is that statement true? The answer is deceptively obvious: "Grass is green" is true iff grass is green. We call the part after the 'iff' the statement's truth conditions .

There are different kinds of truth conditions. Let us say that truth conditions are objective just in case they are publicly available and publicly debatable. The truth conditions on the statement "Grass is green" are objective because we all have access to grass and most of us can perceive the color green. Grass, in short, is something we can look at and talk about.

Of course, some things we can't look at. Suppose I say, "2+2=4". This is objectively true, of course, but it's not objectively true in the same sense in which "grass is green" is true. So we draw a distinction between kinds of objective truth conditions. We say that the truth conditions on statements like "grass is green" are objective a posteriori and the truth conditions on statements like "2+2=4" are objective a priori .

Truth conditions which are objective a posteriori require some experience of the world in order to verify their truth: these are sometimes called 'truths of fact'. Truth conditions which are objective a priori do not require any experience of the world in order to verify their truth: these are sometimes called 'truths of reason'. The statements of logic and mathematics have a priori objective truth conditions, while the statements of biology and chemistry have a posteriori objective truth conditions.

Other truth conditions are neither publicly available nor publicly debatable. Suppose I say, "I have a toothache". Presumably, this statement is either true or false. But it would be absurd for you to say, "Oh no you don't!" Only I have access to my inner, subjective experience. So the truth conditions on statements like "I have a toothache" or "I like chocolate ice-cream" are subjective .

In the above passage, Hume is simply claiming that ethical statements do not have objective truth conditions. What leads Hume to make his famous statement is something very much like the following argument:

Hume's argument, however, appears to miss an important point. There are two ways in which ethical statements can have objective truth conditions. In particular,

How Ethical Statements Can Have Objective Truth Conditions

A. Ethical statements could have truth conditions which are objective a priori.

Ethics could be objective in the sense that moral problems can be solved by rational methods. Moral judgments are rationally justified. In this sense, ethics is objective in much the same way that mathematics is objective. Moral facts are facts of reason. This view is sometimes called 'Moral Rationalism'.

B. Ethical statements could have truth conditions which are objective a posteriori.

Ethics could be objective in the sense that moral predicates like 'right' and 'wrong' refer to real properties of objects in the world in just the same way that predicates like 'round' and 'red' refer to real properties of objects in the world. Moral facts are not facts of reason. Rather, moral facts are just like any other facts about the world. This view is called 'Moral Realism'. According Moral Realism, ethics is objective in much the same way that we consider the sciences-physics, chemistry, biology, etc.- to be objective.

It is clear from his argument that Hume ignores (A). For Hume, the claim that ethical statements have objective truth conditions is equivalent to Moral Realism. So premise (1) of Hume's argument is false. Ethics need not be like science for ethical statements to have objective truth conditions. It could be like mathematics or logic.

In response, Hume argues that reason alone cannot determine morality, since "[m]orals excite passions, and produce or prevent actions. Reason of itself is utterly impotent in this particular." That is, Hume thinks morality plays a role in our lives in determining action which pure reason, exemplified in subjects like mathematics or logic, does not. Morality motivates , whereas the conclusions of mere reason do not. Hence morality cannot also be a matter of reason. It is on this point that his successor Immanuel Kant will press to construct his theory of morality.

• College of Liberal Arts
• Bell Library
• Academic Calendar

• Table of Contents
• Random Entry
• Chronological
• Editorial Information
• About the SEP
• Editorial Board
• How to Cite the SEP
• Special Characters
• Advanced Tools
• Support the SEP
• PDFs for SEP Friends
• Make a Donation
• SEPIA for Libraries
• Entry Contents

Bibliography

Academic tools.

• Friends PDF Preview
• Author and Citation Info
• Back to Top

Moral Relativism

Moral relativism is an important topic in metaethics. It is also widely discussed outside philosophy (for example, by political and religious leaders), and it is controversial among philosophers and nonphilosophers alike. This is perhaps not surprising in view of recent evidence that people’s intuitions about moral relativism vary widely. Though many philosophers are quite critical of moral relativism, there are several contemporary philosophers who defend forms of it. These include such prominent figures as Gilbert Harman, Jesse J. Prinz, J. David Velleman and David B. Wong. The term ‘moral relativism’ is understood in a variety of ways. Most often it is associated with an empirical thesis that there are deep and widespread moral disagreements and a metaethical thesis that the truth or justification of moral judgments is not absolute, but relative to the moral standard of some person or group of persons. Sometimes ‘moral relativism’ is connected with a normative position about how we ought to think about or act towards those with whom we morally disagree, most commonly that we should tolerate them.

1. Historical Background

2. forms and arguments, 3. experimental philosophy, 4. descriptive moral relativism, 5. are moral disagreements rationally resolvable, 6. metaethical moral relativism, 7. mixed positions: a rapprochement between relativists and objectivists, 8. relativism and tolerance, other internet resources, related entries.

Though moral relativism did not become a prominent topic in philosophy or elsewhere until the twentieth century, it has ancient origins. In the classical Greek world, both the historian Herodotus and the sophist Protagoras appeared to endorse some form of relativism (the latter attracted the attention of Plato in the Theaetetus ). It should also be noted that the ancient Chinese Daoist philosopher Zhuangzi put forward a nonobjectivist view that is sometimes interpreted as a kind of relativism.

Among the ancient Greek philosophers, moral diversity was widely acknowledged, but the more common nonobjectivist reaction was moral skepticism, the view that there is no moral knowledge (the position of the Pyrrhonian skeptic Sextus Empiricus), rather than moral relativism, the view that moral truth or justification is relative to a culture or society. This pattern continued through most of the history of Western philosophy. There were certainly occasional discussions of moral disagreement—for example in Michel de Montaigne’s Essays or in the dialogue David Hume attached to An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals . These discussions pertained to moral objectivity, but moral relativism as a thesis explicitly distinguished from moral skepticism ordinarily was not in focus. Prior to the twentieth century, moral philosophers did not generally feel obliged to defend a position on moral relativism.

Nonetheless, the increased awareness of moral diversity (especially between Western and non-Western cultures) on the part of Europeans in the modern era is an important antecedent to the contemporary concern with moral relativism. During this time, the predominant view among Europeans and their colonial progeny was that their moral values were superior to the moral values of other cultures. Few thought all moral values had equal or relative validity, or anything of that sort. The main impetus for such a position came from cultural anthropology. Anthropologists were fascinated with the diversity of cultures, and they produced detailed empirical studies of them—especially “primitive,” non-Western ones. At the beginning anthropologists accepted the assumption of European or Western superiority. But this assumption began to be challenged in the twentieth century, especially by some social scientists in the United States. An early dissent came from the sociologist William Graham Sumner, who proposed a version of moral relativism in his 1906 Folkways . But the most influential challenge originated with the anthropologist Franz Boas. He and his students—in particular, Ruth Benedict, Melville J. Herskovits, and Margaret Mead—explicitly articulated influential forms of moral relativism in the first half of the twentieth century. In 1947, on the occasion of the United Nations debate about universal human rights, the American Anthropological Association issued a statement declaring that moral values are relative to cultures and that there is no way of showing that the values of one culture are better than those of another. Anthropologists have never been unanimous in asserting this, and more recently human rights advocacy on the part of some anthropologists has mitigated the relativist orientation of the discipline. Nonetheless, prominent anthropologists such as Richard A. Shweder and the late Clifford Geertz have defended relativist positions in recent years.

An important early bridge from anthropology to philosophy was established by Edward Westermarck (1906–8 and 1932), a social scientist who wrote anthropological and philosophical works defending forms of empirical as well as metaethical moral relativism. In the latter half of the 20th century, moral philosophers began devoting considerable attention to moral relativism and some—most notably Richard B. Brandt (1954) and John Ladd (1957)—took quite seriously the empirical effort of anthropology to understand the moralities of different cultures, to the point of making such empirical inquiries themselves (an anticipation of the recent emphasis on experimental philosophy, to be discussed in section 3 ). In the past several decades there has been increasing consideration of moral relativism, and there is now an enormous literature on the subject (the Bibliography below is very limited). Most of these discussions are situated in the domain of “pure metaethics,” but not all. For example, there is considerable work on moral relativism in connection with human rights (Donnelly 2013, part 2 and Okin 1998), political philosophy (Accetti 2015, Bilgrami 2011 and Long 2004) and feminist philosophy (Code 1995 and Khader 2019). There are also discussions of moral relativism in applied fields such as medical ethics (Earp 2016).

In general, the term ‘relativism’ refers to many different ideas. For example, in anthropology it sometimes connotes, among other things, the rather uncontroversial notion that anthropologists should strive to be impartial and unprejudiced in their empirical inquires. However, in moral philosophy ‘relativism’ is usually taken to suggest an empirical, a metaethical, or a normative position. The empirical position is usually:

Descriptive Moral Relativism ( DMR ). As a matter of empirical fact, there are deep and widespread moral disagreements across different societies, and these disagreements are much more significant than whatever agreements there may be.

Sometimes what is emphasized is moral diversity rather than strict disagreement. DMR is often thought to have been established by anthropology and other empirical disciplines. However, it is not uncontroversial: Empirical as well as philosophical objections have been raised against it. Hence, it is one focal point of debate.

The metaethical position usually concerns the truth or justification of moral judgments, and it has been given somewhat different definitions. Metaethical relativists generally suppose that many fundamental moral disagreements cannot be rationally resolved, and on this basis they argue that moral judgments lack the moral authority or normative force that moral objectivists usually contend these judgments may have. Hence, metaethical relativism is in part a negative thesis that challenges the claims of moral objectivists. However, it often involves a positive thesis as well, namely that moral judgments nonetheless have moral authority or normative force, not absolutely or universally (as objectivists contend), but relative to some group of persons such as a society or culture. This point is typically made with respect to truth or justification (or both), and the following definition will be a useful reference point:

Metaethical Moral Relativism ( MMR ). 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.

With respect to truth-value, this means that a moral judgment such as ‘Polygamy is morally wrong’ may be true relative to one society, but false relative to another. It is not true, or false, simply speaking. Likewise, with respect to justification, this judgment may be justified in one society, but not another. Taken in one way, this last point is uncontroversial: The people in one society may have different evidence available to them than the people in the other society. But proponents of MMR usually have something stronger and more provocative in mind: That the standards of justification in the two societies may differ from one another and that there is no rational basis for resolving these differences. This is why the justification of moral judgments is relative rather than absolute.

In recent years, there has been a proliferation of different formulations of relativism (for discussion of some of these, see Fricker 2013, Krausz 2011 and López de Sa 2011). It is important to note several distinctions that may be made in formulating different metaethical relativist positions. First, a distinction is sometimes drawn between content relativism, the view that sentences may have different contents (meanings) in different frameworks, and truth relativism, the view that sentences have the same content in different frameworks, but their truth-value may vary across these frameworks (for a discussion of this distinction in terms of moral relativism, see Prinz 2007: 180–3). In the discussions that follow, truth relativism is ordinarily assumed. Second, it is sometimes said that the truth or justification of moral judgments may be relative to an individual person as well as a group of persons. In this article, the latter will be assumed, as in the definition of MMR , unless otherwise noted. Third, that to which truth or justification is relative may be the persons making the moral judgments or the persons about whom the judgments are made. These are sometimes called appraiser and agent relativism respectively. Appraiser relativism suggests that we do or should make moral judgments on the basis of our own standards, while agent relativism implies that the relevant standards are those of the persons we are judging (of course, in some cases these may coincide). Appraiser relativism is the more common position, and it will usually be assumed in the discussion that follows. Finally, MMR may be offered as the best explanation of what people already believe, or it may be put forward as a position people ought to accept regardless of what they now believe. There will be occasion to discuss both claims below, though the latter is probably the more common one.

Metaethical moral relativist positions are typically contrasted with moral objectivism. Let us say that moral objectivism maintains that moral judgments are ordinarily true or false in an absolute or universal sense, that some of them are true, and that people sometimes are justified in accepting true moral judgments (and rejecting false ones) on the basis of evidence available to any reasonable and well-informed person. There are different ways of challenging moral objectivism. Moral skepticism says that we are never justified in accepting or rejecting moral judgments. Other views—variously called moral non-cognitivism, expressivism, anti-realism, nihilism, etc.—contend that moral judgments lack truth-value, at least beyond the truth-value implied by the minimalist claim that to assert that S is true is simply to assert S (a related view, the error theory, claims that moral judgments are always false). MMR is often distinguished from all of these views: Instead of denying truth-value or justification, it affirms relative forms of these. However, metaethical moral relativist views are sometimes regarded as connected with positions that say moral judgments lack truth-value, since the relativist views contend that moral judgments lack truth-value in an absolute or universal sense. This is sometimes simply a question of terminology, but not always. If it is said that moral judgments lack truth-value (beyond the claim of minimalism), then there cannot be relative truth-value in the sense that moral relativists usually intend (though it might be contended that there is a sense in which there could still be justification). As will be seen below, there is a debate about the relationship between MMR and non-cognitivist or expressivist positions.

Most arguments for MMR are based on DMR and the contention that it is implausible to suppose fundamental moral disagreements can always be resolved rationally (for overviews of these arguments, see Plakias 2020 and Seipel 2020b). Sometimes it is said that some moral disagreements are faultless, meaning that neither party has made a mistake (see Kölbel 2004). For instance, Harman (1996), Prinz (2007) and Wong (1984 and 2006) have all stressed the importance of moral disagreements in arguing for MMR , and such arguments will be considered in some detail in subsequent sections. However, some arguments for MMR have a rather different approach, and two of these should be noted here.

First, MMR might be defended as a consequence of the general relativist thesis that the truth or justification of all judgments is not absolute or universal, but relative to some group of persons. For example, this general position might be maintained on the ground that each society has its own conceptual framework and that conceptual frameworks are incommensurable with one another. Hence, we can only speak of truth or justification in relative terms (see the discussion of incommensurability in the Summer 2015 archived version of the entry on relativism (section 4.2)). This position might be thought to have the disadvantage that it can only be put forward as true or justified relative to some conceptual framework (the suggestion is usually that this framework is our own), and many find it implausible with regard to common sense judgments and judgments in the natural sciences. However, this is one avenue to MMR . But most proponents of MMR focus on distinctive features of morality and reject general relativism. In fact, they often contrast morality and science with respect to issues of truth and justification. For example, Harman (2000b), Prinz (2007) and Wong (1996 and 2006) all associate moral relativism with naturalism, a position that usually presupposes the objectivity of the natural sciences.

Second, a metaethical moral relativist position might be defended by emphasizing aspects of morality other than disagreement. For example, Rovane (2011 and 2013) has maintained that relativism is best understood, not as a response to disagreement, but as a response to alternative conceptual schemes that portray different worlds that are normatively insulated from one another. On this account, the truth-bearers in one world are not logically related to the truth-bearers in another world (so there cannot be strict disagreement), and yet it is not possible to embrace both worlds (so they are alternatives). Rovane argues that in the moral domain, but not in the domain of the natural sciences, there may be different worlds in this sense. Hence, a moral judgment may be true for the occupant of one world, but not for the occupant of another. An implication of this view, she says, is that learning and teaching across different moral worlds might not be possible.

In a partially similar view, Velleman (2015) has claimed, on the basis of ethnographic and historical data, that different communities construct available action types differently. Moreover, reasons for action are always dependent on the perspective of the particular community since they arise out of the drive for mutual interpretability needed for social life within the community. Hence, there are no perspective-independent reasons. There cannot be straight-forward disagreement across these communities because they do not have common sets of action types. The communities may nonetheless address the basic themes of morality, but in incompatible ways given their different perspectives. So moralities can only have local validity.

Both Rovane and Velleman stress moral diversity rather than moral disagreement. They maintain, not that disagreements cannot be rationally resolved, but that there is no basis for showing that, among various incompatible alternatives, one is rationally superior to another.

In addition, it is worth noting that MMR is sometimes justified by appealing in a significant way to a distinctive analysis of moral judgments in combination with a claim about moral disagreement. For example, Prinz (2007) argues that what he calls “moral sentimentalism” implies a form of MMR once we acknowledge moral disagreements. According to moral sentimentalism, an action is morally right (wrong) if and only if some observer of the action has a sentiment of approbation (disapprobation) concerning it. Prinz defends this position on the basis of a metaethical argument that it is the most plausible account in light of empirical studies linking moral judgments and emotions. Since people often have conflicting sentiments about the same action, a judgment of the form ‘Action X is right’ may be true (when expressed by a person who approves of X ), and ‘ X is wrong’ may also be true (when expressed by a person who disapproves of X ). On this view, the truth of such moral judgments is relative to the sentiments of the persons who make them. Moral sentimentalism is a crucial feature of this argument and many philosophers would deny that moral rightness and wrongness depend on our sentiments in this way. But most arguments for MMR are not based on moral sentimentalism.

In another example, Harman (2000a) argues that a moral judgment that a person ought to do X (an “inner judgment”) implies that the person has motivating reasons to do X , and that a person is likely to have such reasons only if he or she has implicitly entered into an agreement with others about what to do. Hence, moral judgments of this kind are valid only for groups of persons who have made such agreements. An action may be right relative to one agreement and wrong relative to another (this combines agent and appraisal relativism insofar as Harman assumes that the person making the judgment and the person to whom the judgment is addressed are both parties to the agreement).

Harman’s relativism is presented as a thesis about logical form, but the relativist implication arises only because it is supposed that the relevant motivating reasons are not universal and so probably arose from an agreement that some but not all persons have made. In this sense, moral disagreement is an important feature of the argument. But the main focus is on the internalist idea that inner judgments imply motivating reasons, reasons that are not provided simply by being rational, but require particular desires or intentions that a person may or may not have. Internalism in this sense is a controversial view, and many would say that a moral judgment can apply to a person whether or not that person is motivated to follow it (see the section on ‘Psychological: Moral Motivation’ in the entry on moral epistemology ). However, internalism is not a standard feature of most arguments for moral relativism, and in fact some relativists are critical of internalism (for example, see Wong 2006: ch. 7)

It is worth noting that internalism is one expression of a more general viewpoint that emphasizes the action-guiding character of moral judgments. Though Harman and others (for example, Dreier 1990 and 2006) have argued that a form of moral relativism provides the best explanation of internalism, a more common argument has been that the action-guiding character of moral judgments is best explained by a non-cognitivist or expressivist account according to which moral judgments lack truth-value (at least beyond the claim of minimalism). In fact, some have claimed that the expressivist position avoids, and is superior to, moral relativism because it accounts for the action-guiding character of moral judgments without taking on the problems that moral relativism is thought to involve (for instance, see Blackburn 1998: ch. 9 and 1999, and Horgan and Timmons 2006). By contrast, others have maintained that positions such as non-cognitivism and expressivism are committed to a form of moral relativism (for example, see Bloomfield 2003, Foot 2002b, and Shafer-Landau 2003: ch 1). For an assessment of this debate, see Miller 2011, and for a discussion of non-cognitivism and related positions, see the entry on moral cognitivism vs. non-cognitivism .

Finally, the term ‘moral relativism’ is sometimes associated with a normative position concerning how we ought to think about, or behave towards, persons with whom we morally disagree. Usually the position is formulated in terms of tolerance. In particular, it is said that we should not interfere with the actions of persons that are based on moral judgments we reject, when the disagreement is not or cannot be rationally resolved. This is thought to apply especially to relationships between our society and those societies with which we have significant moral disagreements. Since tolerance so-understood is a normative thesis about what we morally ought to do, it is best regarded, not as a form of moral relativism per se , but as a thesis that has often been thought to be implied by relativist positions such as DMR and MMR . Despite the popularity of this thought, most philosophers believe it is mistaken. The main question is what philosophical relationship, if any, obtains between moral relativism and tolerance.

The remainder of this entry will discuss DMR , the contention that it is unlikely that fundamental moral disagreements can be rationally resolved, arguments for and challenges to MMR , mixed positions that combine moral relativism and moral objectivism, and the relationship between moral relativism and tolerance. But first there needs to be some consideration of the recent contributions of experimental philosophy to these discussions.

Experimental philosophy is an approach to philosophy that explicitly draws on experimental knowledge established by the sciences to address philosophical questions (see the entry on experimental moral philosophy ). There are three significant ways in which experimental philosophy has played an important role in discussions of moral relativism. These concern the extent to which there is moral disagreement or moral diversity among people (that is, DMR ), the extent to which folk morality is committed to an objectivist or relativist understanding of moral judgments (that is, the views of ordinary people concerning MMR ), and the extent to which acceptance of moral relativism affects moral attitudes such as tolerance (that is, ways in which views concerning MMR causally influence whether or not people have tolerant attitudes).

The first of these has a long history in discussions of moral relativism and in fact may be considered one of the earliest instances of experimental moral philosophy. As was seen in section 1 , for more than a century the work of anthropologists and other social scientists has contributed to the development of thought about moral relativism, both by purporting to provide empirical evidence for extensive cross-cultural disagreement and diversity about morality, and by proposing the notion that moral codes are true only relative to a culture as the best explanation of this. That is, these scientists have provided empirical grounds for accepting DMR , and they have suggested that some form of MMR is a reasonable inference from this data (though these positions were not always clearly distinguished). More importantly, the work cited in section 1 by Brandt (1954) and Ladd (1957), involving both empirical investigations into the moral values of Native Americans and philosophical reflection on the significance of these investigations vis-à-vis moral relativism, are significant examples of moral philosophers engaging in empirical inquiry in support of philosophical aims. Their empirical work did not immediately inspire other other philosophers to engage in similar research. Experimental philosophy in this sense—experiments or other empirical investigations conducted by philosophers—did not become prominent until nearly a half-century later. Nowadays philosophers do sometimes conduct experiments to investigate the extent of moral disagreement (for example, see the study of Western and East Asian values cited in Doris and Plakias 2008). What has been much more common in recent decades has been the citation by philosophers of empirical studies by anthropologists to establish facts about moral disagreement or diversity (for example, see Prinz 2007, Velleman 2015, and Wong 1984 and 2006). There has been a renewed interest in ethics by some anthropologists in the last few years (see Klenk 2019 and Laidlaw 2017), but this has not yet attracted much attention by philosophers. There is more about these issues in section 4 .

The second concern, the extent to which ordinary people accept some form of moral objectivism or some form of MMR (or some other non-objectivist position), has been the subject of considerable experimental research in recent years. This research has sometimes been conducted by psychologists (or other scientists), sometimes by philosophers, and increasingly sometimes by both working together (for overviews of this literature, see Pölzler and Wright 2019 and Sarkissian 2016). In the past, philosophers with a variety of meta-ethical commitments have sometimes claimed that in everyday moral practices people implicitly suppose that moral objectivism in some sense is correct (for example, see Blackburn 1984: 180 and Jackson 1998: 137). By contrast, on occasion some philosophers have maintained that ordinary people sometimes have attitudes that conflict with objectivism. For instance, Wong has argued that in some moral disagreements people grant that the person with the conflicting moral judgment is reasonable in accepting the judgment to the extent that these people are unsure if their own position is uniquely right—what he calls “moral ambivalence” (see Wong 2006: ch. 1). So who are correct, philosophers who claim that ordinary people accept a form of objectivism (folk moral objectivism) or philosophers who think that ordinary people at least sometimes accept something closer to MMR (folk moral relativism)?

Recent empirical research suggests that both positions may have some merit: the meta-ethical views of ordinary people are rather complex. A common method for measuring whether people are objectivists or relativists about a moral statement is to present them with a disagreement between two parties concerning the statement and to ask them if at most only one party could be correct. A response that only one could be correct indicates commitment to objectivism, while a response that more than one could be correct suggests commitment to relativism (or some non-objectivist position). Several studies employing this and related methodologies have provided evidence that, while many people are objectivists about morality, a significant number are not objectivists (for example, see Nichols 2004). Moreover, some studies have shown interesting correlations with these differences. For instance, being in a competitive rather than cooperative interaction and belief in a punishing God correlate with more objectivist intuitions (see Fisher et al. 2017 and Sarkissian and Phelan 2019) while openness to experience and to alternative possibilities are more common among those with non-objectivist intuitions (see Feltz and Cokely 2008 and Goodwin and Darley 2010). In addition, some studies purport to show that there may be causal relationships as well as correlations. For example, the desire to punish generates objectivist intuitions (see Rose and Nichols Forthcoming).

Other studies have shown different kinds of complexity. People are more likely to be objectivists about some moral issues (such as robbery) than they are about other moral issues (such as abortion). These differences also have correlations that might be partly explanatory: regarding an issue as objective correlates with strength of belief and perception of consensus on the issue (see Goodwin and Darley 2008 and 2010; cf. Ayars and Nichols 2020). Moreover, people are more likely to be objectivists about some issues than others even when they are allowed to determine for themselves which issues count as moral issues (see Wright et al. 2013).

Finally, it is more more probable that people give objectivist responses when they think that the parties to a moral disagreement share the same culture than when they think that the disagreeing parties belong to a very different culture. This might suggest that many of those who give objectivist responses are tacitly assuming a kind of objectivity on the assumption that the disagreeing parties have a common moral framework, but not in circumstances in which there are different moral frameworks (see Sarkissian et al. 2011).

In short, empirical work about folk meta-ethical outlooks suggests that there is considerable diversity in the extent to which, and the circumstances under which, people express moral objectivist views or moral non-objectivist views such as MMR . This might be taken to indicate that some people are objectivists and some are not. But it might also be taken to show that some people are “meta-ethical pluralists”: they are objectivists about some moral issues, but they are relativists about other moral issues (see Pölzler 2017, Wright 2018, and Wright, Grandjean and McWhite 2013). That is, perhaps some people implicitly deny the common assumption among philosophers that all moral beliefs should be given the same meta-ethical analysis.

Various questions may be raised about the value and significance of this experimental work. In recent years an important issue in psychology has been the extent to which experimental results can be replicated. It has been argued that the replication rate in experimental philosophy is comparatively high (see Cova et al. 2018) and some studies of people’s acceptance of moral objectivity have been replicated (for example, see Wright 2018). Another issue is whether the samples of these studies are sufficiently diverse to be indicative of the meta-ethical commitments of all human beings. Once again, there have been concerns that psychology studies have been unrepresentative (for example, because they rely too heavily on undergraduate students in the United States). However, at least some studies pertaining to moral objectivity have included a more diverse group of subjects (for example, Beebe et al. 2015 and Sarkissian et al. 2011). A different question is to what extent these studies actually measure acceptance of moral objectivism or moral relativism. Many studies focus on moral objectivism and these may leave unclear people’s views about a position such as MMR (Since there are a variety of positions that reject objectivism). However, some studies have focused on moral relativism specifically (for example, Sarkissian et al. 2011).

In any case, some philosophers may wonder about the philosophical relevance of this experimental research. One response is that it could affect criteria of success in meta-ethics. For example, it is sometimes suggested that most people are moral objectivists rather than moral relativists, and that a meta-ethical position such as moral realism gains credibility because it is in accord with folk morality so understood (see Smith 1991). The studies just cited and others appear to challenge the factual premise of this meta-ethical criterion (see Sarkissian 2017), and it has been argued that the best interpretation of the empirical data is that many people accept a form of relativism (see Beebe Forthcoming). Another response is that some of the complexity revealed in these studies might lead philosophers to consider more seriously the philosophical viability of a pluralist or mixed meta-ethical position according to which, for instance, moral objectivism is correct in some respects, but MMR is correct in other respects (in this connection, see Gill 2008 and Sinnott-Armstrong 2009). There is more on this issue in section 7 . In any case, there is increasing recognition of the importance of interpreting the significance of the experimental evidence for meta-ethics with care (see Bush and Moss 2020, Hopster 2019 and Pölzler and Wright 2020).

The final area in which experimental philosophy has contributed to discussions of moral relativism pertains to the relationship between relativism and moral attitudes such as tolerance. It is sometimes claimed that some forms of moral relativism provide a reason for tolerance (see section 8 ). But are moral relativists more likely to be tolerant than moral objectivists? Some recent psychological studies suggest that the answer may be “yes.” There is some correlation between accepting moral relativism and being more tolerant (Collier-Spruel et al. 2019), and there is some correlation between regarding a moral issue as objective and being less tolerant (Wright et al. 2008 and 2014), though it is also clear that other factors are relevant to whether behavior is tolerant or intolerant.

Insofar as these studies suggest that there is some correlation between acceptance of moral relativism and tolerance, this might be regarded as an unsurprising result for those who have argued that moral relativism provides a rational basis for tolerance. Of course, a psychological relationship does not show that there is a logical relationship. But some support might be derived from the fact that people are behaving in what, for this position, is a rational way. In addition, it has been claimed that an advantage of moral relativism is that, even though it does not provide a reason for tolerance, acceptance of it makes people more tolerant (see Prinz 2007: 208). These studies would provide support for this empirical claim.

Most discussions of moral relativism begin with, and are rooted in, DMR . Though this is not sufficient to establish MMR , the most common rationales for MMR would be undermined if DMR (or some descriptive thesis about significant moral disagreement or diversity) were incorrect. Moreover, if DMR were generally rejected, it is likely that MMR would have few proponents. Hence, it is important to consider whether or not DMR is correct. Defenders of DMR usually take it to be well-established by cultural anthropology and other empirically-based disciplines, and many believe it is obvious to anyone with an elementary understanding of the history and cultures of the world. Examples of moral practices that appear sharply at odds with moral outlooks common in the United States are not hard to come by: polygamy, arranged marriages, suicide as a requirement of honor or widowhood, severe punishments for blasphemy or adultery, female circumcision or genital mutilation (as it is variously called), and so on (for a review of some of the literature, see Prinz 2007: 187–95). At a more general level, Wong (1984) has argued that at least two different approaches to morality may be found in the world: a virtue-centered morality that emphasizes the good of the community, and a rights-centered morality that stresses the value of individual freedom.

Though it is obvious that there are some moral disagreements, it is another matter to say that these disagreements are deep and widespread, and that they are much more significant than whatever agreements there may be. Philosophers have raised two kinds of objection to this contention: a priori arguments that DMR could not be true, and a posteriori arguments that DMR is probably not true or at least has not been established to be true.

A priori objections maintain that we can know DMR is false on the basis of philosophical considerations, without recourse to empirical evidence. One argument, expressed in general form by Donald Davidson (1984a), states that disagreement presupposes considerable agreement (see the entry on Donald Davidson ). According to Davidson, a methodological constraint on the translation of the language of another society is that we must think they agree with us on most matters. For example, suppose we believed there were numerous disagreements between us and another society about trees. As the disagreements piled up, we reasonably would begin to think we had mistranslated a word in the language of the other society as ‘tree’: It is more likely that (what we take to be) their false beliefs about trees are really beliefs about something else. By generalization, it follows that there could not be extensive disagreements about trees between our society and the other one. Of course, there could be some disagreements. But these disagreements would presuppose substantial agreements in other respects. Davidson (1984b [2004a] and 1995 [2004b]) and others (for example, Cooper 1978 and Myers 2004) have claimed that this argument applies to moral concepts. If they are right, then there cannot be extensive disagreements about morality, and the agreements are more significant than the disagreements. DMR cannot be true.

Davidson’s argument is controversial. One response is that, even if it were compelling in some cases, it would not have force with respect to moral concepts. ‘Tree’ is an ordinary, descriptive concept based on direct observation. In view of this, mistranslation seems more likely than substantial disagreement. But what about concepts concerning what is amusing, interesting, or exciting? These have to do with human reactions to the world, and it may be said that our knowledge of human nature suggests that some reactions vary widely. A claim that there is much disagreement about what people find amusing—about what makes them laugh—does not immediately generate the suspicion of mistranslation. If moral concepts were more similar to ‘amusing’ than to ‘tree’, as some believe, then the Davidsonian argument might not undermine DMR even if it were convincing in other cases. Davidson, however, believed the argument applies across the board, to evaluations as well as empirical beliefs. Another response to his argument is to claim that, even if it does apply to evaluations, it would only apply to very basic ones and would leave room for substantial disagreements beyond these (if this were the case, then Davidson would have established only what I call a mixed position in section 7 ). For some critical responses to the Davidsonian critique of relativism, see Gowans 2004: 144–6, Prinz 2007: 195–9 and Rovane 2013: 247–62.

Another a priori objection to DMR was suggested by Philippa Foot (1978a and 1978b) in a response to emotivism. Just as there are shared criteria of ‘rude’ such that not just anything could be considered rude, she argued, there are shared criteria of moral concepts such that not just anything could be a moral virtue or obligation. For example, there are substantial constraints on what could be considered courage. Hence, there are significant limits to the extent of moral disagreements.

One response to this argument, interpreted as an objection to DMR , is that it faces a dilemma. On the one hand, if ‘courage’ is understood broadly, in terms of confronting a difficulty to achieve some perceived good, then it is likely that most everyone values courage. However, this leaves room for very different conceptions of courage. Both warriors and pacifists may value it, but they may regard very different kinds of actions as courageous. This puts less pressure on DMR , a point Foot later conceded to some extent (see section 7 )). On the other hand, if courage is defined narrowly, for example, as the virtue of a warrior who faces the threat of death in battle (as suggested by Aristotle), then there may be little disagreement about the scope of the concept, but considerable disagreement about whether courage so-defined should be valued (pacifists would say no). A proponent of DMR might say that this is also a significant moral disagreement. Against this, it may be said that our understanding of human nature and culture shows that everyone values courage understood within some fairly significant limits. This is a more empirical point, in line with the objections in the last paragraph of this section.

Some versions of the a priori approach emphasize the constraints imposed by “thinner” moral concepts such as goodness, rightness, or morality itself (for example, see Garcia 1988). Once again, a defender of DMR might say that, if these concepts have enough content to preclude significant disagreement in their application, then it is likely that many societies do not apply them at all—a form of moral disagreement in itself. Another response would be to argue, following R.M. Hare (1981), that a formal analysis, for example in terms of a kind of prescriptivity, is plausible with respect to some thinner moral concepts, and that this is consistent with significant moral disagreements. However, the a priori critics question the adequacy of any such analysis. Much of this debate concerns the acceptability of formal versus material definitions of morality (see the entry on the definition of morality ).

The second approach to rejecting DMR focuses on the interpretation of the empirical evidence that purportedly supports this thesis. Some objections point to obstacles that face any attempt to understand human cultures empirically. For example, it may be said that the supposed evidence is incomplete or inaccurate because the observers are biased. In support of this, it may be claimed that anthropologists often have had preconceptions rooted in disciplinary paradigms or political ideologies that have led them to misrepresent or misinterpret the empirical data. Or it may be said that even the most objective observers would have difficulty accurately understanding a society’s actual moral values on account of phenomena such as self-deception and weakness of will. These concerns point to substantial issues in the methodology of the social sciences. However, even if they were valid, they would only cast doubt on whether DMR had been established: They would not necessarily give us reason to think it is false. Of course, this would be an important objection to someone who claims DMR is established or relies on DMR to argue for MMR .

Another objection, more directly pertinent to DMR , is that anthropologists have tacitly and mistakenly assumed that cultures are rather discrete, homogenous, and static entities—rather like the shapes in a Piet Mondrian painting or a checkerboard. In fact, according to this contention, cultures typically are rather heterogeneous and complex internally, with many dissenting voices. Moreover, they often interact and sometimes influence one another, and they may change over time. From this perspective, the world of cultures is closer to an animated Jackson Pollock painting than to the unambiguous configuration suggested by the first image. If these contentions were correct, then it would be more difficult to know the moral values of different cultures and hence to know whether or not DMR is true. As before, this would not show that it is false (in fact, the point about heterogeneity might point the other way). However, we will see later that these contentions also pose challenges to MMR .

Other critics try to establish that the empirical evidence cited in support of DMR does not really show that there are significant moral disagreements, and is consistent with considerable moral agreement. A prominent contention is that purported moral disagreements may result from applying a general moral value (about which there is no disagreement) in different circumstances or in the same circumstances where there is a factual disagreement about what these circumstances are. Either way, there is no real moral disagreement in these cases. For example, everyone might agree on the importance of promoting human welfare (and even on the nature of human welfare). But this may be promoted differently in different, or differently understood, circumstances. Another contention is that moral disagreements may be explained by religious disagreements: It is only because specific religious assumptions are made (for instance, about the soul) that there are moral disagreements. Once again, the apparent moral disagreement is really a disagreement of a different kind—here, about the nature of the soul. There is no genuine moral disagreement. Of course, these possibilities would have to be established as the best explanation of the disagreements in question to constitute an objection to DMR .

Finally, some objections maintain that proponents of DMR fail to recognize that there is significant empirical evidence for considerable moral agreement across different societies (see Sauer 2019). Several kinds of agreement have been proposed. For example, the role-reversal test implied by the Golden Rule (“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”) has been prominent beyond Western traditions: A version of it is also endorsed in The Analects of Confucius, some traditional Buddhist texts, and elsewhere (see Wattles 1996). Another form of this claim maintains that basic moral prohibitions against lying, stealing, adultery, killing human beings, etc. are found across many different and otherwise diverse societies. Yet another contention is that the international human rights movement indicates substantial moral agreement (see Donnelly 2013: ch. 4). On the basis of evidence of this kind, some such as Sissela Bok (1995) and Michael Walzer (1994) have proposed that there is a universal minimal morality, whatever other moral differences there may be. In a similar vein, Hans Küng (1996) and others have maintained that there is a common “global ethic” across the world’s major religious traditions regarding respect for human life, distributive justice, truthfulness, and the moral equality of men and women. These contentions, which have received increased support in recent years, must be subjected to the same critical scrutiny as those put forward in support of DMR . However, if they were correct, they would cast doubt on DMR . In the final analysis, there may be significant agreements as well as disagreements in people’s moral values. If this were the case, it would complicate the empirical background of the metaethical debate, and it might suggest the need for more nuanced alternatives than the standard positions.

Philosophers generally agree that, even if DMR were true without qualification, it would not directly follow that MMR is true. In particular, if moral disagreements could be resolved rationally for the most part, then disagreement-based arguments for MMR would be undermined, and there would be little incentive to endorse the position. Such resolvability, at least in principle, is what moral objectivism would lead us to expect. One of the main points of contention between proponents of MMR and their objectivist critics concerns the possibility of rationally resolving moral disagreements. It might be thought that the defender of MMR needs to show conclusively that the moral disagreements identified in DMR cannot be rationally resolved, or again that the moral objectivist must show conclusively that they can be. Neither is a reasonable expectation. Indeed, it is unclear what would count as conclusively arguing for either conclusion. The center of the debate concerns what plausibly may be expected. Adherents of MMR attempt to show why rational resolution is an unlikely prospect, while their objectivist critics try to show why to a large extent this is likely, or at least not unlikely.

Moral objectivists can allow that there are special cases in which moral disagreements cannot be rationally resolved, for example on account of vagueness or indeterminacy in the concepts involved. Their main claim is that ordinarily there is a rational basis for overcoming disagreements (not that people would actually come to agree). Objectivists maintain that, typically, at least one party in a moral disagreement accepts the moral judgment on account of some factual or logical mistake, and that revealing such mistakes would be sufficient to rationally resolve the disagreement. They suggest that whatever genuine moral disagreements there are usually can be resolved in this fashion. In addition, objectivists sometimes offer an analysis of why people make such mistakes. For example, people may be influenced by passion, prejudice, ideology, self-interest, and the like. In general, objectivists think, insofar as people set these influences aside, and are reasonable and well-informed, there is generally a basis for resolving their moral differences. However, though these claims are often made, it is another matter to establish empirically that self-interest is the source of disagreement, and it has been argued that there are considerable obstacles to doing this (see Seipel 2020a). (Objectivists might also say that at least some agreements about moral truths reflect the fact that, with respect to matters pertaining to these truths, people generally have been reasonable and well-informed.)

Proponents of MMR may allow that moral disagreements sometimes are rationally resolved. In particular, they may grant that this often happens when the parties to a moral dispute share a moral framework. The characteristic relativist contention is that a common moral framework is often lacking, especially in moral disagreements between one society and another, and that differences in moral frameworks usually cannot be explained simply by supposing that one society or the other is making factual or logical mistakes. These moral disagreements are ultimately rooted in fundamentally different moral orientations, and there is usually no reason to think these differences result from the fact that, in relevant respects, one side is less reasonable or well-informed than the other. They are faultless disagreements. This conclusion might rest on the observation that it is not evident that mistakes are at the root of these disagreement. But it might also depend on a theory, developed to explain such observations, that the frameworks are incommensurable: They do not have enough in common, in terms of either shared concepts or shared standards, to resolve their differences, and there is no impartial third standpoint, accessible to any reasonable and well-informed person, that could be invoked to resolve the conflict.

Various objectivist responses may be made to this argument. One is the Davidsonian approach, already considered, that precludes the possibility of incommensurable moral frameworks. Another response is that incommensurability does not preclude the possibility of rationally resolving differences between moral frameworks. For example, Alasdair MacIntyre (1988: ch. 18 and 1994) has argued that, in some circumstances, it is possible to realize, through an exercise in imagination, that a conflicting and incommensurable moral tradition is rationally superior to one’s own tradition. However, the most common objectivist response is to claim that some specific moral framework is rationally superior to all others. For example, it might be argued, following Kant, that pure practical reason implies a fundamental moral principle such as the Categorical Imperative (see Kant’s moral philosophy ), or it might be claimed, following Aristotle, that human nature is such that virtues such as courage, temperance, and justice are necessary for any plausible conception of a good life (see the sections on the human good and the function argument in the entry on Aristotle’s ethics, and the entry on virtue ethics ). If such an argument were sound, it might provide a compelling response to the relativist contention that conflicts between moral frameworks cannot be rationally resolved.

Proponents of MMR are unimpressed by these responses. They may say that the Davidsonian account cannot assure sufficient common ground to resolve conflicts between moral frameworks (or to ensure that there is really only one framework), and that MacIntyre’s approach is likely to work at best only in some cases. And they usually consider debates about the Kantian and Aristotelian arguments to be as difficult to resolve rationally as the conflicts between moral frameworks the relativists originally invoked. They may add that the fact that moral objectivists disagree among themselves about which objectivist theory is correct is further indication of the difficulty of resolving fundamental moral conflicts.

A rather different objectivist challenge is that the position of the proponent of MMR is inconsistent. The relativist argument is that we should reject moral objectivism because there is little prospect of rationally resolving fundamental moral disagreements. However, it may be pointed out, the relativist should acknowledge that there is no more prospect of rationally resolving disagreements about MMR . By parity of reasoning, he or she should grant that there is no objective truth concerning MMR .

To this familiar kind of objection, there are two equally familiar responses. One is to concede the objection and maintain that MMR is true and justified in some metaethical frameworks, but not others: It is not an objective truth that any reasonable and well-informed person has reason to accept. This may seem to concede a great deal, but for someone who is a relativist through and through, or at least is a relativist about metaethical claims, this would be the only option. The other response is to contest the claim that there is parity of reasoning in the two cases. This would require showing that the dispute about the irresolvability of moral disagreements (a metaethical debate) can be rationally resolved in a way that fundamental moral disagreements (substantive normative debates) themselves cannot. For example, the metaethical debate might be rationally resolved in favor of the relativist, while the substantive normative debates cannot be resolved.

Even if it were established that there are deep and widespread moral disagreements that cannot be rationally resolved, and that these disagreements are more significant than whatever agreements there may be, it would not immediately follow that MMR is correct. Other nonobjectivist conclusions might be drawn. In particular, opponents of objectivism might argue for moral skepticism, that we cannot know moral truths, or for a view that moral judgments lack truth-value (understood to imply a rejection of relative truth-value). Hence, proponents of MMR face two very different groups of critics: assorted kinds of moral objectivists and various sorts of moral nonobjectivists. The defender of MMR needs to establish that MMR is superior to all these positions, and this would require a comparative assessment of their respective advantages and disadvantages. It is beyond the scope of this article to consider the alternative positions (see the entries on moral cognitivism vs. non-cognitivism , moral anti-realism , moral epistemology , moral realism , and moral skepticism ). What can be considered are the challenges the proponent of MMR faces and what may be said in response to them. Some critics of MMR have raised questions about the coherence of the position (for example, Boghossian 2011 and 2017).

For example, it might be thought that MMR , with respect to truth-value, would have the result that a moral judgment such as “suicide is morally right” (S) could be both true and false—true when valid for one group and false when invalid for another. But this appears to be an untenable position: most people would grant that nothing can be both true and false. Of course, some persons could be justified in affirming S and other persons justified in denying it, since the two groups could have different evidence. But it is another matter to say S is both true and false.

A standard relativist response is to say that moral truth is relative in some sense. On this view, S is not true or false absolutely speaking, but it may be true-relative-to- X and false-relative-to- Y (where X and Y refer to the moral codes of different societies). This means that suicide is right for persons in a society governed by X , but it is not right for persons in a society governed by Y ; and, the relativist may contend, there is no inconsistency in this conjunction properly understood.

It might be objected that the notion of relative truth fails to capture the sense in which ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ are normative terms about what ought to be as opposed to what is the case. The statement “suicide is morally right” is normative in this sense, but the statement “suicide is morally right for persons in a society governed by moral code X” is not normative, but descriptive: it tells us what persons who accept moral code X think, and as such it is something everyone could agree with, irrespective of their own moral code, if in fact this is what moral code X says. In response, it might be said that there are expressions of relativist moral statements that are normative. For instance, “suicide is morally right for us,” spoken by and to members of the group referred to by ‘us’, is not merely a description of what they believe: it tells them what they are morally permitted to do (in this sense, it is action-guiding).

Such relativist formulations may also give rise to a related and very common objection. Relativism often presents itself as an interpretation of moral disagreements: It is said to be the best explanation of rationally irresolvable or faultless moral disagreements. However, once moral truth is regarded as relative, the disagreements seem to disappear. For example, someone accepting X who affirms S is saying suicide is right for persons accepting X , while someone accepting Y who denies S is saying suicide is not right for persons accepting Y . It might well be that they are both correct and hence that they are not disagreeing with one another (rather as two people in different places might both be correct when one says the sun is shining and the other says it is not, or as two people in different countries may both be correct when one says something is illegal and the other says it is not). The relativist explanation dissolves the disagreement. But, then, why did it appear as a disagreement in the first place? An objectivist might say this is because people thinking this assume that moral truth is absolute rather than relative. If this were correct, the relativist could not maintain that MMR captures what people already believe. The contention would have to be that they should believe it, and the argument for relativism would have to be formulated in those terms. For example, the relativist might contend that MMR is the most plausible position to adopt insofar as moral judgments often give practically conflicting directives and neither judgment can be shown to be rationally superior to the other.

Another common objection, though probably more so outside philosophy than within it, is that MMR cannot account for the fact that some practices such as the holocaust in Germany or slavery in the United States are obviously objectively wrong. This point is usually expressed in a tone of outrage, often with the suggestion that relativists pose a threat to civilized society (or something of this sort). Proponents of MMR might respond that this simply begs the question, and in one sense they are right. However, this objection might reflect a more sophisticated epistemology, for example, that we have more reason to accept these objectivist intuitions than we have to accept any argument put forward in favor of MMR . This would bring us back to the arguments of the last section. Another relativist response would be to say that the practices in question, though widely accepted, were wrong according to the fundamental standards of the societies (for example, there were arguments against slavery presented in the United States prior to the Civil War). This would not show that the practices are objectively wrong, but it might mitigate the force of the critique. However, though this response may be plausible in some cases, it is not obvious that it always would be convincing.

This last response brings out the fact that a proponent of MMR needs a clear specification of that to which truth is relative. For example, if S is true-relative-to the moral code of a society, does this mean it is true-relative-to what people in the society think the moral code says or to what the fundamental standards of the moral code actually imply? These might not be the same. It is often supposed that truths can be undiscovered or that people can make mistakes about them. As just noted, a moral relativist could make sense of this by supposing that it is the fundamental standards of a moral code that are authoritative for people in a society that accepts that code. Hence, what is morally true-relative-to the moral code of a society is whatever the fundamental standards of the code would actually warrant. By this criterion, there could be moral truths that are unknown to people in the society that accepts the code, or these people could be mistaken in thinking something is a moral truth.

A similar point arises from the fact that it is sometimes thought to be an advantage of MMR that it maintains a substantial notion of intersubjective truth or justification: It avoids the defects of moral objectivism, on the one hand, and of moral skepticism and theories that disregard moral truth-value altogether, on the other hand, because it maintains that moral judgments do not have truth in an absolute sense, but they do have truth relative to the moral code of a society (and similarly for justification). This is thought to be an advantage because, notwithstanding the supposed difficulties with moral objectivism, morality is widely regarded as “not merely subjective,” and MMR can capture this. However, this purported advantage raises an important question for relativism: Why suppose moral judgments have truth-value relative to a society as opposed to no truth-value at all? If the relativist claims that a set of fundamental standards is authoritative for persons in a society, it may be asked why they have this authority. This question may arise in quite practical ways. For example, suppose a dissident challenges some of the fundamental standards of his or her society. Is this person necessarily wrong?

Various answers may be given to these questions. For example, it may be said that the standards that are authoritative in a society are those that reasonable and well-informed members of the society would generally accept. This might seem to provide a basis for normative authority. However, if this approach were taken, it may be asked why that authority rests only on reasonable and well-informed members of the society. Why not a wider group? Why not all reasonable and well-informed persons?

A different response would be to say that the standards that are authoritative for a society are the ones persons have agreed to follow as a result of some negotiation or bargaining process (as seen above, Harman has argued that we should understand some moral judgments in these terms). Once again, this might seem to lend those standards some authority. Still, it may be asked whether they really have authority or perhaps whether they have the right kind. For example, suppose the agreement had been reached in circumstances in which a few members of society held great power over the others (in the real world, the most likely scenario). Those with less power might have been prudent to make the agreement, but it is not obvious that such an agreement would create genuine normative authority—a point the dissident challenging the standards might well make. Moreover, if all moral values are understood in this way, how do we explain the authority of the contention that people should follow a set of values because they agreed to do so? Must there be a prior agreement to do what we agree to do?

A related objection concerns the specification of the society to which moral justification or truth are said to be relative. People typically belong to many different groups defined by various criteria: culture, religion, political territory, ethnicity, race, gender, etc. Moreover, while it is sometimes claimed that the values of a group defined by one of these criteria have authority for members of the group, such claims are often challenged. The specification of the relevant group is itself a morally significant question, and there appears to be no objective map of the world that displays its division into social groups to which the truth or justification of moral judgments are relative. A proponent of MMR needs a plausible way of identifying the group of persons to which moral truth or justification are relative.

Moreover, not only do people typically belong to more than one group, as defined by the aforementioned criteria, the values that are authoritative in each group a person belongs to may not always be the same. If I belong to a religion and a nationality, and their values concerning abortion are diametrically opposed, then which value is correct for me? This raises the question whether there is a basis for resolving the conflict consistent with MMR (the two groups might have conflicting fundamental standards) and whether in this circumstance MMR would entail that there is a genuine moral dilemma (meaning that abortion is both right and wrong for me). This point is not necessarily an objection, but a defender of MMR would have to confront these issues and develop a convincing position concerning them.

The fact that social groups are defined by different criteria, and that persons commonly belong to more than one social group, might be taken as a reason to move from relativism to a form of subjectivism. That is, instead of saying that the truth or justification of moral judgments is relative to a group, we should say it is relative to each individual (as noted above, relativism is sometimes defined to include both positions). This revision might defuse the issues just discussed, but it would abandon the notion of intersubjectivity with respect to truth or justification—what for many proponents of MMR is a chief advantage of the position. Moreover, a proponent of this subjectivist account would need to explain in what sense, if any, moral values have normative authority for a person as opposed to simply being accepted. The fact that we sometimes think our moral values have been mistaken is often thought to imply that we believe they have some authority that does not consist in the mere fact that we accept them.

Another set of concerns arises from purported facts about similarities among and interactions across different societies vis-à-vis morality. People in one society sometimes make moral judgments about people in another society on the basis of moral standards they take to be authoritative for both societies. In addition, conflicts between societies are sometimes resolved because one society changes its moral outlook and comes to share at least some of the moral values of the other society. More generally, sometimes people in one society think they learn from the moral values of another society: They come to believe that the moral values of another society are better in some respects than their own (previously accepted) values. The Mondrian image of a world divided into distinct societies, each with it own distinctive moral values, makes it difficult to account for these considerations. If this image is abandoned as unrealistic, and is replaced by one that acknowledges greater moral overlap and interaction among societies (recall the Pollock image), then the proponent of MMR needs to give a plausible account of these dynamics. This is related to the problem of authority raised earlier: These considerations suggest that people sometimes acknowledge moral authority that extends beyond their own society, and a relativist needs to show why this makes sense or why people are mistaken in this acknowledgement.

Discussions of moral relativism often assume (as mostly has been assumed here so far) that moral relativism is the correct account of all moral judgments or of none. But perhaps it is the correct account of some moral judgments but not others or, more vaguely, the best account of morality vis-à-vis these issues would acknowledge both relativist and objectivist elements. Such a mixed position might be motivated by some of the philosophical questions already raised (recall also the suggestion in the section on experimental philosophy that some people may be “meta-ethical pluralists”). On the empirical level, it might be thought that there are many substantial moral disagreements but also some striking moral agreements across different societies. On the metaethical plane, it might be supposed that, though many disagreements are not likely to be rationally resolved, other disagreements may be (and perhaps that the cross-cultural agreements we find have a rational basis). The first point would lead to a weaker form of DMR The second point, the more important one, would imply a modified form of MMR (see the suggestions in the last paragraph of section 4 ). This approach has attracted some support, interestingly, from both sides of the debate: relativists who have embraced an objective constraint, and (more commonly) objectivists who have allowed some relativist dimensions. Here are some prominent examples of these mixed metaethical outlooks.

David Copp (1995) maintains that it is true that something is morally wrong only if it is wrong in relation to the justified moral code of some society, and a code is justified in a society only if the society would be rationally required to select it. Since which code it would be rationally required to select depends in part on the non-moral values of the society, and since these values differ from one society to another, something may be morally wrong for one society but not for another. Copp calls this position a form of moral relativism. However, he believes this relativism is significantly mitigated by the fact that which code a society is rationally required to select also depends on the basic needs of the society. Copp thinks all societies have the same basic needs. For example, every society has a need to maintain its population and system of cooperation from one generation to the next. Moreover, since meeting these basic needs is the most fundamental factor in determining the rationality of selecting a code, Copp thinks the content of all justified moral codes will tend to be quite similar. For instance, any such code will require that persons’s basic needs for such things as physical survival, self-respect and friendship be promoted (these are said to be necessary for minimal rational agency). The theory is mixed insofar as the rationality of selecting a code depends partly on common features of human nature (basic needs) and partly on diverse features of different societies (values). Whether or not justified moral codes (and hence moral truths) would tend to be substantially similar, despite differences, as Copp argues, would depend on both the claim that all societies have the same basic needs and the claim that these needs are much more important than other values in determining which moral code it is rational for a society to select.

Wong (1996) defended a partly similar position, though one intended to allow for greater diversity in correct moral codes. He argued that more than one morality may be true, but there are limits on which moralities are true. The first point is a form of metaethical relativism: It says one morality may be true for one society and a conflicting morality may be true for another society. Hence, there is no one objectively correct morality for all societies. The second point, however, is a concession to moral objectivism. It acknowledges that objective factors concerning human nature and the human situation should determine whether or not, or to what extent, a given morality could be one of the true ones. The mere fact that a morality is accepted by a society does not guarantee that it has normative authority in that society. For example, given our biological and psychological make-up, not just anything could count as a good way of life. Again, given that most persons are somewhat self-interested and that society requires some measure of cooperation, any plausible morality will include a value of reciprocity (good in return for good on some proportional basis). Since these objective limitations are quite broad, they are insufficient in themselves to establish a specific and detailed morality: Many particular moralities are consistent with them, and the choice among these moralities must be determined by the cultures of different societies.

Wong has developed this approach at length in more recent work (2006). His “pluralistic relativism” continues to emphasize that there are universal constraints on what could be a true morality. The constraints are based on a naturalistic understanding of human nature and the circumstances of human life. For Wong, given a variety of human needs and the depth of self-interest, morality’s function is to promote both social co-operation and individual flourishing. In addition, morality requires that persons have both effective agency and effective identity, and these can only be fostered in personal contexts such as the family. Hence, the impersonal perspective must be limited by the personal perspective. Any true morality would have to respect requirements such as these.

Nonetheless, according to Wong, the universal constraints are sufficiently open-ended that there is more than one way to respect them. Hence, there can be more than one true morality. This is pluralistic relativism. For Wong, the different true moralities need not be, and typically are not, completely different from one another. In fact, they often share some values (such as individual rights and social utility), but assign them different priorities.

Wong presents pluralistic relativism as the best explanation of what he calls “moral ambivalence,” the phenomenon of morally disagreeing with someone while recognizing that the person is still reasonable in making the conflicting judgment—to the point that one’s confidence in being uniquely right is shaken. The extent to which moral ambivalence is widespread is an empirical question (see section 3 ). In any case, Wong presents a sustained and detailed argument that an empirically-based understanding of the nature and conditions of human life both limits and underdetermines what a true morality could be. In many respects, his position is the most sophisticated form of relativism developed to date, and it has the resources to confront a number of the issues raised in the last section (for some critical responses to Wong and his replies, see Xiao and Huang 2014; for more recent discussion, see Li 2019, Vicente and Arrieta 2016, and Wong 2020).

A somewhat similar mixed position has been advanced, though more tentatively, by Foot (2002a and 2002b; see also Scanlon 1995 and 1998: ch. 8). She argued that there are conceptual limitations on what could count as a moral code (as seen in section 4 ), and that there are common features of human nature that set limits on what a good life could be. For these reasons, there are some objective moral truths—for example, that the Nazi attempt to exterminate the Jews was morally wrong. However, Foot maintained, these considerations do not ensure that all moral disagreements can be rationally resolved. Hence, in some cases, a moral judgment may be true by reference to the standards of one society and false by reference to the standards of another society—but neither true nor false in any absolute sense (just as we might say with respect to standards of beauty).

Foot came to this mixed view from the direction of objectivism (in the form of a virtue theory), and it might be contended by some objectivists that she has conceded too much. Since there are objective criteria, what appear as rationally irresolvable disagreements might be resolvable through greater understanding of human nature. Or the objective criteria might establish that in some limited cases it is an objective moral truth that conflicting moral practices are both morally permissible. In view of such considerations, objectivists might argue, it is not necessary to have recourse to the otherwise problematic notion of relative moral truth.

A position related to Foot’s has been advanced by Martha Nussbaum (1993). With explicit reference to Aristotle, she argued that there is one objectively correct understanding of the human good, and that this understanding provides a basis for criticizing the moral traditions of different societies. The specifics of this account are explained by a set of experiences or concerns, said to be common to all human beings and societies, such as fear, bodily appetite, distribution of resources, management of personal property, etc. Corresponding to each of these is a conception of living well, a virtue, namely the familiar Aristotelian virtues such as courage, moderation, justice, and generosity. Nussbaum acknowledged that there are disagreements about these virtues, and she raised an obvious relativist objection herself: Even if the experiences are universal, does human nature establish that there is one objectively correct way of living well with respect to each of these areas? In response, Nussbaum conceded that sometimes there may be more than one objectively correct conception of these virtues and that the specification of the conception may depend on the practices of a particular community.

As with Foot, Nussbaum came to this mixed position from the objectivist side of the debate. Some moral objectivists may think she has given up too much, and for a related reason many moral relativists may believe she has established rather little. For example, bodily appetites are indeed universal experiences, but there has been a wide range of responses to these—for example, across a spectrum from asceticism to hedonism. This appears to be one of the central areas of moral disagreement. In order to maintain her objectivist credentials, Nussbaum needs to show that human nature substantially constrains which of these responses could be morally appropriate. Some objectivists may say she has not shown this, but could, while relativists may doubt she could show it.

Mixed positions along the lines of those just discussed suppose that morality is objective in some respects, on account of some features of human nature, and relative in other respects. For the respects in which morality is relative, it is up to particular societies or individuals to determine which moral values to embrace. Hence, the authority of morality depends partly on objective factors and partly on the decisions of groups or individuals. Insofar as this is true, such mixed positions need to say something about the basis for these decisions and how conflicts are to be resolved (for example, when individuals dissent from groups or when people belong to different groups with conflicting values). The objective features of mixed positions may help resolve these issues, or may limit their import, but at the point where these features give out there remain some of the standard concerns about relativism (such as those raised in the last section).

Another approach might be construed as a mixed position, though it was not put forward in these terms. Isaiah Berlin (1998) argued that, though some moral values are universal, there are also many objective values that conflict and are not commensurable with one another. He called his position pluralism and rejected the label ‘relativism’ (see the entry on Isaiah Berlin ). But if incommensurability implies that these conflicts cannot be rationally resolved, then it might suggest a concession to relativism.

Against such a position, an objectivist may ask why we should think objective goods are incommensurable: If X and Y are both objectively good, then why not say that the statement ‘ X is better than Y ’ (or a more restrictive comparative statement specifying respects or circumstances) is objectively true or false, even if this is difficult to know? Berlin’s view was that there are many examples of conflicting goods—for example, justice and mercy, or liberty and equality—where it is implausible to suppose they are commensurable.

Finally, it should also be noted that a rather different kind of mixed position was proposed by Bernard Williams (1981 and 1985: ch. 9). He rejected what he called “strict relational relativism,” that ethical conceptions have validity only relative to a society. But he endorsed another form of relativism. This was explained by reference to a distinction between a “notional confrontation,” where a divergent outlook is known but not a real option for us, and a “real confrontation,” where a divergent outlook is a real option for us—something we might embrace without losing our grip on reality. Williams’s “relativism of distance” says ethical appraisals are appropriate in real confrontations, but not in notional ones. For example, we could never embrace the outlook of a medieval samurai: Since this is a notional confrontation, it would be inappropriate to describe this outlook as just or unjust. This is the sense in which relativism is correct. But in real confrontations, relativism unhelpfully discourages the evaluation of another outlook that is a genuine option for us (for a development of Williams’s position by reference to the recent experimental literature, see Gaitán and Viciana 2018).

Williams was a strong critic of most forms of moral objectivism, yet he also criticized many of the nonobjectivist alternatives to objectivism. His outlook is not easily classified in terms of standard metaethical positions. With respect to his relativism of distance, it may be wondered why appraisals are inappropriate in notional confrontations: Why should the fact that an outlook is not a real option preclude us from thinking it is just or unjust? On the other hand, in real confrontations Williams thought the language of appraisal was appropriate, but he also thought these confrontations could involve rationally irresolvable disagreements. Though Williams rejects strict relational relativism, objectivists may argue that his position suffers from defects as serious as those that attend MMR . If the confrontations are real because the two outlooks have something in common, objectivists might ask, could this not provide a basis for resolving these disagreements?

The central theme in mixed positions is that neither relativism nor objectivism is wholly correct: At least in the terms in which they are often expressed, these alternatives are subject to serious objections, and yet they are motivated by genuine concerns. It might seem that a mixed position could be developed that would give us the best of both worlds (there are a number of other proposals along these lines; for example see Hampshire 1983 and 1989). However, an implication of most mixed positions (this does not apply to Williams) seems to be that, in some respect, some moral judgments are objectively true (or justified), while others have only relative truth (or justification). This should not be confused with the claim that an action may be right in some circumstances but not others. For example, a consequentialist view that polygamy is right in one society and wrong in another because it has good consequences in the first society and bad consequences in the second would not be a mixed position because the judgments “Polygamy is right in circumstances A ” and “Polygamy is wrong in circumstances B ” could both be true in an absolute sense. By contrast, a mixed position might say that “Polygamy is right” is true relative to one society and false relative to another (where the two societies differ, not necessarily in circumstances, but in fundamental values), while other moral judgments have absolute truth-value. This is a rather disunified conception of morality, and it invites many questions. A proponent of a mixed view would have to show that it is an accurate portrayal of our moral practices, or that it is a plausible proposal for reforming them.

Relativism is sometimes associated with a normative position, usually pertaining to how people ought to regard or behave towards those with whom they morally disagree. The most prominent normative position in this connection concerns tolerance. In recent years, the idea that we should be tolerant has been increasingly accepted in some circles. At the same time, others have challenged this idea, and the philosophical understanding and justification of tolerance has become less obvious (see Heyd 1996 and the entry on toleration ). The question here is whether moral relativism has something to contribute to these discussions, in particular, whether DMR or MMR provide support for tolerance (for discussion, see Graham 1996, Harrison 1976, Ivanhoe 2009, Kim and Wreen 2003, Prinz 2007: pp. 207–13 and Wong 1984: ch. 12). In this context, tolerance does not ordinarily mean indifference or absence of disapproval: It means having a policy of not interfering with the actions of persons that are based on moral judgments we reject, when the disagreement is not or cannot be rationally resolved. The context of discussion is often, but not always, moral disagreements between two societies. Does moral relativism provide support for tolerance in this sense?

Though many people seem to think it does, philosophers often resist supposing that there is a philosophical connection between accepting a metaethical position and reaching a practical conclusion (however, see Gillespie 2016). Hence, it is often thought that, though DMR may provide the occasion for tolerance, but it could not imply that tolerance is morally obligatory or even permissible. DMR simply tells us there are moral disagreements. Recognition of this fact, by itself, entails nothing about how we should act towards those with whom we disagree. MMR fares no better. For one thing, MMR cannot very well imply that it is an objective moral truth that we should be tolerant: MMR denies that there are such truths. (A mixed position could contend that tolerance is the only objective moral truth, all others being relative; but it would have to be shown that this is more than an ad hoc maneuver.) It might be said that MMR implies that tolerance is a relative truth. However, even this is problematic. According to MMR , understood to concern truth, the truth-value of statements may vary from society to society. Hence, the statement, “people ought to be tolerant” ( T ), may be true in some societies and false in others. MMR by itself does not entail that T is true in any society, and may in fact have the result that T is false in some societies (a similar point may be made with respect to justification).

Some objectivists may add that in some cases we should be tolerant of those with whom we morally disagree, but that only objectivists can establish this as an objective moral truth (for example, by drawing on arguments in the liberal tradition from Locke or Mill). To the objection that moral objectivism implies intolerance (or imperialism), objectivists typically contend that the fact that we regard a society as morally wrong in some respect does not entail that we should interfere with it.

Nonetheless, the thought persists among some relativists that there is a philosophically significant connection between relativism and tolerance. Perhaps the conjunction of MMR and an ethical principle could give us a reason for tolerance we would not have on the basis of the ethical principle alone. Such an approach has been proposed by Wong (1984: ch. 12). The principle is, roughly speaking, that we should not interfere with people unless we could justify this interference to them (if they were rational and well-informed in relevant respects). Wong called this “the justification principle.” Of course, it is already a tolerance principle of sorts. The idea is that it gains broader scope if MMR is correct. Let us suppose the statement that there is an individual right to freedom of speech is true and justified for our society, but is false and unjustified in another society in which the press is restricted for the good of the community. In this case, given MMR , our society might not be able to justify interference to the restrictive society concerning freedom of the press. Any justification we could give would appeal to values that are authoritative for us, not them, and no appeal to logic or facts alone would give them a reason to accept our justification.

If the justification principle were widely accepted, this argument might explain why some people have had good reason to think there is a connection between relativism and tolerance. But there is a question about whether the position is stable. Wong derived the justification principle from Kant, and Kant rejected MMR . If we were to accept MMR , would we still have reason to accept the justification principle? Wong thought we might, perhaps on the basis of considerations quite independent of Kant. In any case, this argument would only show that MMR plays a role in an argument for tolerance that is relevant to people in a society that accepted the justification principle. The argument does not establish that there is a general connection between relativism and tolerance. Nor does it undermine the contention that MMR may have the result that T is true in some societies and false in others.

In his more recent defense of pluralistic relativism (2006), Wong has argued that, since some serious moral disagreements are inevitable, any adequate morality will include the value of what he calls accommodation. This involves a commitment to peaceful and non-coercive relationships with persons with whom we disagree. Accommodation appears to be related to tolerance, but Wong argues for more than this: we should also try to learn from others, compromise with them, preserve relationships with them, etc. Wong’s defense of accommodation is immune to the objection that relativism cannot be a basis for such a universal value because his defense purports to be based on considerations that any adequate morality should recognize. However, for this reason, though it presupposes the considerations supporting the relativist dimension of his position (there is no single true morality), it argues from the non-relativist dimension (there are universal constraints any morality should accept, in particular, that one function of morality is to promote social co-operation). Hence, it is not strictly speaking an argument from relativism to accommodation.

As was noted in section 3 , aside from the philosophical question whether or not some form of moral relativism provides a reason for attitudes such as tolerance, there is the psychological question whether or not people who accept relativism are more likely to be tolerant. As was seen, there is some evidence that relativists are more tolerant than objectivists, and it has been claimed that, even if relativism does not justify tolerance, it would be a positive feature of relativism that acceptance of it makes people more tolerant (see Prinz 2007: 208). Of course, this judgment presupposes that, in some sense, it is good to be tolerant.

• Accetti, C., 2015, Relativism and Religion: Why Democratic Societies Do Not Need Moral Absolutes , New York: Columbia University Press.
• American Anthropological Association Executive Board, 1947, “Statement on Human Rights,” American Anthropologist , 49: 539–43.
• Appiah, K. A., 2006, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers , New York: W.W. Norton.
• Audi, R., 2007, Moral Value and Human Diversity , New York: Oxford University Press.
• Ayars, A. and S. Nichols, 2020, “Rational Learners and Metaethics: Universalism, Relativism, and Evidence from Consensus,” Mind and Language , 35: 67–89.
• Baghramian, M., 2004, Relativism , London: Routledge.
• Beebe, J.R., 2010, “Moral Relativism in Context,” Nous , 44: pp. 691–724.
• –––, 2014, “How Different Kinds of Disagreement Impact Folk Metaethical Judgments,” in H. Sarkissian and J.C. Wright (eds.), Advances in Experimental Moral Psychology , London: Bloomsbury, 167–87.
• –––, Forthcoming, “The Empirical Case for Folk Indexical Moral Relativism,” in T. Lombrozo, J. Knobe and S. Nichols (eds.), Oxford Studies in Experimental Philosophy , Vol. 4, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Beebe, J.R. et al., 2015, “Moral Objectivism in Cross-Cultural Perspective,” Journal of Cognition and Culture , 15: 386–401.
• Benbaji, Y. and M. Fisch, 2004, “Through Thick and Thin: A New Defense of Cultural Relativism,” Southern Journal of Philosophy , 42: 1–24.
• Benedict, R, 1934, Patterns of Culture , Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
• Berlin, I., 1998, “The Pursuit of the Ideal,” in Berlin, The Proper Study of Mankind: An Anthology of Essays , H. Hardy and R. Hausheer (eds.), New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, pp. 1–16. Original Publication Date: 1988.
• Bilgrami, A., 2011,“Secularism, Liberalism, and Relativism,” in S.D. Hales (ed.), A Companion to Relativism , Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 326–45.
• Bjornsson, G. and S. Finlay, 2010, “Metaethical Contextualism Defended,” Ethics , 121: 7–36.
• Blackburn, S., 1984, Spreading the Word: Groundings in the Philosophy of Language , Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• –––, 1998, Ruling Passions: A Theory of Practical Reasoning , Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• –––, 1999, “Is Objective Moral Justification Possible on a Quasi-realist Foundation?,” Inquiry , 42: 213–28.
• Bloomfield, P., 2003, “Is There a Moral High Ground?,” The Southern Journal of Philosophy , 41: 511–26.
• Boghossian, P., 2006, Fear of Knowledge: Against Relativism and Constructivism , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• –––, 2011,“Three Kinds of Relativism,” in S.D. Hales (ed.), A Companion to Relativism , Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 53–69.
• –––, 2017, “Relativism about Morality,” in K. Neges et al. (eds.), Realism-Relativism-Constructivism: Proceedings of the 38th International Wittgenstein Symposium in Kirchberg , Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, pp. 301–12.
• Bok, S., 1995, Common Values , Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press.
• Brady, M., 2010, “Disappointment,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society , 84: 179–98.
• Brandt, R.B., 1954, Hopi Ethics: A Theoretical Analysis , Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• –––, 1984, “Relativism Refuted?,” The Monist , 67: 297–307.
• Brogaard, B., 2008, “Moral Contextualism and Moral Relativism,” Philosophical Quarterly , 58: 385–409.
• –––, 2012, “Moral Relativism and Moral Expressivism,” Southern Journal of Philosophy , 50: 538–56.
• Bush, L.S. and D. Moss, 2020, “Misunderstanding Metaethics: Difficulties Measuring Folk Objectivism and Relativism,” Diametros , 17: 6–21.
• Capps, D., M.P. Lynch and D. Massey, 2008, “A Coherent Moral Relativism,” Synthese , 151: 1–26.
• Code, L., 1995, “Must a Feminist Be a Relativist After All?,” in Code, Rhetorical Spaces: Essays on Gendered Locations , New York: Routledge, pp. 185–207.
• Coliva, A. and S. Moruzzi, 2012, “Truth Relativists Can’t Trump Moral Progress,” Analytic Philosophy , 53: 48–57.
• Collier-Spruel, L.A., et al., 2019, “Relativism or Tolerance? Defining, Assessing, Connecting, and Distinguishing Two Moral Personality Features with Prominent Roles in Modern Societies,” Journal of Personality , 87: 1170–88.
• Cook, J.W., 1999, Morality and Cultural Differences , New York: Oxford University Press.
• Cooper, D., 1978, “Moral Relativism,” Midwest Studies in Philosophy , 3: 97–108.
• Copp, D., 1995, Morality, Normativity, and Society , New York: Oxford University Press.
• Corradetti, C., 2009, Relativism and Human Rights: A Theory of Pluralistic Universalism , Dordrecht: Springer.
• Cova, F., et al., 2018, “Estimating the Reproducibility of Experimental Philosophy,” Review of Philosophy and Psychology , doi:10.1007/s13164-018-0400-9
• Davidson, D., 1984a, “On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme” in Davidson, Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation , Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. 183–98. Original Publication Date: 1973–74.
• –––, 1984b [2004a], “Expressing Evaluations” in D. Davidson, Problems of Rationality , Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. 19–37; originally published in Expressing Evaluations , Lindley Lecture, Lawrence, Kansas: University of Kansas, 1984.
• –––, 1995 [2004b], “The Objectivity of Values” in D. Davidson, Problems of Rationality , Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. 39–57; originally published in El Trabajo Filosófico de Hoy en el Continente , edited by Carlos Gutiérrez, Bogatá: Editorial ABC, 1995, 59–69.
• Donnelly, J., 1984, “Cultural Relativism and Universal Human Rights,” Human Rights Quarterly , 6: 400–419.
• –––, 2013, Universal Human Rights in Theory and Practice , Third Edition, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
• Doris, J.M. and A. Plakias, 2008, “How to Argue about Disagreement: Evaluative Diversity and Moral Realism,” in W. Sinnott-Armstrong (ed.), Moral Psychology, Volume 2: The Cognitive Science of Morality: Intuition and Diversity , Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, pp. 303–31.
• Dreier, J., 1990, “Internalism and Speaker Relativism,” Ethics , 101: 6–26.
• –––, 2006, “Moral Relativism and Moral Nihilism,” in D. Copp (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Ethical Theory , New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 240–64.
• Duncker, K., 1939, “Ethical Relativity?”, Mind , 48: 39–57.
• Dyke, M.M., 2020, “Group Agency Meets Metaethics: How to Craft a More Compelling Form of Normative Relativism,” in R. Shafer-Landau (ed.) Oxford Studies in Metaethics , Vol. 15, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 219–40.
• Earp, B.D., 2016, “Between Moral Relativism and Moral Hypocrisy: Reframing the Debate on ‘FGM’,” Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal , 26: 105–44.
• Egan, A., 2012, “Relativist Dispositional Theories of Value,” Southern Journal of Philosophy , 50: 557–82.
• Elgin, C. Z., 1989, “The Relativity of Fact and the Objectivity of Value,” in M. Krausz (ed.), Relativism: Interpretation and Confrontation , Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, pp. 86–98.
• Evers, D., 2021, “Relativism and the Metaphysics of Value,” British Journal of Aesthetics , 61: 75–87.
• Feltz, A. and E.T. Cokely, 2008, “The Fragmented Folk: More Evidence of Stable Individual Differences in Moral Judgments and Folk Intuitions,” in B.C. Love, K. McRae and V.M. Sloutsky (eds.), Proceedings of the 30th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society , Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society, 1771–76.
• Fisher, M. et al., 2017, “The Influence of Social Interaction on Intuitions of Objectivity and Subjectivity,” Cognitive Science , 41: 1119–34.
• Fleischacker, S., 1992, Integrity and Moral Relativism , Leiden: E.J. Brill.
• Foot, P., 1978a, “Moral Arguments,” in Foot, Virtues and Vices and Other Essays in Moral Philosophy , Oxford: Basil Blackwell, pp. 96–109, Original Publication Date: 1958.
• –––, 1978b, “Moral Beliefs,” in Foot, Virtues and Vices and Other Essays in Moral Philosophy , Oxford: Basil Blackwell, pp. 110–31, Original Publication Date: 1958–59.
• –––, 2002a, “Morality and Art,” in Foot, Moral Dilemmas and Other Topics in Moral Philosophy , Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. 5–19, Original Publication Date: 1972.
• –––, 2002b, “Moral Relativism,” in Foot, Moral Dilemmas and Other Topics in Moral Philosophy , Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. 20–36, Original Publication Date: 1979.
• Frick, M-L., 2017, “A Plurality of True Moralities? Tracing ‘Truth’ in Moral Relativism,” in K. Neges et al. (eds.), Realism-Relativism-Constructivism: Proceedings of the 38th International Wittgenstein Symposium in Kirchberg , Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, pp. 327–38.
• Fricker, M., 2010, “The Relativism of Blame and Williams’s Relativism of Distance,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society , 84: 151–77.
• –––, 2013, “Styles of Moral Relativism: A Critical Family Tree,” in R. Crisp (ed.), Oxford Handbook of the History of Ethics , Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 793–817.
• Gaitán, A. and H. Viciana, 2018, “Relativism of Distance—A Step in the Naturalization of Meta-ethics,” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice , 21: 311–27.
• Garcia, J.L.A., 1988, “Relativism and Moral Divergence,” Metaphilosophy , 19: 264–81.
• Geertz, C., 2000, Available Light: Anthropological Reflections on Philosophical Topics , Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• Gewirth, A., 1994, “Is Cultural Pluralism Relevant to Moral Knowledge?,” in E.F. Paul, F.D. Miller, Jr., and J. Paul (eds.), Cultural Pluralism and Moral Knowledge , Cambridge U.K.: Cambridge University Press, pp. 22–43.
• Gill, M.B., 2008, “Metaethical Variability, Incoherence, and Error,” in W. Sinnott-Armstrong (ed.), Moral Psychology, Volume 2: The Cognitive Science of Morality: Intuition and Diversity , Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, pp. 387–401.
• Gillespie, R., 2016, “Normative Reasoning and Moral Argumentation in Theory and Practice,” Philosophy and Rhetoric , 49: 49–73.
• Goodwin, G.P. and J.M. Darley, 2008, “The Psychology of Meta-ethics: Exploring Objectivism,” Cognition , 106: 1339–66.
• –––, 2010, “The Perceived Objectivity of Ethical Beliefs: Psychological Findings and Implications for Public Policy,” Review of Philosophy and Psychology , 1: 161–88.
• Gowans, C., (ed.), 2000, Moral Disagreements: Classic and Contemporary Readings , London: Routledge.
• –––, 2004, “ A Priori Refutations of Disagreement Arguments against Moral Objectivity: Why Experience Matters,” Journal of Value Inquiry , 38: 141–57.
• –––, 2011,“Virtue Ethics and Moral Relativism,” in S.D. Hales (ed.), A Companion to Relativism , Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 391–410.
• Graham, G., 1996, “Tolerance, Pluralism, and Relativism,” in D. Heyd (ed.), Toleration: An Elusive Virtue , Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, pp. 44–59.
• Hales, S., 2009, “Moral Relativism and Evolutionary Psychology,” Synthese , 166: 431–47.
• –––, (ed.), 2011, A Companion to Relativism , Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.
• Hampshire, S., 1983, “Morality and Conflict,” in Hampshire, Morality and Conflict , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, pp. 140–169.
• –––, 1989, Innocence and Experience , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Hare, R.M., 1981, Moral Thinking: Its Levels, Method, and Point , Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Harman, G., 1996, “Moral Relativism,” in G. Harman and J.J. Thompson (eds.), Moral Relativism and Moral Objectivity , Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers, pp. 3–64.
• –––, 2000a, “Moral Relativism Defended,” in Harman, Explaining Value: And Other Essays in Moral Philosophy , Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. 3–19. Original Publication Date: 1975.
• –––, 2000b, “Is There a Single True Morality?,” in Harman, Explaining Value: And Other Essays in Moral Philosophy , Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. 77–99. Original Publication Date: 1984.
• –––, 2015, “Moral Relativism is Moral Realism,” Philosophical Studies , 172: 855–63.
• Harrison, G., 1976, “Relativism and Tolerance,” Ethics , 86: 122–35.
• Hatch, E., 1983, Culture and Morality: The Relativity of Values in Anthropology , New York: Columbia University Press.
• Herskovits, M.J., 1972, Cultural Relativism: Perspectives in Cultural Pluralism , F. Herskovits (ed.), New York: Random House.
• Heyd, D., (ed.), 1996, Toleration: An Elusive Virtue , Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press.
• Hills, A, 2013, “Faultless Moral Disagreement,” Ratio , 26: 410–27.
• Hopster, J., 2019, “The Meta-ethical Significance of Experiments about Folk Moral Objectivism,” Philosophical Psychology , 32: 831–52.
• Horgan, T. and M. Timmons, 2006, “Expressivism, Yes! Relativism, No!,” in R. Shafer-Landau (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaethics , Vol. 1, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 73–98.
• Ivanhoe, P.J., 2009, “Pluralism, Toleration, and Ethical Promiscuity,” Journal of Religious Ethics , 37: 311–29.
• Jackson, F., 1998, From Metaphysics to Ethics: A Defense of Conceptual Analysis , Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Kellenberger, J., 2001, Moral Relativism, Moral Diversity, and Human Relationships , University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press.
• –––, 2008, Moral Relativism: A Dialogue . Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers.
• Khader, S.J., 2019, Decolonizing Universalism: A Transnational Feminist Ethic , New York: Oxford University Press.
• Kim, H-K. and M. Wreen, 2003, “Relativism, Absolutism, and Tolerance,” Metaphilosophy , 34: 447–59.
• Kirchin, S., 2000, “Quasi-Realism, Sensibility Theory, and Ethical Relativism,” Inquiry , 43: 413–28.
• Klenk, M., 2019, “Moral Philosophy and the ‘Ethical Turn’ in Anthropology,” Zeitschrift für Ethik und Moralphilosophie , 2: 331–53.
• Kölbel, M., 2004, “Faultless Disagreement,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society , 104: 53–73.
• –––, 2005, “Moral Relativism,” in T. Tännsjö and D. Westerstahl (eds.), Lectures on Relativism , Philosophical Communications, Red Series No. 40, Göteburg University, pp. 51–72.
• Krausz, M., (ed.), 1989, Relativism: Interpretation and Confrontation , Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.
• ––– (ed.), 2010, Relativism: A Contemporary Anthology , New York: Columbia University Press.
• –––, 2011, “Varieties of Relativism and the Reach of Reasons,” in S.D. Hales (ed.), A Companion to Relativism , Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 70–84.
• Krausz, M. and J.W. Meiland, (eds.), 1982, Relativism: Cognitive and Moral , Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.
• Küng, H., (ed.), 1996, Yes to a Global Ethic: Voices from Religion and Politics , New York: Continuum.
• Ladd, J., 1957, The Structure of a Moral Code: A Philosophical Analysis of Ethical Discourse Applied to the Ethics of the Navaho Indians , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• ––– (ed.), 1985, Ethical Relativism . Lanham, MD: University Press of America.
• Laidlaw, J., 2017, “Ethics/Morality,” in F. Stein et al., (eds), The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Anthropology , first online 19 May 2017, doi:10.29164/17ethics [ Laidlaw 2017 available online ].
• Levy, N., 2002, Moral Relativism: A Short Introduction , Oxford: Oneworld Publications.
• ––– 2003, “Descriptive Relativism: Assessing the Evidence,” The Journal of Value Inquiry , 37: 165–77.
• Li, Y., 2019, “Moral Ambivalence: Relativism or Pluralism?,” Acta Analytica , 34: 473–91.
• Lillehammer, H., 2007, “Davidson on Value and Objectivity,” Dialectica , 61: 203–17.
• Long, G., 2004, Relativism and the Foundations of Liberalism , Exeter, UK: Imprint Academic.
• López de Sa, 2011,“The Many Relativisms: Index, Context, and Beyond,” in S.D. Hales (ed.), A Companion to Relativism , Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 102–17.
• Lukes, S., 2008, Moral Relativism , New York: Picador.
• Lyons, D., 1976, “Ethical Relativism and the Problem of Incoherence,” Ethics , 86: 107–21
• MacIntyre, A., 1988, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? , Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.
• –––, 1994, “Moral Relativism, Truth and Justification,” in L. Gormally (ed.), Moral Truth and Moral Tradition: Essays in Honour of Peter Geach and Elizabeth Anscombe , Blackrock, County Dublin: Four Courts Press, pp. 6–24.
• Macklin, R., 1999, Against Relativism: Cultural Diversity and the Search for Ethical Universals in Medicine , New York: Oxford University Press.
• Mead, M., 1928, Coming of Age in Samoa , New York: William Morrow.
• Miller, C.B., 2002, “Rorty and Moral Relativism,” European Journal of Philosophy , 10: 354–74.
• –––, 2011, “Moral Relativism and Moral Psychology,” in S.D. Hales (ed.), A Companion to Relativism , Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 346–67.
• Moody-Adams, M.M., 1997, Fieldwork in Familiar Places: Morality, Culture, and Philosophy , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Moser, P.K. and T.L. Carson, (eds.), 2001, Moral Relativism: A Reader , New York: Oxford University Press.
• Myers, R.H., 2004, “Finding Value in Davidson,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy , 34: 107–36.
• Nichols, S., 2004, “After Objectivity: An Empirical Study of Moral Judgment,” Philosophical Psychology , 17: 3–26.
• Nussbaum, M.C., 1993, “Non-relative Virtues: An Aristotelian Approach” in M. Nussbaum and A. Sen (eds.), The Quality of Life , Oxford: Clarendon Press, 242–69.
• –––, 1999, “Judging Other Cultures: The Case of Genital Mutilation,” in Nussbaum, Sex and Social Justice , New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 118–29.
• Okin, S.M., 1998, “Feminism, Women’s Human Rights, and Cultural Differences,” Hypatia , 13: 32–52.
• Olinder, R.F., 2012, “Moral and Metaethical Pluralism: Unity in Variation,” Southern Journal of Philosophy , 50: 583–601.
• –––, 2013, “Moral Relativism, Error Theory, and Ascriptions of Mistakes,” The Journal of Philosophy , 110: 564–80.
• –––, 2016, “Some Varieties of Metaethical Relativism,” Philosophy Compass , 11: 529–40.
• Paul, E.F., F.D. Miller and J. Paul (eds.), 2008, Objectivism, Subjectivism, and Relativism in Ethics , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Plakias, A., 2020, “Moral Relativism and Moral Disagreement,” in M. Kusch (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Relativism , London: Routledge, pp. 155–64.
• Pölzler, T., 2017, “Revisiting Folk Moral Realism,” Review of Philosophy and Psychology , 8: 455–76.
• Pölzler, T. and J.C. Wright, 2019, “Empirical Research on Folk Moral Objectivism,” Philosophy Compass , 14: 1–15.
• –––, 2020, “Anti-Realist Pluralism: A New Approach to Folk Metaethics,” Review of Philosophy and Psychology , 11: 53–82.
• Prinz, J.J., 2007, The Emotional Construction of Morals , New York: Oxford University Press.
• –––, 2009, “The Significance of Moral Variation: Replies to Tiberius, Gert and Doris,” Analysis Reviews , 69: 731–45.
• Quintelier, K.J.P. and M.T. Fessler, 2012, “Varying Versions of Moral Relativism: The Philosophy and Psychology of Normative Relativism,” Biology and Philosophy , 27: 95–113.
• Rachels, J., 1999, “The Challenge of Cultural Relativism,” The Elements of Moral Philosophy , 3 rd ed., New York: Random House, pp. 20–36.
• Raz, J., 2003, The Practice of Value , Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Renteln, A.D., 1985, “The Unanswered Challenge of Relativism and the Consequences for Human Rights,” Human Rights Quarterly , 7: 514–40.
• Rescher, N., 2008, “Moral Objectivity,” in E.F. Paul, F.D. Miller, Jr., and J. Paul (eds.), Objectivism, Subjectivism, and Relativism in Ethics , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 393–409.
• Rorty, R., 1991, Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Rose, D. and S. Nichols, Forthcoming, “From Punishment to Universalism,” Mind and Language .
• Rovane, C., 2002, “Earning the Right to Realism or Relativism in Ethics,” Noûs , 36 (Supplement): 264–85.
• –––, 2011, “Relativism Requires Alternatives, Not Disagreement or Relative Truth,” in S.D. Hales (ed.), A Companion to Relativism , Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 31–52.
• –––, 2013, The Metaphysics and Ethics of Relativism , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Ryan, J.A., 2003, “Moral Relativism and the Argument from Disagreement,” Journal of Social Philosophy , 34: 377–86.
• Sarkissian, H., 2016, “Aspects of Folk Morality: Objectivism and Relativism,” in W. Buckwalter and J. Sytsma (eds.), A Companion to Experimental Philosophy , London: Blackwell, pp. 212–24.
• –––, 2017, “Folk Platitudes as the Explananda of Philosophical Metaethics: Are They Accurate? And Do They Help or Hinder Inquiry?,” Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research, 34: 565–75.
• –––, forthcoming, “Well-functioning Daos and Moral Relativism,” Philosophy East & West .
• Sarkissian, H. et. al., 2011, “Folk Moral Relativism,” Mind & Language , 26: 482–505.
• Sarkissian, H. and M. Phelan, 2019, “Moral Objectivism and a Punishing God,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology , 80: 1–7.
• Sauer, H., 2019, “The Argument from Agreement: How Universal Values Undermine Moral Realism,” Ratio , 32: 339–52.
• Scanlon, T.M., 1995, “Fear of Relativism,” in R. Hursthouse, G. Lawrence, and W. Quinn (eds.), Virtues and Reasons: Philippa Foot and Moral Theory , Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp, 219–46.
• –––, 1998, What We Owe to Each Other , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Schafer, K, 2012, “Assessor Relativism and the Problem of Moral Disagreement,” Southern Journal of Philosophy , 50: 602–20.
• Seipel, P., 2020a, “Famine, Affluence, and Philosophers’ Biases,” Philosophical Studies , 177: 2907–26.
• –––, 2020b, “Moral Relativism,” in M. Kusch (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Relativism , London: Routledge, pp. 165–73.
• Shafer-Landau, R., 2003, Moral Realism: A Defense , New York: Oxford University Press.
• –––, 2009, “A Defense of Categorical Reasons,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society , 109 (2): 189–206.
• Shweder, R.A., 1991, Thinking Through Cultures: Expeditions in Cultural Psychology . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Sinnott-Armstrong, W., 2009, “Mixed-up Meta-ethics,” Philosophical Issues , 19: 235–56.
• Smith, M., 1991, “Realism,” in P. Singer (ed.), A Companion to Ethics , Oxford: Basil Blackwell, pp. 399–410.
• Snare, F., 1980, “The Diversity of Morals,” Mind , 89: 353–69.
• –––, 1992, The Nature of Moral Thinking , London: Routledge.
• Sreenivasan, G., 2001, “Understanding Alien Morals,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research , 62: 1–32.
• Stout, J., 1988, Ethics After Babel: The Languages of Morals and Their Discontents , Boston: Beacon Press.
• Streiffer, R., 2003, Moral Relativism and Reasons for Action , New York: Routledge.
• Sturgeon, N.L., 1994, “Moral Disagreement and Moral Relativism,” in E.F. Paul, F.D. Miller, Jr., and J. Paul (eds.), Cultural Pluralism and Moral Knowledge , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 80–115.
• Suikkanen, J., 2019, “Contextualism, Moral Disagreement, and Proposition Clouds,” in R. Shafer-Landau (ed.) Oxford Studies in Metaethics , Vol. 14, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 47–69.
• Sumner, W.G., 1906, Folkways , Boston: Ginn and Company.
• Tännsjö, T., 2007, “Moral Relativism,” Philosophical Studies , 135: 123–43.
• Tasioulas, J., 1998, “Relativism, Realism, and Reflection,” Inquiry , 41: 377–410.
• Tersman, F., 2006, Moral Disagreement , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Tiberius, V., 2009, “The Practical Irrelevance of Relativism,” Analysis Reviews , 69: 722–31.
• Velleman, J.D., 2015, Foundations for Moral Relativism , Second Expanded Edition, Cambridge: Open Book Publishers.
• Vicente, A. and A. Arrieta, 2016, “Moral Ambivalence, Relativism, and Pluralism,” Acta Analytica , 32: 207–23.
• Walzer, M., 1994, Thick and Thin: Moral Argument at Home and Abroad , Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.
• Wattles, J., 1996, The Golden Rule , New York: Oxford University Press.
• Wellman, C., 1963, “The Ethical Implications of Cultural Relativity,” The Journal of Philosophy , 60: 169–84.
• –––, 1975, “Ethical Disagreement and Objective Truth,” American Philosophical Quarterly , 12: 211–21.
• Westermarck, Edward, 1906–8, The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas , 2 volumes, New York: The Macmillan Company.
• –––, 1932, Ethical Relativity , New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
• Wiggins, D., 1990–91, “Moral Cognitivism, Moral Relativism and Motivating Moral Beliefs,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society , 91: 61–85.
• Williams, B., 1972, Morality: An Introduction to Ethics , New York: Harper & Row.
• –––, 1981, “The Truth in Relativism,” in Williams, Moral Luck , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 132–43. Original Publication Date: 1974–75.
• –––, 1985, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy , Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.
• Wong, D.B., 1984, Moral Relativity , Berkeley: University of California Press.
• –––, 1986, “On Moral Realism without Foundations,” The Southern Journal of Philosophy , 24 (Supplement): 95–113.
• ––– ,1996, “Pluralistic Relativism,” Midwest Studies in Philosophy: Moral Concepts , 20: 378–399.
• –––, 2006, Natural Moralities: A Defense of Pluralistic Relativism , New York: Oxford University Press.
• –––, 2011,“Relativist Explanation of Interpersonal and Group Disagreement,” in S.D. Hales (ed.), A Companion to Relativism , Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 411–29.
• –––, 2020, “Moral Ambivalence,” in M. Kusch (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Relativism , London: Routledge, pp. 147–54.
• Wreen, M., 2018, “What is Moral Relativism?,” Philosophy , 93: 337–54.
• –––, 2019, “Moral Relativism and Majority Rule,” Metaphilosophy , 50: 361–76.
• Wright, C., 2008, “Fear of Relativism?,” Philosophical Studies , 141: 379–90.
• Wright, J.C. 2018, “The Fact and Function of Meta-Ethical Pluralism: Exploring the Evidence,” in T. Lombrozo, J. Knobe and S. Nichols (eds.), Oxford Studies in Experimental Philosophy , Vol. 2, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 119–50.
• Wright, J.C., J. Cullum and N. Schwab, 2008, “The Cognitive and Affective Dimensions of Moral Conviction: Implications for Attitudinal and Behavioral Measures of Interpersonal Tolerance,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin , 34: 1461–76.
• Wright, J.C., P.T. Grandjean and C.B. McWhite, 2013, “The Meta-ethical Grounding of our Moral Beliefs: Evidence for Meta-ethical Pluralism,” Philosophical Psychology , 26: 336–61.
• Wright, J. C., C.B. McWhite and P.T. Grandjean, 2014, “The Cognitive Mechanisms of Intolerance: Do Our Meta-Ethical Commitments Matter,” in T. Lombrozo, J. Knobe and S. Nichols (eds.), Oxford Studies in Experimental Philosophy , Vol. 1, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 28–61.
• Xiao, Y. and Y. Huang, (eds.), 2014, Moral Relativism and Chinese Philosophy: David Wong and his Critics , Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
• Zhuangzi, 2020, The Complete Writings , translated by Brook Ziporyn, Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company.

How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.

• Bibliography on Moral Relativism (in PDF), by Jörg Schroth (Philosophisches Seminar, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen).

cognitivism vs. non-cognitivism, moral | metaethics | moral anti-realism | moral epistemology | morality, definition of | moral realism | moral skepticism | reasoning: moral | relativism | toleration

Copyright © 2021 by Chris Gowans < gowans @ fordham . edu >

• Accessibility

Support SEP

Mirror sites.

View this site from another server:

• Info about mirror sites

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is copyright © 2023 by The Metaphysics Research Lab , Department of Philosophy, Stanford University

Library of Congress Catalog Data: ISSN 1095-5054

Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer.

To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to  upgrade your browser .

Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link.

• We're Hiring!
• Help Center

An Essay for Moral Objectivism

This paper shall promote the theory of Moral Objectivism by (1) denying the plausibility of Ethical Relativism, (2) relating inherent human rights to the necessity of absolute morality, and (3) stressing the importance of believing in justified propositions in decision making.

Related Papers

International Journal of Multicultural and Multireligious Understanding IJMMU

SEDA ARIKAN

The film adaptation of Dennis Lehane's novel Gone Baby Gone (Ben Affleck, 2007) is based on a moral questioning about right choice and right act although, on the surface, it appears as a detective film in which the mystery is unexpectedly uncovered by discovering the "good criminal". The obligation to make a moral choice in case of a moral dilemma results in the conflicted moral attitudes of the characters, which invites the spectator to question the validity of each. In the film, the basic moral choice that should be made by the characters is whether to take an abducted little girl back to her careless, and also drug user mother, or to let her stay with her abductor, but a respectful police captain who grants a promising future for her. The matter becomes much more problematic when the characters adopt contradictory moral attitudes varying from moral absolutism to moral subjectivism, two opposite poles, and also including moral objectivism, which could be accepted as a moderate breeze between them. In this sense, this study examines how moral dilemmas, exercising their influence over the spectator as well, reveal various moral attitudes that have been essentially discussed in the history of philosophy on the basis of the choices made by the characters. The study, analyzing Gone Baby Gone in terms of moral dilemma, choice and act, aims to trace what is gone-namely what is left behind by the choice, or the moral would-be possibilities as they were not chosen-within the context of moral philosophy.

Cultura. International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology

Carlo Alvaro, Ph.D.

This paper is a response to Park Seungbae's article, "Defence of Cultural Relativism". Some of the typical criticisms of moral relativism are the following: moral relativism is erroneously committed to the principle of tolerance, which is a universal principle; there are a number of objective moral rules; a moral relativist must admit that Hitler was right, which is absurd; a moral relativist must deny, in the face of evidence, that moral progress is possible; and, since every individual belongs to multiple cultures at once, the concept of moral relativism is vague. Park argues that such contentions do not affect moral relativism and that the moral relativist may respond that the value of tolerance, Hitler's actions, and the concept of culture are themselves relative. In what follows, I show that Park's adroit strategy is unsuccessful. Consequently, moral relativism is incoherent.

Nariman Mohamed

David Moss , Lance S Bush

Recent research on the metaethical beliefs of ordinary people appears to show that they are metaethical pluralists that adopt different metaethical standards for different moral judgments. Yet the methods used to evaluate folk metaethical belief rely on the assumption that participants interpret what they are asked in metaethical terms. We argue that most participants do not interpret questions designed to elicit metaethical beliefs in metaethical terms, or at least not in the way researchers intend. As a result, existing methods are not reliable measures of metaethical belief. We end by discussing the implications of our account for the philosophical and practical implications of research on the psychology of metaethics.

Zanenhlanhla Buthelezi

Seungbae Park

Andrew J Cohen

Bernard Mauser

bruce small

Loading Preview

Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.

RELATED PAPERS

JUNETTE A PEREZ

Eric Blumenson

Biology & Philosophy

Daniel Fessler

Amanda Roth

Kjp Quintelier

Thomas Pölzler

Die Philosophie des Marktes – The Philosophy of the Market, ed. Hans-Christoph Schmidt am Busch (Felix Meiner Verlag,)

Christopher Zurn

Oxford Studies in Experimental Philosophy

James R Beebe

Journal of Business Ethics

Herbert Sherman

Ulrich de Balbian

Jerry Kirkpatrick

6(1) International Journal of Law in Context (2010), pp. 23 – 44.

Eric Heinze

Jaron D Schoone

ewanlen. A Journal of Philosophical Inquiry

A Companion to Ayn Rand

Gregory Salmieri

Environmental Values

Anne Schwenkenbecher

The Journal of Socio-Economics

Stefano Moroni

Casey Cegielski

Sanna Hirvonen

David O. Kronlid

James Franklin

David Hunter

Arto Laitinen

Jathin naidu

Philosophical Psychology

Ross Colebrook

Cardiff University - PhD Thesis

Kyle Barrowman

Simon J Duffy

Jen Cole Wright

Nicholas Maxwell

Nikki Larin

Bruce Brower

James R Beebe , David Sackris

Fr. Thomas Berg

Maybelle Padua

AJOB - Neuroethics

RELATED TOPICS

•   We're Hiring!
•   Help Center
• Find new research papers in:
• Health Sciences
• Earth Sciences
• Cognitive Science
• Mathematics
• Computer Science
• Academia ©2024

• Bipolar Disorder
• Therapy Center
• When To See a Therapist
• Types of Therapy
• Best Online Therapy
• Best Couples Therapy
• Best Family Therapy
• Managing Stress
• Sleep and Dreaming
• Understanding Emotions
• Self-Improvement
• Healthy Relationships
• Student Resources
• Personality Types
• Guided Meditations
• Verywell Mind Insights
• 2024 Verywell Mind 25
• Mental Health in the Classroom
• Editorial Process
• Meet Our Review Board
• Crisis Support

What Is Objective Morality?

Ariane Resnick, CNC is a mental health writer, certified nutritionist, and wellness author who advocates for accessibility and inclusivity.

Ivy Kwong, LMFT, is a psychotherapist specializing in relationships, love and intimacy, trauma and codependency, and AAPI mental health.  

Gorodenkoff / Getty Images

• Objectivity
• Arguments For & Against It
• Does It Exist?

Objective morality is the idea that right and wrong exist factually, without any importance of opinion. It's the concept that some actions and beliefs are imperatively good or inherently bad, and that the goodness or badness of those things holds true no matter who you are or what else you believe in.

Objectivity refers to the notion that something is factual, aka objective, and without bias. and morality means a sense of something being right or wrong. objective morality is also known as moral objectivism.

The History of Objectivity

The idea of objective morality has been around for centuries. It is the opposite of subjective morality, which is the view that morals can very from person to person. The idea of objectivity is one that has been discussed since ancient times, from Mohism in ancient China (479-221 BCE) to Plato and Aristotle in ancient Greece (427-322 BCE).

In the 19th century, philosophers migrated to the idea that because science can prove concepts factually, philosophy should become more factually oriented. While some philosophers criticized this shift, it gained enough steam that it became a dominant form of thinking.

The History of Morality

The idea of morality transcends humans. For example, research in neuroscience and animal ecology suggest that some animals have a primitive sense of morality, such as chimpanzees punishing other chimps for violating rules of the social order and animals demonstrating empathetic behaviors towards others such as rhesus monkeys refusing to dispense electric shocks to fellow monkeys, even if they would get food as a reward in doing so.

Did Humans Inherit Morality?

As people, we generally consider our sense of morality as we know it to be the result of our ability to write and communicate in complex ways. Science has suggested key components of morality including prosocial concern, conformity, and the presence of biologically anchored norms have evolved along different evolutionary trajectories amongst primates, possibly influencing human morality both in theory and in practice.

Morality vs. Ethics

Morality and ethics can be related and influence each other, but the two are different. In its simplest form, morals are what you believe, and ethics are what you do.

Morals define our character on a personal level and are our guiding principals and values to what what we believe is right and wrong, stemming from an internal set of beliefs and influenced by upbringing, religious beliefs, and lived experiences.

Ethics dictate the inner working of a social system and are based on moral codes adopted by members of a society. Ethics outline standards of right and wrong in social, professional, or legal contexts.

The Arguments For and Against Objective Morality

Because objective morality can't be determined, hands down, as definitely existing or not, some people believe in it, and others do not. There are arguments to be made both ways.

Before delving into them, it's important to note that these are philosophical concepts, not facts. Scholars and philosophers have debated these questions for millennia, and there is no quantifiable "easy" answer.

The Arguments For Objective Morality

Here are some arguments that support objective morality:

• Religion Determines Morality : The most common argument for objective morality relies on good and bad as viewed through the lens of God. This argument relies on the teachings of religious texts including the Bible, Torah, and Quran, all of which have many passages about right and wrong. For instance, people who practice Christianity may fear taking certain actions or having certain identities because the Bible labels certain things as "sins."
• Society Determines Morality: Even to atheists or people who don't subscribe to religion, the idea of objective morality can still be argued for. The simple fact that we hold certain behaviors as acceptable in society and others as unacceptable is an argument for objective morality's existence. When something occurs, and our gut reaction is "that's not fair," that's an example of objective morality—the idea that occurrences are fair or not, regardless of the circumstances surrounding them.
• Self-Improvement Determines Morality : Another argument for the existence of objective morality is how people often want to better themselves. This idea involves similar acts and ideas no matter who is trying to do that. Being kinder to others and acting charitably are examples. When we think of becoming better people, we generally all think of similar actions. This can be taken to mean that as people, we see some ways of being as good and others as bad or in need of change or bettering.

The Arguments Against Objective Morality

Here are some arguments that are against objective morality:

• Moral relativism : The most common argument against the existence of objective morality is the concept of moral relativism. Moral relativism argues that morality is relative, changing between cultures and historical periods. It also postulates that viewpoints change depending on perspective. This is a strong argument, in that our cultures over time have had huge fluctuations in what can be considered morally acceptable or not.
• Scientific Analysis : One scientific analysis notes that there is "no set criteria by which two opposing moral beliefs can be directly compared to see which one is correct." Instead, the analysis says that we can only decide what is right and wrong for us based on the past, such as how we now, as a whole, think slavery, polygamy, and animal cruelty are wrong.

How Do We Really Know What's Right or Wrong?

If morality were objective and something such as polygamy is now considered wrong or bad by the average person, then how could it be the norm for many years? And why does it still exist in some cultures, including ones in the United States? It isn't legal, but some religious groups still practice it. How can something be objectively "wrong" if some people are convinced it's "right?"

Does Objective Morality Truly Exist?

There is no "right" answer about whether or not objective morality exists. In fact, the arguments for and against its existence are both strong and logical.

There are also truths on each side : those who believe in it say we agree that certain actions are wrong, and those who don't say that those decisions about right and wrong change depending on time and circumstance.

A Word From Verywell

Every day, we are faced with decisions to make about how we behave in the world. Whether objective morality exists or not, we all have an inner sense of right and wrong and of good and bad. Following that inner sense is your best bet to living well and being a kind person even though morality may or may not be objective. You are allowed to decide for yourself based on your own moral compass , what the correct choices are for your own life.

Philosophy is a complicated subject, and it has many facets. If this article made you want to learn more about philosophical ideas, consider learning about additional concepts. One great example is epicureanism , which has a lifestyle model to improve your happiness.

Shermer M. Morality is real, objective, and natural .  Ann N Y Acad Sci . 2016;1384(1):57-62. doi:10.1111/nyas.13077

Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Objectivity .

Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Moral .

Objectivity - history of the term [Internet]. [cited 2022 Jul 7]

Burkart JM, Brügger RK, van Schaik CP. Evolutionary origins of morality: insights from non-human primates . Front Sociol [Internet]. 2018 [cited 2022 Jul 7];0.

Wilson C. The scientific perspective on moral objectivity . Ethic Theory Moral Prac. 2017 Aug 1;20(4):723–36.

By Ariane Resnick, CNC Ariane Resnick, CNC is a mental health writer, certified nutritionist, and wellness author who advocates for accessibility and inclusivity.

Home — Essay Samples — Psychology — Morality — Moral Objectivism vs Relativism: Clash of Moral Perspectives

Moral Objectivism Vs Relativism: Clash of Moral Perspectives

• Categories: Ethics Morality Relativism

About this sample

Words: 1033 |

Published: Aug 4, 2023

Words: 1033 | Pages: 2 | 6 min read

Table of contents

Introduction, understanding morality, moral objectivism vs. moral relativism, arguments for moral objectivism, works cited.

• Pojman, Louis P. 'The Theory of Ethics: Moral Objectivism.' In Ethics: Discovering Right and Wrong, pp. 12-31. Cengage Learning, 2011.
• Kant, Immanuel. 'Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals.' Translated by James W. Ellington. Hackett Publishing, 1993.

Cite this Essay

Let us write you an essay from scratch

• 450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
• Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Get high-quality help

Prof Ernest (PhD)

Verified writer

• Expert in: Philosophy Psychology

+ 120 experts online

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Related Essays

1 pages / 548 words

2 pages / 717 words

1 pages / 505 words

5 pages / 2133 words

Remember! This is just a sample.

You can get your custom paper by one of our expert writers.

121 writers online

Still can’t find what you need?

Browse our vast selection of original essay samples, each expertly formatted and styled

Related Essays on Morality

In conclusion, The Crucible is a powerful and thought-provoking play that explores themes of mass hysteria, morality, and the abuse of power. Through its depiction of the Salem witch trials, Miller sheds light on the dangers of [...]

Press, Oxford Living Dictionaries. 'Morals.' Oxford Living Dictionaries, 2019.Pojman, Louis P. 'The Theory of Ethics: Moral Objectivism.' In Ethics: Discovering Right and Wrong, pp. 12-31. Cengage Learning, 2011.Editors, [...]

Tragic play "Julius Caesar" presents a complex and multi-faceted character in the form of Marcus Brutus. Throughout the play, Brutus is torn between his loyalty to his friend, Julius Caesar, and his belief in the greater good of [...]

Lather and Nothing Else is a short story written by Hernando Téllez, which revolves around the inner conflict of a barber who is faced with a moral dilemma. The barber, who is also a revolutionary, is given the task of shaving [...]

Ethics is defined as a moral principle that deals with right verses wrong and ultimately governs an individual’s behavior. As members of the healthcare community, we have an obligation to protect the rights of every patient we [...]

Live in such a way that if someone spoke badly of you, no one would ever believe it. The philosophical study of values has a name, actually it's called "axiology". It studies the metaphysical and epistemological status of [...]

Related Topics

By clicking “Send”, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement . We will occasionally send you account related emails.

Where do you want us to send this sample?

By clicking “Continue”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy.

Be careful. This essay is not unique

This essay was donated by a student and is likely to have been used and submitted before

Download this Sample

Free samples may contain mistakes and not unique parts

Sorry, we could not paraphrase this essay. Our professional writers can rewrite it and get you a unique paper.

Please check your inbox.

We can write you a custom essay that will follow your exact instructions and meet the deadlines. Let's fix your grades together!

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

• Instructions Followed To The Letter
• Deadlines Met At Every Stage
• Unique And Plagiarism Free

Home / Essay Samples / Philosophy / Relativism / Advantages Of Moral Objectivism In Contrast To Moral Relativism

Advantages Of Moral Objectivism In Contrast To Moral Relativism

• Category: Life , Psychology , Philosophy
• Topic: Moral , Morality , Relativism

Pages: 2 (1006 words)

Views: 1848

• Downloads: -->

Introduction

Morals and morality, traits of morals principles.

• Universal: For a principle to be “universal” it is always valid to all people in similar circumstances.
• Overriding: Moral principles supersede emotional, legal and other circumstantial considerations.
• Prescriptive: Moral principles are right whether you believe them or not.
• Public: Moral principles can be known by everyone and be used by everyone to judge morality with common human rationality.
• Practicable: Moral principles because they are public, universal, rigid and cannot be overridden are then practicable since they have a consistent standard for judging morality.

What is Moral Objectivism

What is moral relativism, why moral objectivism and not moral relativism.

• Crash Course. (2016, October 25). Metaethics: Crash Course Philosophy #32. Retrieved from Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOoffXFpAlU
• Jacobs, T. (2017, September 10). Relativism vs. Objectivism. Retrieved from Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzJTIjSLC98

--> ⚠️ Remember: This essay was written and uploaded by an--> click here.

Found a great essay sample but want a unique one?

are ready to help you with your essay

You won’t be charged yet!

Philosophy of Education Essays

Utilitarianism Essays

Human Nature Essays

Future Essays

Virtue Ethics Essays

Related Essays

We are glad that you like it, but you cannot copy from our website. Just insert your email and this sample will be sent to you.

By clicking “Send”, you agree to our Terms of service  and  Privacy statement . We will occasionally send you account related emails.

Your essay sample has been sent.

In fact, there is a way to get an original essay! Turn to our writers and order a plagiarism-free paper.

samplius.com uses cookies to offer you the best service possible.By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .--> -->