Hello, dear friend, you can consult us at any time if you have any questions, add WeChat: daixieit

Lecture 3: Discussion Questions

PHIL 1011

1. Can you describe some unproductive ways in which the terminology of “subjectivity” and “objectivity” gets employed in everyday discussions? Try to explain in your own words how these notions might be more precisely, productively used.

2. Does the sceptical worry about why we have the moral views that we actually have incline you towards the denial of “objectivist” moral theories? Why? Has this lecture altered your views about the import of this worry?

3. Why do you think Sam followed his reflections on the sceptical worry with a (brief) exploration of the morality of FGC? Do these initial framing devices pull you in different directions?

4. Is it possible to reconcile a commitment to the impermissibility of FGC with a commitment to the permissibility of at least some common forms of male circumcision?

5. Do you see why the two taxonomical questions—about truth-aptness and speaker-dependence—help us to conceptualise alternative metaethical positions with greater clarity? Do you understand the menu of options better now that you have these distinctions in mind? (See the slides if you need a reminder.) Compare:

“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 [Metaethical Moral Relativism] 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” (from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s entry on Moral Relativism).

6. Before listening to this lecture, would you have described yourself as a cultural relativist, or would you have endorsed some characteristic relativist ideas about morality? Were you motivated by what Sam called the “appeal to moral disagreement”? If so, do you still find that argument plausible? How would you respond to the objection Sam explored (and the example of rain explanations)?

7. How should the cultural relativist respond to the anti-majoritarian argument? How should she respond to Sam’s question about one reason we seem to value great artworks (i.e., that they express moral understanding)?

8. Sam argued (following Midgley) that while cultural relativism is often motivated by a thought about the value of tolerance, this motivation seems self-undermining. Express this argument in your own words. Is it persuasive? How and why should we value tolerance? What is tolerance? For instance, does tolerating my political opponents involve refraining from telling others why I think they are wrong, misguided, even dangerous? If not, what is it that tolerance requires?

9. What is your reaction when you hear of the debate in Brazil about whether the government should intervene to stop members of remote indigenous tribes from killing their disabled children? Compare this interesting passage (also from the SEP):

“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.”

10. Is it easy or hard for the cultural relativist to make sense of “moral improvement” within a society? Is it easy or hard for her to make sense of what the moral facts are in conditions of trenchant social disagreement?

11. Sam concluded with some controversial assertions about the meta-normative status of various claims (in the domains of pronunciation, etiquette, gastronomy, rationality/mathematics, aesthetic value, artistic value). What did you think about these ideas? Did they help you to see some of the philosophical interest in thinking about various forms of normativity?