by Gene Howington, Guest Blogger
I had in interesting argument the other night. Not interesting because of the content precisely. It was old ground about the rationale for being in Iraq and Afghanistan and this person took the position of the post hoc rationalization “to contain Iran” and that – and this was a new one, funny but new – that our reason for being there was based on our need as driven by the hostage crisis of the 70’s. It wasn’t a match against a skilled opponent. He was about as smart and skilled at argumentation as a house plant and that is really an insult to house plants. But what was interesting was when the topic turned to the idea of just wars and ethical relativism. I’ll summarize the just war argument to give some context and then show how ethical relativism came into the conversation because it got me thinking about ethical relativism (and its natural cousin moral relativism). Is it a good idea or a path to anarchy?
Summary of the just war argument:
A’s Primary Contention: We went to war in Iraq to contain Iran because we’re on a 70’s style revenge mission for the hostage taking. (Ed. Note: Seriously. That was the claim.)
B’s Primary Contention: The rationale given the public for invading Iraq was “to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, to end Saddam Hussein’s support for terrorism, and to free the Iraqi people.” In the end, there were no WMDs, no support of terrorism, and the Iraqis were a lot better off before we removed the only stabilizing force holding their secular country together and destroyed their infrastructure. The just war would have been to attack those who attacked us on 9/11, the Saudis with help from Afghani terrorist training bases. It would have given us the same benefits as invading Iraq (oil, common border with Iran) and come at a substantially lower cost to materials and troops when combined with an in and out strategy in Afghanistan (which history has proven to be fairly immune to long term occupation because of geographic and societal factors).
A: There is no such thing as a just war. Name one.
B: I can name two. American entry into WWII and the Revolutionary War come to mind, but there are other examples of just war through history.
A: We went to war to make rich men richer.
B: Really. And that is a reason to wage war that is just?
A: I haven’t heard the term “just war” since Medieval History class. You’re a (*#$#($*#head.
B: That’s all very interesting but I think you don’t know what a just war is. %$*($%$.
A: I know there is no such thing.
B: I can think of a couple of examples. Coming to the defense of your allies in the face of outside aggression, in defense of attack or in retribution of an attack by foreign forces.
A: There’s no such thing as a just war. Just depends on your perspective.
B: No. It doesn’t. There are some ethical absolutes.
A: No there aren’t.
B: Saying there aren’t and proving there aren’t are two separate things.
A: You *()$(#)($#) $)#$()#$ ()$#$!
B: That’s still not proving there aren’t, )($#)()@head. Are there are are there no ethical absolutes? Yes or no.
A: That’s a stupid question.
B: It’s not stupid just because you can’t answer it. It’s a simple question.
[Much back and forth of “stupid” and/or ($#_)#@$#% combined with a rebuttal of “non-responsive, try again”.]
A: People make ethical judgements all the time.
B: That’s not what I asked. Are there ethical absolutes or not?
A: Have your ethics changed over time?
B: Yes they have but that is irrelevant to the question here: are there ethical absolutes or not?
A: You’ve got nothing!
B: You saying I’ve got nothing is not the same as you proving I’ve got nothing. Are you an ethical relativist?
A: Give me an example of an ethical absolute.
B: Human life has value. Protecting it is a good thing.
A: That’s true, but I just want to see some people die.
B: Then you are an ethical relativist and we really don’t have much more to discuss.
A: You’re jumping to conclusions.
B: No I’m not. If human life has value except when you “want to see someone die”, then you are an ethical relativist.
The rest of the conversation was basically A drunkenly ranting about how I (B) didn’t know $*(# and that he had me just where he wanted me (on my knees) before he called me a little girl and proclaimed victory. I was very not impressed. I’d say it was embarrassing for him, but he proudly proclaimed that “ignorance was not a problem for him” and that he thought “retrograde drunken Neanderthal” was a compliment. But I digress . . .
It all got me thinking about ethical relativism though.
What is ethical relativism? It is the philosophical theory stating that ethics are relative to the norms of one’s culture; whether an action is right or wrong depends on the ethical and moral norms of the society in which it is practiced. There are no universal ethical or moral standards and the only standards against which a society’s practices can be judged are its own. The implication of this is there can be no common framework for resolving moral disputes or for reaching agreement on ethical matters among members of different cultures. We know from history that this is not the case. Some acts are considered to by universally wrong or right among the human species. Most ethicists reject ethical relativism because while the practices of societies may differ, the fundamental ethical and moral principles underlying these practices do not. Consider cultures where euthanasia is practiced like some Eskimo tribes when parents declare they are ready to die because of old age or illness, their families would kill them directly or leave them on the ice to die at the hands of nature. This would be frowned upon in our culture, but if you look at the underlying principle – taking care of one’s parents – both societies hold this principle as valuable.
Secondly, it’s an important topic because a kind of ethical relativism is encouraged in law schools under the guise of giving all comers adequate representation and ensuring a fair trial. It’s also something you see more often now in public behavior than in the past: rationalizations of bad behavior based on personal desire rather than ethical or moral principle. “I wanted to feel what killing someone felt like,” said 17 year old killer of 9 year old Elizabeth Olten. Truly a sign of someone with a broken ethical compass probably based in mental illness, but it illustrates the first problem with ethical relativism. It injects ego into the equation.
Consequently and concurrently we cannot remove ego from the equation altogether. If the ethical rightness or wrongness of an action depends on a societal norms, then the logical implication is that to be ethical that one must obey the norms of one’s society because deviance would be unethical or immoral. This leads to an interesting conundrum. If a member of a society that believes that racial or sexist practices are ethically wrong but they are permissible within that society, then one must accept those practices as morally right. This view is both oppressive and narrow in promoting unthinking social conformity and leaves no possibility for ethical and/or moral reform or improvement within a society. Consider that a lack of uniform majority though on a matter may not have created an ethical or moral standard to follow with the members of a society holding different views. Consider the example of the United States. Need I say more than “abortion” or “animal testing” or “medical marijuana” to provide examples of such unsettled ethical questions?
One of the strongest arguments against ethical relativism comes from the assertion that universal ethical and/or moral standards can exist even if some practices and beliefs vary among cultures. In other words, it is possible to acknowledge cultural differences and still find that some of these practices and beliefs are wrong. Consider that although the Aztec had a society that was in some ways more advanced that their contemporary European counterparts, that their practice of human sacrifice is simply wrong. Just so, the barbaric treatment of the Jews, Roma, homosexuals and the mentally handicapped by Nazi society is ethically and morally reprehensible regardless of the beliefs of the Nazis. Ethics are an intellectual inquiry into right and wrong through applying critical thought to the underlying reasons of various ethical and/or moral practices and beliefs. Ethical relativism fails to recognize that some societies may have better reasons for holding their views than other societies.
However, although ethical relativism has much going against it, it does remind us to examine and consider that different societies have different ethical and/or moral beliefs and invites us to examine those forces influence within our own culture. The only way to reach universal ethical truths whenever possible is through examining and challenging our own ethical systems by comparing them to other systems.
Can ethical relativism lead to anarchy? When everything is relative, there are no true stable standards, so I think the answer is yes.
Should ethical relativism be discouraged in our educational systems and society as a whole or do you teach it with the proper caveats and perspective to make it a useful tool instead of a dangerous tool?
Is ethical relativism a good thing or a bag thing?
Or is it like most tools dependent upon the user’s intent and application?
What do you think?
~submitted by Gene Howington, Guest Blogger.
The goodest ole boy form of American Exceptionalism is a form of ethical relativism run amok (“the first problem with ethical relativism. It injects ego into the equation” – Gene H).
In effect it declares “we are better than you are so what we do is axiomatically better than what you do”, irrelevant of what that “we do” happens to be.
We are good enough to practice terrorism, you are not; we are good enough to invade and occupy nations on our say so, but you are not.
We are good enough to ignore international norms, but you are not.
We are good enough to pollute the Earth more so than any other nation, but you are not.
I can see the sense in Tony’s “ethical absolute is objective fair play” but doesn’t the rationale debate then reveal that “fair play” is semantics for “equally and impartially” which makes it a judgement call and not an absolute. Absolutes require that emotion and self-interest be set aside.
I will have to join Slarti in pondering this material further.
As to the main post, I do believe in a small core of ethical absolutism; but that belief contradicts (I think obviously) the “state of nature” arguments of most philosophers trying to intellectually synthesize the social contract from first principles.
If we have some ethical absolutes, then however they might be defined we are born with those ethical constraints on our behavior, by definition. Some acts are right, and others are wrong. The prohibitions and laws against those acts are not a result of people giving up something they never had, and the rationale for the social contract is damaged, because one of its axiomatic first principles is not really a first principle at all: Ethical absolutes precede it.
In my view, ethical absolutes cannot really be defined in terms of specific acts, because (and I believe this was an intellectual conundrum for early philosophers) many acts we think of as immoral (like killing another person) end up, with sufficient qualifying circumstances, to be moral in tightly defined scenarios.
I can even justify cannibalism (especially with the consent of the eaten) in certain dire circumstances (say, injury in a crash with certain death anyway) where the alternative for people they love would be starvation. However, I think it easier to justify cannibalism than it is to justify forcible rape or forcible slavery. When I ask myself why I feel that way, in light of the horrors I can justify as moral in some circumstances, I arrive at at least a clue to ethical absolutism: There is something immoral in the use of force in the pursuit of personal gain; whether that gain is labor (like slavery) or sexual gratification or even reproductive success (in the case of rape).
I do not regard suicide as immoral, and I do not think a prohibition on it can qualify as an ethical absolute. It might be suicide by volunteering to be sacrificed due to one’s religious beliefs. It might be suicide by volunteering to be cannibalized to save others. It might be the suicide of 300 Spartans volunteering to engage in a delaying battle tactic to save their loved ones.
So is the prohibition on “force” an ethical absolute? I do not think so; I think the specific prohibitions on rape and slavery are just another clue to something larger. Because without force in some form, we would subject ourselves to free riders. Just because something is an ethical absolute does not mean everyone will believe it; born psychopaths and sociopaths, which may be people born with developmental errors in the brain, believe only themselves matter and all other lives are expendable resources.
That can be another clue. Ultimately our ethical choices are all about something I DO believe is inherent in normally developed brains, and that is an over-arching concept of “fairness.”
It has nothing to do with the cultural specifics, or religion, or anything else. Ethical behavior is fair behavior. Sometimes it is fair to use force when somebody else is acting unfairly. It is unethical to deny somebody coverage they thought they had, and you let them believe they had, or even tricked them into believing they had. If they suffer or die because of that denial, you deserve forceful punishment that “fits the crime,” another general invocation of “fairness.”
To me the ethical absolute is objective fair play. Killing invaders (home or country) is fair play, they should know they risk their lives by the act of invasion. Although I find it horribly misguided, the human sacrifice of volunteers would not be unethical, no more so than any other religious figure sacrificing their own life or happiness to serve their God.
Not all cultures revere “life” as an absolute good and death as something to be avoided at all costs, Spartans, Romans, Greeks, the Norse and many others (including some of our founding fathers and many American soldiers) have all consciously embraced personal death as a coin to be spent on achieving a greater good, in the pursuit of a more lasting “fairness.” For example, wouldn’t you say (Gene) that our own revolution was spurred by the unfair treatment of the colonies by King George? Wouldn’t you say the Civil War was spurred on by the unfair institution of slavery?
Fairness, as an absolute, is not the empty rhetoric “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” because that is too generalized and too culturally subjective. Fairness is something the normally developed human brain will inherently process, as many psychological experiments across many cultures demonstrate.
So it is NOT fair to use force to bend others to your will or personal gain or pleasure against their will; it CAN be fair to use force to prevent free riders from exploiting our common works for their own personal gain or pleasure against the will of the people. The prohibition is not on “force,” per se, or even “coercion,” the prohibition is on using those tools for unfair gain or advantage.
I think the ethical absolute is fair play. Although what is “fair” is open to rational debate, I do not think it is endless debate.
The East Coast is facing higher seal level rise than most of the rest of the country NOW.
Several island nations are facing the same thing NOW.
Global behavior, not local behavior is causing the East Coast and those island nations to suffer locally.
Eventually everyone will face more and more what they now face.
Our global laws are not composed of the proper amounts of absolutism nor ethical relativism to deal with the problem, nor are the global courts.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18563_162-57464122/fast-rising-sea-levels-hit-atlantic-coast-hardest/
Gene
I’m sorry I missed your comment at 8:27. The fair trial problem is a huge issue to me personally and to a lot of other people who suffered in our courts, see LawlessAmerica.com.
Do you have an opinion on court orders against self representation and on imprisonment of pro se litigants such as myself for attempting to get redress in court after initially being denied due process?
FairlyBalanced,
To imitate MikeS:
Do scare propaganda often? How is the sky doing today Chicken Little?
You ignore history and create evil opponents from those who oppose our attempts to take over their country and/or its resources.
You, in all likelihood, can not see that taking out the secular Iraq took away its hindrance to the expansion of Iran, in competition with Saudi Wahabism and the Salsfists.
Please return to the topic at hand.
” In the end, there were no WMDs, no support of terrorism, and the Iraqis were a lot better off before we removed the only stabilizing force holding their secular country together and destroyed their infrastructure.”
Economics first?
Bill Keller, NY Times April 6, 2002:
“My candidate for underreported news item of the season is the announcement last month by Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz that Iraq was increasing the blood money it pays to families of Palestinian suicide bombers, from $10,000 to $25,000. I’m not suggesting that market forces are the main impetus for the rise in terror, but in the West Bank or Gaza $25,000 is not a meaningless incentive.”
Ones perspective is based only on the knowledge that is at hand. Some of it is truth, some of it is fiction. Your position can be either truth or fiction, depending on the knowledge you possess……
Most wars are based upon lies….. And in support of your allies….. Wilson may have had merits to his points of nonintervention…..and to remain natural….. But there is too much money to be had……
Tony C. 1, October 21, 2012 at 10:22 am
@Gene: Is human sacrifice immoral if the sacrifices are volunteers, that truly believe because of their willing sacrifice that God will take mercy on their community and end a drought, repel an invader, or make the fish return? Voluntary human sacrifice was not unheard of, in Egypt, Norse, and pre-Columbian South America at least. Perhaps in Druidic culture as well.
=====================================
Interesting point.
I read an historical paper once that advanced the notion that those societies that began human sacrifice of the religious ritualistic sort soon collapsed.
The example nation was Carthage, a competent sea power that kept Rome at bay for a long, long time … until it began to practice human sacrifice.
Evidently that practice does damage to the sense, comprehension, and other cognitive abilities.
Anyway, if David Roberts and other scientists are correct, civilization is now practising human sacrifice on a global scale.
GeneH,
““Don’t let your duty to represent interfere with your duty as officers of the court to promote a fair trial and justice.” At least I never heard anyone speak about it with greater depth than that. Everyone is basically left to figure out that relationship on their own. Some do better at this than others and figure out ways to zealously represent without letting it get in the way of keeping the courts fair. Some don’t do so well with the concept and adopt a win at costs mentality that is ultimately damaging to the court’s ability to provide a fair trial. Honestly, I don’t know if educating the law students better on the philosophy here would make a big dent in the percentage of those who figure out that a zealous defense is not the same thing as manipulation of process to get a desired result, just or otherwise. A better ethical education may not eliminate the problem, but it would certainly mitigate the problem.”
Let us compare to political advocacy. I know of no pol who will do otherwise than “whatever” to gain his case, whatever is needed.
How can a lawyer act as an advocate, and not play at the same time the role of a judge, saying that this considered action is unethical, against the canons of the practice of law—-I am grappling in an unknown area for me.
What guides him in his strivings to not let his advocacy overstep limits? I think you said that there were none, and further teaching would not necessarily correct the problem.
He is not given guidance nor norms to follow.
Is the satisfactory? Do you have more to add?
If you think it worthwhile to elaborate.
Concerning planetary absolutes and ethical relativism at the planetary scale.
The video I used in the comment up-thread shows how national law, no matter how good, is not sufficient to solve the deadly serious global problems.
It is like, ok you are a sovereign nation, so whatever you do is sovereign.
But what if some nations do not believe the science, as some religions do not?
Our House of Representatives has dozens of members who think global warming is the greatest hoax ever, and surely that ideology must exist in other national governments as well.
Thus there is a international form of ethical relativism even though some sovereigns have laws that punish or prevent more and more of the events that are endangering every nation via destruction of required human habitat.
The absolutes need to apply to all nations, as do the instances of ethical relativism.
The United Nations comes to mind.
If the absolutes are at the highest level, then a united international body can deal with those allowed instances of ethical relativism, insuring that they go no further than practices that do not harm the whole of humanity, including themselves.
In other words an international enforcement of pollution issues that affect all human beings and nations.
There can still be absolutism mixed with ethical relativism, because to a significant degree nations can choose the crops they want to farm, choose trees they want in their forests, flowers, the fish they want as food stock, and everything like that which does not harm the whole.
It is kinda like freedom of religion in the sense one can have any religion but it can’t violate criminal norms in the name of religious freedom.
The just war concept could apply to rogue nations who feel they have the right to pollute the Earth everyone, including that rogue nation, depends on.
Police action would probably be a better term, ” a just police action.”
This is a concept that intends to give all nations freedom, but not ethical relativism to the point of reckless abandon that harms the whole.
Lots of theory here. However, while a judge in a jurisdiction is bound to adhere to the rules of civil procedure, and while they do in theory, there are wide variances in the application of those rules. There are plaintiff and defense judges and anyone who has worked in litigation knows this quite basic fact.
@Gene: Is human sacrifice immoral if the sacrifices are volunteers, that truly believe because of their willing sacrifice that God will take mercy on their community and end a drought, repel an invader, or make the fish return? Voluntary human sacrifice was not unheard of, in Egypt, Norse, and pre-Columbian South America at least. Perhaps in Druidic culture as well.
Gene
Do you have any thoughts or knowledge of societies present/past that show higher/lower degrees of moral and ethical relativism across that societies generations? If yes, are there commonalities or tendencies that are seen within those society’s cultures and histories that are notable?
In other words, are there examples of societies that are fairly immune/prone to high degrees of evolving morals/ethics(maybe through heavily codified ethical standards that are less open to malleable interpretations across generations in the case of “immune” group)? What’s the effect?
Nice article, btw.
Also FB, containing Iran could have been better accomplished and cheaper by justly invading Saudi Arabia after 9/11. It would have provided access to oil and a long common border with Iran if we’d made SA an occupied protectorate.
FairlyBalanced,
Thank you for that rousing bit of apologist post hoc propaganda. We should always go to war for incidents that happened almost 40 years ago. Why, everyone know that it wasn’t the bombing of Pearl Harbor that started our involvement in WWII, but rather it was a continuation of the War of the Golden Stool between the UK and the Ashanti Empire.
That last part was sarcasm.
Kay,
I already did.
Gene H
In your article you refer to what is taught at law school about ensuring a fair trial. Can you expand on that please?
The issue isn’t so much “moral absolutes” as immoral absolutes, when acts cease to be acts done to survive. Immoral absolutes can come from culture, but also situations and ideology.
Atrocities throughout history (the Nazis, Soviets, crusaders, etc.) were a result of ideology and religion – their acts and arguments were directly related. No barbarity was ever perpetrated without it being rationalized or “justified” first, without dehumanizing or lessening the value of others as human beings. That’s even true now, the US using “anti-terrorism” as a rationalization for stealing oil.
Situations can affect what we lable moral or not. Here are a few examples, some real and some hypothetical:
* Some people label “partial birth abortions” as murder because the foetus is removed in the eighth or ninth month. But what if the foetus is unlikely to survive (e.g. clinically brain dead before birth), not live very long, or giving birth will kill both the woman and the foetus? Or what if a woman was raped? How can forcing people into untenable decisions be “moral”?
* What if someone were fatally wounded, say, bitten in half by a crocodile in a river and medical care wouldn’t arrive in time. Is it murder to end the victim’s suffering, especially if the person asks?
* Imagine during the Apollo 13 flight that so much oxygen was lost there was only enough for one man to survive the trip. Would it have been justified for one man to kill two others if there weren’t two volunteers for suicide?
* If food supplies worldwide were to crash because of overpopulation and environmental damage, will it be okay for people resort to “Donner Party”/”Soylent Green” diets to survive? No one looked down on the survivors of the 1972 Andes plane crash for eating their dead friends and the pilots because they had nothing else left. Is cannibalism only a crime and socially unacceptable because there is enough to eat?
To my mind, the only true moral absolutes are to survive and propagate, to fight and ensure the survival of the species. Socialized animals (and even less aware animals like reptiles) are capable of empathy or decision making (i.e. big fish not eating cleaner fish on coral reefs) toward their own or certain species.
The line where we call things moral really begins where things are immoral, when animals and acts become malicious. Feline males kill the young of competing males, but that is done to send females into heat; there is “evil” in the act. It is in humans and other primates that are capable of hurting others for intimidation, territory and “sport”, not just food and breeding rights, that morality becomes a topic. We and animals like chimpanzees sometimes display deliberate acts that serve no purpose in ensuring survival. They are done solely to cause emotional and physical injury, to show dominance.
America has no sense of its own history and cannot connect the dots. Or the threads. The old geezer he was talking to refers back to the “hostage crisis” of the 70’s in Iran. Well, the son’s of those “students” and some of those “students” are now in Afghanistan, Syria, Lebanon, and Gaza. In Gaza they direct Hezbollah or however one spells it in English, to shoot rockets into Israel on a daily basis. They Ayatollahs still reign in Iran since the “crisis of the’70s”. That crisis did not just come and go. It came and stayed. The man on the street in America forgets. Now the Ayatollah is about to get a nuclear bomb. The “students” are in dire need of it in Gaza and will like to bring one to a city near you.