About a year ago I gave a talk on moral relativism for Thinking Matters Tauranga. During that talk I noted that relativism entails that one cannot apply the moral principles you (or your culture) accepts to the practices of other people (or cultures). I was critical of this position arguing that it suffers from all [...]
Entries Tagged as 'Ethical Theory'
Sunday Study: The Virtue of Judging – Jesus was not a Relativist
June 23rd, 2009 3 Comments
Tags: Judging · Relativism · Sunday Study · Theology
Cultural Confusion and Ethical Relativism III
December 6th, 2008 24 Comments
Arguments against Relativism In my previous post I argued that the common arguments for relativism fail. In this post I want to go one step further and suggest there are good reasons for rejecting relativism. Many reasons could be mustered here; I will limit myself to three. Counter Examples Both cultural and individual ethical relativism [...]
Tags: Ethics · Louis Pojman · Philosophy of Religion · Relativism
Cultural Confusion and Ethical Relativism II
December 5th, 2008 13 Comments
In my previous post, I set out the differences between relativist and objectivist views of ethics. I noted that objectivist views were widely disparaged in our culture in favour of relativist ones. I now want to raise what, I think, is an obvious question, why should we accept the relativism assumed in much cultural ethical [...]
Tags: Ethics · Frances Howard-Snyder · Philosophy of Religion · Relativism · Rodney Stark
Cultural Confusion and Ethical Relativism I
December 2nd, 2008 19 Comments
Suppose you asked me what today’s date was and I answered that the Maori Electorate seats in Parliament should be scrapped. You would quite rightly wonder what I was on. The question of what the date is is a completely different question as to whether a particular social policy is just. Oddly enough, however, when [...]
Tags: Ethics · Frances Howard-Snyder · Philosophy of Religion · Relativism · Robert Adams
