IV—Moral Cognitivism, Moral Relativism and Motivating Moral Beliefs

Moral Contextualism and Moral Relativism

Moral relativism provides a compelling explanation of linguistic data involving ordinary moral expressions like ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. But it is a very radical view. Because relativism relativizes sentence truth to contexts of assessment it forces us to revise standard linguistic theory. If, however, no competing theory explains all of the evidence, perhaps it is time for a paradigm shift. Howeve...

Moral Relativism and Moral Psychology

Moral Relativism

There is a general philosophical problem with the status of non-objective judgements, such as evaluative or aesthetic judgements. On the one hand, even judgements in these areas seem to answer to some standard of correctness. They are not arbitrary. We often call them " true " or " false ". One can err in making them. We argue about them. On the other hand, there are reasons to say these judgem...

Moral Realism, Moral Relativism and Moral Rules (A Compatibility Argument)

Relativism and realism are often held to be in conflict. It is not obvious what the exact nature of the conflict is supposed to be, because it is not obvious what the two doctrines amount to. But that there is some kind of conflict between moral realism and moral relativism is evidenced by the fact that some take moral relativism to be the straightforward denial of moral realism. David Brink, f...

Exposure to moral relativism compromises moral behavior