Varying versions of moral relativism: the philosophy and psychology of normative relativism

Varying versions of moral relativism: the philosophy and psychology of normative relativism

Among naturalist philosophers, both defenders and opponents of moral relativism argue that prescriptive moral theories (or normative theories) should be constrained by empirical findings about human psychology. Empiricists have asked if people are or can be moral relativists, and what effect being a moral relativist can have on an individual’s moral functioning. This research is underutilized i...

Moral Relativism and Moral Psychology

Moral relativism and evolutionary psychology

I argue that evolutionary strategies of kin selection and game-theoretic reciprocity are apt to generate agent-centered and agentneutral moral intuitions, respectively. Such intuitions are the building blocks of moral theories, resulting in a fundamental schism between agent-centered theories on the one hand and agentneutral theories on the other. An agent-neutral moral theory is one according ...

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 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...