To me, an unqualified “fact” is, by implication, a simple claim about the universe, not a fact about the person holding the belief in that fact.
It’s a fact that my height is less than six feet. It’s also a fact that I disapprove of torture. These are objective facts, not opinions or one person’s suspicions. It’s not just that I object to claims that I’m seven feet tall; such claims would be false. And if someone says of me that I approve of torture, they’re in error, as surely as if they said grass is red and ponies have seventeen hooves.
However, if when I say ‘torture is wrong’, I mean the fact that I disapprove of torture, I am using relativism. The statement “torture is wrong” is saying something about the speaker. But it’s also saying something about the listener; I expect the listener to react in some way to the idea I’m expressing. I don’t go around saying “torture is flooble”; I expect that listeners don’t assign any significance to floobleness, but they do to wrongness.
Relativism does not mean that moral claims become mere matters of passing fancy; it means that moral claims express preferences of particular minds (including speakers’ and listeners’); understanding them requires understanding something about the minds of those who make them.
Consider: As an English-speaker, you might find it distasteful if your neighbor named her daughter “Porn”. You might even think it was wrong, especially if you had concerns about how other English-speakers would react to a little girl named Porn. If you were a Thai-speaker living in a Thai language community, you probably wouldn’t see a problem, because “Porn” means “Blessing” in Thai and is a common female name. Understanding why the English-speaker is squicked by the idea of a little girl named Porn, but the Thai-speaker is not, requires knowing something about English and Thai languages, as well as about cultural responses to different sorts of mental imagery involving children.
But suppose that when I say “torture is wrong”, I mean “Any intelligent mind, no matter its origin, if it is capable of understanding what ‘torture’ means, will disapprove of torture.” That is, a relativisty-preferencey sort of “wrongness” follows from some fact that is true about all intelligent minds. That’s a very different claim. It’s a lot closer to what people tend to think of as “absolute, objective morality”.
Relativism does not mean that moral claims become mere matters of passing fancy; it means that moral claims express preferences of particular minds (including speakers’ and listeners’); understanding them requires understanding something about the minds of those who make them.
Understanding their content, understanding why the speaker considers them true, or understanding why they are
true-for_speaker?
Consider: As an English-speaker, you might find it distasteful if your neighbor named her daughter “Porn”. You might even think it was wrong, especially if you had concerns about how other English-speakers would react to a little girl named Porn. If you were a Thai-speaker living in a Thai language community, you probably wouldn’t see a problem, because “Porn” means “Blessing” in Thai and is a common female name. Understanding why the English-speaker is squicked by the idea of a little girl named Porn, but the Thai-speaker is not, requires knowing something about English and Thai languages, as well as about cultural responses to different sorts of mental imagery involving children.
Is the more general principle “don’t give your children embarrassing names” equally relative? How about “don’t embarass people in general ”? Or “don’t do unpleasant things to people in general”?
It’s a fact that my height is less than six feet. It’s also a fact that I disapprove of torture. These are objective facts, not opinions or one person’s suspicions. It’s not just that I object to claims that I’m seven feet tall; such claims would be false. And if someone says of me that I approve of torture, they’re in error, as surely as if they said grass is red and ponies have seventeen hooves.
However, if when I say ‘torture is wrong’, I mean the fact that I disapprove of torture, I am using relativism. The statement “torture is wrong” is saying something about the speaker. But it’s also saying something about the listener; I expect the listener to react in some way to the idea I’m expressing. I don’t go around saying “torture is flooble”; I expect that listeners don’t assign any significance to floobleness, but they do to wrongness.
Relativism does not mean that moral claims become mere matters of passing fancy; it means that moral claims express preferences of particular minds (including speakers’ and listeners’); understanding them requires understanding something about the minds of those who make them.
Consider: As an English-speaker, you might find it distasteful if your neighbor named her daughter “Porn”. You might even think it was wrong, especially if you had concerns about how other English-speakers would react to a little girl named Porn. If you were a Thai-speaker living in a Thai language community, you probably wouldn’t see a problem, because “Porn” means “Blessing” in Thai and is a common female name. Understanding why the English-speaker is squicked by the idea of a little girl named Porn, but the Thai-speaker is not, requires knowing something about English and Thai languages, as well as about cultural responses to different sorts of mental imagery involving children.
But suppose that when I say “torture is wrong”, I mean “Any intelligent mind, no matter its origin, if it is capable of understanding what ‘torture’ means, will disapprove of torture.” That is, a relativisty-preferencey sort of “wrongness” follows from some fact that is true about all intelligent minds. That’s a very different claim. It’s a lot closer to what people tend to think of as “absolute, objective morality”.
Understanding their content, understanding why the speaker considers them true, or understanding why they are true-for_speaker?
Is the more general principle “don’t give your children embarrassing names” equally relative? How about “don’t embarass people in general ”? Or “don’t do unpleasant things to people in general”?