White 2011 One Way to Be a Moral Relativist

7/31/2019 White 2011 One Way to Be a Moral Relativist

1/16

One Way to Be a Moral Relativist

This lecture is addressed to peopleprimarily but not exclusively college

studentswho would deny being moral absolutists, but nevertheless want to be moral. It

is addressed to you if, first, because of moral values that you accept, there are things that

you do (or think you should do) and things that you dont (or think you shouldnt), and if,

second, you think that people can be morally good even if they accept moral values that

are not the same as your moral values.

If you become a moral relativist of the sort this essay tells you how to be, then you

will be moralbecause of your acceptance of your collection of moral values, and you will

be a relativist because you will deny that yours is the only collection of moral values. This

denial that yours is the only collection of moral values will not, however, lead you to hold

eitherthat all collections ofpracticalvalues are collections ofmoralvalues, orthat all

collections of moral values are equally good.

I call the kind of moral relativism Im offering for your considerationframework

relativism.1 As a first step in clarifying the term framework, I introduce a distinction

betweenpractical frameworks and moral frameworks. A practical framework is, centrally,

a collection of guidelines for actingguidelines for what to do. All of us regularly rely on

1 The frameworks spoken of in this lecture are, more technically, theoretical frameworks.For details, see Puntel 2006/2008, Puntel 2010/2011, or White (in progress). The

framework relativism elaborated in this essay is importantly different from the frameworkrelativism criticized in Siegel 1987, because according to this essays version, someframeworks are better than others.

Framework relativism is, in the terminology of contemporary philosophy, a meta-ethicaltheory. Your own moral framework is the moral or ethical theory you rely on; asexplained below, it includes moral obligations and prohibitions. Framework relativism isa theoryabout moral or ethical theories; framework relativism includes no moralobligations or prohibitions.


2/16

many specialized practical frameworks, because we act in many different contexts. When

you act by registering for courses, you are presumably guided to some extent by

requirements, to some extent by your interests, and to some extent by recommendations

of friends and advisers. When you act by ordering food in a restaurant, you are

presumably guided to some extent by what you think would taste good, but you may also

be guided to some extent by prices, or by concern for your health.2

In both cases Ive just mentionedchoosing courses to take and dishes to order

it may be that you rarely think explicitly about the guidelines you follow, but that doesnt

mean that youre not relying on any. Indeed, Im confident you wouldnt have much

trouble identifying various contexts of action and various guidelines you rely on in each

of them. The more of those guidelines you articulate for any domain, and the more clearly,

the more fully will you have specified the practical framework you rely on for that domain.

To get from practical frameworks to moral frameworks, lets go back to the

example of ordering food in a restaurant. One of your guidelines might be Dont order any

meatyou might be a vegetarian. If thats one of your guidelines, then that guideline is a

component of your practical framework, but so too are whatever reason or reasons you

have for accepting it as a guideline. One reason might be that you dont like the taste of

meat; another you might have, instead or in addition, is that you think eating meat is

unhealthy. But it might be that you have, again instead or in addition, a reason of a

different kind: you might deem it morally wrong to eat meat. Ifthat is among your

2 Such specialized frameworks are, more precisely, sub-frameworks in that they arecomponents within your comprehensive practical framework, which guides what you doon the whole.


3/16

reasons for not ordering meat, then the guideline youre following is not only a practical

guidelineas it is, given that it guides your behaviorbut also a moralguideline, because

it is a moral prohibition.

Lets assume youre a vegetarian for moral reasons, that is, that you deem it

morally wrong to eat meat. What if your dinner companion orders a steak? May you

object? Must you? Well, that depends on other components of your moral framework.

Your moral framework might obligate you to try to convert carnivores to vegetarianism,

but it also might not. Heres one wayyour framework might be configured without any

such obligation: you think that killing animals so that people can eat them violates rights

that those animals have, but its far from clear to you just what rights are, what it means

to have rights, and which animals have them and which dont. You yourself slap

mosquitoes that are biting you, and sometimes take antibioticsmosquitos and microbes,

according to you, have no rights. Given these complications,youre not convinced that

your reasons for not eating meat are so good that your companion is wrong not to accept

them. You therefore put your moral relativismyour framework relativismto work: you

act morally by obeying your moral frameworks prohibition of meat-eating, but also

relativistically by not objecting to your companions carnivorism. Rather than objecting to

it, you accept the possibility, and indeed proceed on the assumption, that your

companions framework, which permits meat-eating, is nevertheless a moral framework.3

3 You will not hold, if you are a framework relativist, that the issue is ultimatelyundecidable; you will instead be aware that further reflection or additional informationmight either strengthen your commitment to vegetarianism or lead you to abandon it.


4/16

Lets complicate the example. Youre finished your meal, youre leaving the

restaurant, and you and your companion recognize, at another table, a fellow student.

Hes the president of your schools vegetarian advocacy club, and youve long admired

him for being so articulate and outspoken an opponent of carnivorism,4 although you

know that his opposition has often irritated your companion. Now, however, hes

enthusiastically chowing down on a pork chop!

Here again, your moral framework might or might not either permit or require you

to intervene,5 but that aside, your current situation is importantly different from the

situation you faced at your table. Earlier, your companion did something prohibited by

your moral framework but, you assumed (or perhaps knew), permitted by the

companions framework. Now, you see an acquaintance doing something prohibited by a

moral guideline he has publicly presented, on many occasions, not only as one included

in his own moral framework, but also as one that others should include in their

frameworks.6

At this point, there is a suspicion that you and your companion might share,

despite the differences between your frameworks. That suspicion is that the president is a

4Youve admired him because your moral framework is such that you think you ought tobe more like him in this respect; perhaps, according to your framework, it is morally

permissible for you to proceed as you do, but it would be morally better for you to bemore outspoken.5 And if it does require you to intervene, you might or might obey the requirement: youmight give in to shyness, to fear of embarrassment, or to cowardice. If you did, then youwould be acting immorally, by your own lightsthat is, according to your ownframework.6 Of course, unless the acquaintance is a framework relativist, he would make this pointusing other terms.


5/16

hypocrite.7 You might also share an evaluation: perhaps, according to both your moral

framework and your companions moral framework, hypocrisy is morally wrong. But what

might be the status of hypocrisy withinyour acquaintances framework? Could it be that,

according to that framework, hypocrisythat is, not practicing what one preachesis

morally permissible?

Lets assume that the acquaintance has no compunction whatsoever about lying.

Indeed, in whatever situation hes in, he simply says, and indeed does, whatever he thinks

will benefit him the most, and he doesnt care howwhat he does affects anyone else, as

long as there are no repercussions he doesnt like. If hes caught in a lie he may well regret

having liedbecause in that case the lie probably wont end up bringing him the benefit

hed aimed forbut he wont take himself to have acted immorally. If this is the case,

then the acquaintancespracticalframework is not a moralframework, because it has no

moral components.8

Much more could be said about howpracticalframeworks that include moral

components differ from ones that do not, but in this essay, Im not going to saymuch

more about that. To be a framework moral relativist you need to get the general idea, but

you dont have to master a complex philosophical theory.

So, to develop the general idea: one criterion anypracticalframework must satisfy

in order to be a moralframework is that of identifying some acts or kinds of acts as

7Perhaps, instead, hes changed his framework. Perhaps hes even done so publicly, butnews of this hasnt yet reached you.8 In my everyday life, I proceed on the assumption that my cat has a practical framework:she goes to her food bowl when shes hungry, uses her litter box when she needs toexcrete, etc. I dont take her framework to have any moral components.


6/16

morally prohibited, some as morally obligatory, and some as morally permissible. In these

phrases, the word morally serves to disinguish the prohibitions, obligations, and

permissibilities in question from ones that are, on the one hand, legal, and ones that are,

on the other hand,prudential. These are distinctions I now need to explain.

In the United States, exceeding posted speed limits is legally prohibited, as is, for

those under 21, drinking alcohol, but given empirical evidence concerning the frequency

with which these prohibitions are ignored, it is reasonable to conclude that speeding and

underage drinking qualify as morally permissible within the frameworks relied on by

many who reside in this country. Drivers who slow down when alerted by their radar

detectors, like underage drinkers who refrain from consuming alcohol in public, at least

generally do so for reasons that areprudentialrather than moral: they slow down or avoid

drinking in public not because they deem speeding or drinking morally wrongif they

did, they wouldnt be speeding or drinking in the first place (or at least not routinely)

but instead because they want to avoid the consequences of being caught breaking the

law.9

Lets return to the president of the vegetarian advocacy club whos happily eating

his pork chop. It is possible, according to some currently available theories in psychology,

that he has no moral framework, that he relies instead on a wholly prudential framework.

9 Some moral frameworks presumably include at least default obligationsoverridableobligationsto obey the laws of the land. A 19-year-old with such a framework mightdeem it immoral to drink alcohol in the United States, but not in England. Such anobligation might be overridden in cases when obeying laws would require behaviorclassified by the relevant framework as immoral.


7/16

If so, he will not deem his hypocrisy morally wrong, but neither will he deem it morally

obligatory or morally permissible. He will be amoral.

Lets return now to your vegetarianism, and lets say that you happily ate meat

throughtout your childhood, and became a vegetarian in high school, after youd read a

book about animal rights. According to framework relativism, what happened was that

your reading of the book led you to conclude that modifying your framework by

classifying meat-eating as prohibited rather than as permitted would make your

framework better. Perhaps reading the book led you to add to your framework the thesis,

Birds, fish, and mammals have rights that are violated when people kill them in order to

eat them, and once that thesis was in place, your overall framework made better sense10

when it classified meat-eating as prohibited rather than as permitted.

I just described an alteration you might have made to your moral framework, but

of courseyou cant make such alterations unless you have a moral framework in the first

place. And that fact gives us a reason to address the following question: how did you

develop a moral framework in the first place, assuming that you did so? Heres the

answer: if you have a moral framework, you almost certainly began to develop it as you

learned your first language.11 That language was, again almost certainly, a natural

language used by members of a viable communitya community that had persisted for

some time. Because the community was viable, the language it used included moral and

10 Technically: the framework became more coherent and intelligible.11 There is experimental evidence considered by some to support the thesis that, aspsychologist Paul Bloom puts it in a newspaper article, Some sense of good and evilseems to be bred in the bone. Incorporating that thesis into this essay would require onlyminor modifications.


8/16

other evaluative vocabulary. In learning the language, you learned to understand and

articulate moral evaluations.

This is not to say that all who learned the same natural language you did, even at

more or less the same time, developed identical or even highly similar moral frameworks.

The specifics of your developing framework will almost certainly have been most strongly

influenced by those with whom you spent the most time. In addition, you may well have

altered your framework, possibly significantly, even early in the course of its development.

But one way or another, it is highly probable that that is how you acquired the moral

framework that now guides you to a greater or lesser degree (if youre highly self-

disciplined, it guides you to a relatively high degree; if you often give in to temptation, it

guides you to a lesser degree).

A new question: what does framework relativism say aboutyour specific moral

framework? One thing it says is that it could be better. That it could be better follows

from the thesis, central to framework relativism, that it cant qualify as the bestas a

final framework, an optimal framework, a framework allowing for no possible

improvement. Does it follow that, if you become a framework relativist, you accept an

obligation to work to improve your current moral framework? Well, that depends at least

in significant part on the specifics of your framework. But, assuming that youre new to

framework relativism, you might not have thought about this question, so Ill suggest one

way for you to consider thinking about it.

You have a moral framework but, as a framework relativistIll proceed on the

possibly erroneous assumption that youve become oneyou acknowledge that it could


9/16

be better, at the very least in that you may in the future be confronted with moral issues

that your current framework cant readily accommodate, and that if you can alter your

framework in such a way that it can readily accommodate them, the altered framework

will be better. But what about now? Might it be the case that someone else, right now, has

a moral framework that is better than yoursbetter in the sense that, if you were to

become aware of that framework, you would make alterations to your own framework,

perhaps even adopting the new framework?

As a framework relativist, you cant exclude the possibility that there are available

frameworks that are better, in just this sense, than your current framework. Does that

mean that youre obligated to devote your life to studying moral philosophy,

anthropology, and world history, in search of the available framework that you would

deem the best available? Well, that too depends, of course, on your framework. But that

may well be a question that your current framework cant easily accommodate. In case it

is, Ill now suggest a way of thinking about it that you might accept into your framework,

as an improvement.

Ive suggested, somewhat indirectly, that the question, How hard am I obligated to

work to determine that my moral framework is the best moral framework currently

available, is not easily answered. But it may also be one that can be answered without

having been asked. You might be able to answer it without asking it by posing the

following alternative question: According to your moral framework, how hard are others

obligated to work to determine that theirs are the best moral frameworks currently

available? And you might discover that the answer to that question is the following: at


10/16

least often, not very hard. You might come to that answer if you have acquaintances who,

youre pretty sure, havent worked hard to determine that (in your framework-relativist

terms, although probably not in theirs) the moral frameworks they rely on are the best

available, but you nevertheless deem those acquaintances to be morally decent and

perhaps, in at least some cases, morally admirable people. In that case, your framework

might permit you to classify yourself as morally decent, and perhaps occasionally morally

admirable, even if you havent worked hard to determine that the framework you rely on

is the best that is currently available. It might do so if it permits you to classify yourself as

not morally worse than those acquaintances, and does not obligate you to satisfy a higher

standard.

Another question may occur to you: Why not at least try to get rid of your moral

framework altogether? To be sure, as long as you retain any moral framework, you will

presumably feel guilty and perhaps weak when you fail to satisfy its requirements, but

perhaps you could get over thatperhaps you could become an amoralist.12

It might or might not be possible for you to become an amoralist, if you tried to do

so, but without knowing about that one way or the other, you still might ask whether

youd be better off if you could become an amoralist. If you did, youd no longer have any

moral scruples preventing your doing whatever you might want to do. But heres a

question, put two ways: do you think that, if you had no moral scruples, youd be happier?

Do you think that you could flourish, could thrive, as a human being if you were an

amoralist? Or do you think that in order to flourish you have to have a moral framework?

12 Thrasymachus, in Platos Republic, can be understood as one who claims to teachpeople how to become amoralists


11/16

Heres another question that might also clarify this issue for you: If you had a child, and

wanted what was best for your child, would you want your child to have a moral

framework, or to be an amoralist? I leave these questions for your reflection.

To further clarify framework relativism, I turn now to some case studies. These are

examples of thinkers who are not framework relativists; the studies show ways in which

positions these thinkers defend and/or projects they undertaken would be alteredand

improvedif they became framework relativists.

Case study 1: Thomas Pogge*

My first case study develops from the article Making War on Terrorists

Reflections on Harming the Innocent, written by Thomas Pogge. Because the case study

draws on that article, I use Pogges name, but because I reconfigure the position

presented in the article as a framework relativism, I write his name as Pogge*, as a

reminder that I have done so.

Pogge*, like many throughout the world, deems the suicide highjackings of

September 11, 2001, whose results included the destruction of the World Trade Center in

New York and the deaths of nearly 3,000 people of 115 different nationalities,13

exceptionally heinous (3)that is, morally wrong to an extremely high degree. Pogge* is

aware, however, that people relying on different moral frameworks can agree in

classifying those acts as exceptionally heinous without agreeing about what makes them

exceptionally heinous. Some people might deem the attacks to beexceptionally heinous

because their frameworks include the Ten Commandments, as divine laws, and because it

13http://nymag.com/news/articles/wtc/1year/numbers.htm, accessed January 18, 2011.
http://nymag.com/news/articles/wtc/1year/numbers.htmhttp://nymag.com/news/articles/wtc/1year/numbers.htmhttp://nymag.com/news/articles/wtc/1year/numbers.htmhttp://nymag.com/news/articles/wtc/1year/numbers.htm


12/16

is clear to them beyond any shadow of doubt that the 9/11 killings are among those

prohibited by the Sixth Commandment. Others, whose framworks do not include the Ten

Commandments, might nevertheless wholly concur in deeming the attacks exceptionally

heinous; the reason for some might be that they were flagrantly extravagant violations of

human rights.

Although, then, Pogge* cannot provide an answer to the question Why do these

acts qualify as exceptionally heinous that would be accepted as true by all who deem

them exceptionally heinous, he can and does provide the answer to that question that

emerges as true within his own moral framework. Pogge* takes his first step toward that

answer by identifying, in an initial approximation, what (according to his framework)

made the attacks exceptionally heinous: they targeted many innocent people with deadly

force (5).

Within some moral frameworks, Pogge*s initial approximation could be a final

answer; these would be frameworks including unqualifiedprohitions of targeting

innocents with deadly force. Other moral frameworkspacifistic oneswould instead

include unqualified prohibitions of targeting any human beingsnot only innocent

oneswith deadly force. Butto reiterate one centrally important pointdespite the

diversity of these frameworks, all who accepted any one of them would agree that the 9/11

attacks were exceptionally heinous.

For Pogge*, his first formulation is only an initial approximation because he

concludes, on reflexion, that his frameworks prohibition ofthe intentional targeting of

innocents with deadly force is notunqualified. His frameworks prohibition is instead


13/16

overridden in cases where the harm done to [the] innocent people is outweighed . . . by a

greater good. Pogge* next (7) clarifies this provision by introducing four conditions or

criteria that he terms burdens of proof. These are the following:

(a)the alleged good must really be a good;(b)the harm-doing act must contribute to the good at least probabilistically;14(c)the contribution to the good must greatly outweigh the foreseen harm;(d)the harm-doing act must be the best available means to making the aimed-at

contribution.

At this juncture, a terminological point is important enough to warrant a

digression. (a)(d) are theses concerning what is or is not the case; these theses articulate

conditions that may or may not be met. Such theses are not burdens of proof in the

legal sense of that term, and adapting that legal sense, in place of Pogges sense, increases

clarity.

An example will help. In many of the United States, a person is guilty of first-

degree murder only if the following conditions are satisfied:

(1) the person killed another person;(2)the killing was done with malice aforethought; and(3)the killing was premeditated.15

When defendants are prosecuted for first-degree murder, juries are charged not with

determining whether or not these conditions are met, but insteadwith determining

14 An alternative formulation: the preponderance of evidence must support the thesis thatthe harm-doing act will contribute to the good.15 http://www.lectlaw.com/def2/m053.htm; accessed January 18, 2011.


14/16

whether or not the prosecution has met its burden of proof. Because first-degree murder is

a criminal rather than a civil offense, the prosecution meets its burden of proof only by

establishing beyond a reasonable doubt that the conditions are met. In civil cases, the

burden of proof is less severe: a preponderance of evidence is sufficient, so reasonable

doubt may remain.

These distinctions can be applied to the dinner scenario introduced early in this

essay. How your vegetarian framework allows or requires you to interact with carnivores

will presumably depend in part on the burden of proof you take your prohibition of meat-

eating to have met. If you take the truth of the prohibition to be established beyond a

reasonable doubt, you will have far greater reason to try to convert carnivores than if it

you take it instead to be supported only by a preponderanceperhaps only a slight

preponderanceof the evidence.16

Returning to Pogge*: because, according to Pogge*s framework, it is exceptionally

heinous to target innocent people with deadly force unless its conditions are met, the

burden of proof for the case that the conditions have been met is presumably maximally

high. Be that as it may, Pogge* concludes that the 9/11 attacks do not satisfy his

16 Moral frameworks, as theoretical frameworks, are structured as networks or webs, suchthat some of their components are relatively central, others relatively peripheral. The

more tightly a given componenta given thesisis interlinked with other components,by lines of reasoning of various sorts, the more cental it is to the framework. The mostcentral components will be ones that qualify, in the frameworks metaframeworkdistinguishing moral frameworks from merely practical frameworks, as ones versions ofwhich must be included within any practical framework that is also a moral framework.At the periphery of the framework are theses that are minimally interlinked with othercomponents; these are far more likely to be abandoned or significantly altered as theframework develops.


15/16

frameworks conditions and therefore qualify, within his framework, as exceptionally

heinous.

Pogge* begins by deeming the attacks morally heinous, and ends by deeming them

morally heinousbut that is not to say that his reflections lack further consequences. By

introducing his conditions, Pogge opens a path for defense of the attacks, but also

articulates both constraints on his own behavior and permissibilities for the behavior of

others. The path for defense is opened in that arguments could be offered according to

which the attacks satisfy Pogge*s conditions; if Pogge* were to encounter any such

argument that he deemed successful, he would have to revise either his assessment of the

acts, or his conditions. The constraint is Pogge*s commitment not to target innocents

with deadly force unless his conditions are satisfied. If he were to break this commitment,

he would be proceeding immorally, by his own lights. Finally, Pogge*s conditions also

commit him to deeming it ethically permissible for someone else to target him (or others)

with deadly force if his conditions are satisfied; the person who so targeted Pogge* would

not, by Pogge*s lights, be acting immorallyand indeed might be fulfilling a moral

obligation.

[Now, read Pogges article (on Glow), from section IV (page 8) to the end (you may

of course read the previous pages, and I hope youll have time to do so, but they are not

required). Starting on page 8, Pogge argues that the 9/11 terrorists cannot have been

acting morally, by their own lights, and that the Western leaders who have engaged in the

global war on terror cannot have been acting morally, by their own lights. Either assess


16/16

these arguments as they stand, or first transform them into framework-relativist

arguments (Pogge* arguments), and then assess them.

If you are writing the essay, I hope youll have space first to raise any objections

you may have to the framework relativism introduced in this essay, and then to assess

Pogges (or Pogge*s) arguments about the terrorists and the Western leaders.]

Documents

White 2011 One Way to Be a Moral Relativist