A critique of moral relativism

I don't see any internal contradiction. Nearly all moral systems are involve relative harm - and even those individuals who subscribe to absolutist systems like authoritarian Christian fundamentalists (who will say that sin is sin, lying = murder = not loving god, etc) will nearly every time agree that murder > armed robbery > shoplifting > jaywalking.Morality is determined subjectively - it has to be, since ethical distinctions in actions exist only in our own minds. It's usually not down to the opinions of an individual, though. Morality tends to be formed by the community, with individuals varying slightly from the whole.This means that you might have a debate on whether rape or murder is worse, on what punishment is appropriate for a given crime, etc, but basically everyone will agree that both rape and murder are wrong. Today, anyway. Go back 100 years and many things we consider abhorrent today (spousal rape comes to mind) were commonplace and even expected and accepted.Remember that there is a difference between being allowed to hold an opinion and being allowed to act upon it. Our 1st Amendment boils down to the right to hold and express any opinion your conscience allows, but it doesn't grant the right to act on such opinions. You can follow the Aztec religion all you want, but you won't be allowed to do any human sacrifices. You can talk about fire all you want, but you can't yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater (unless of course there's an actual fire).Being entitled to one's opinion in no way conveys that anyone else needs to treat that opinion with respect - many (most?) opinions are simply wrong. A white supremacist, for example, is entitled to hold that opinion, but I get to hold the opinion that he's a bigoted asshole and an idiot.Being entitled to one's opinion only means that it's not legal to use force to make you change your mind. The government can't force Muslims to convert to Christianity, or force death penalty opponents to agree with the death penalty. You can;t go to jail for calling a sitting President a moron.But one can still be entitled to one's opinion and still be restricted from acting upon it. As I was picking up food from a restaurant last Sunday, I overheard a woman "all of these people should be in church!" She's entitled to that opinion, but she can't force any of the restaurant-goers to attend worship services. Many people (myself included) think that outlawing marijuana is silly - but while we're allowed to hold that opinion, our opinion doesn't matter at all if we're caught possessing some by the police.The moral outlook of individuals is trumped by the outlook of the community all the time. But there's no ethical rule that says that this cannot or even should not be the case.Unless the community decides to make one.

I don't think it was very likely so malicious. Well, at least not consciously malicious. The bits of the PATRIOT Act I've actually read (it's huge, so I haven't seen it all) do make law enforcement's job easier. From an enforcement and counter-terrorism perspective, the Act was a huge help.Of course, being allowed to simply up and arrest someone without evidence and hold them indefinitely makes a cop's job really easy, too. Have a murder? Just lock up all the suspects and throw away the key.There are practical reasons for the PATRIOT Act. The one's I'm aware of even validly address the problem of terrorism. That's not the problem. The problem is that the Act appears to have a skewed cost/benefit ratio, and it certainly has gigantic loopholes for abuse with no possibility of oversight or challenge.It bears all of the hallmarks of a reactionary law enacted out of absolute terror without any thought as to unintended applications. I think most if not all abuses allowed by the PATRIOT Act are afterthoughts, not the product of malicious planning on behalf of the Bush Administration.Let's face it: they're just not that smart, and if they had crafted those laws with the intent of abuse, it's very likely they would have used those laws on political opponents and such. The purpose of law is to create and maintain a stable society so that everyone can reap the benefits of communal effort (I prefer the grocery store to hunting for food, myself. Also, electricity, computers, and cars are pretty nice).From a utilitarian standpoint, this means that law is at least intended to be a benefit. The problem is those laws that cause or allow to be caused more harm than benefit - we have had and continue to have many of those.

Moral absolutes are a myth. They don't exist, for the same reason that absolute color preferences don't exist.Some moral principles seem identical to absolutes for all practical purposes, but this is simply because we all tend to agree very strongly on certain things.But all it takes is examining a very different culture to see that even our most strongly cherished moral cornerstones are not absolute.You and I and anyone in the West might agree that homicide is wrong outside of self-defence or legal warfare.But what about the Aztecs, who regularly practiced human sacrifice? Apparently homicide isn;t an absolute evil - it depends on context.Even in teh modern West, we divide up different versions of homicide - negligent homicide, manslaughter, 1st/2nd/3rd degree murder, so on and so forth. Nothing is absolute, everything is relative, and the moral relationship between one action and another depends entirely on cultural context.You and I would agree that violation of a person's free will is a form of harm that should not be done arbitrarily, but is justified when the harm is significantly outweighed by the benefit - ie, I may not want to pay taxes, but the State is justified in enforcing tax law because the community benefit to taxation vastly outweighs the harm done to me as an individual.But imagine a culture where the free will of the individual is not valued. Think of the American South during the era of slavery - violating the free will of a slave was not considered to be harmful at all.You and I would agree that genocide is disgustingly evil, and I'm sure that anyone you and I are likely to meet would agree wholeheartedly. But what of the Old Testament authors who wrote about killing every man, woman, and child in various nations and portrayed it as righteous? Regardless of whether the event historically happened, in such cases genocide was viewed as a moral positive, and in fact at God's command a moral imperative.Moral absolutism is a personally satisfying fantasy, nothing more. It sounds nice to say "the free will of the individual is sacred, and the use of force against that free will is universally wicked," but any examination of the facts shows that this has not been the case, and that in fact it would cripple any potential social structure the moment one person wants to take something that another person doesn't want taken.I grew up with television programming that frequently stated moral absolutes like "Freedom is the right of all sentient beings," but reality is both more complicated and less emotionally satisfying than Optimus Prime. There comes a time when we need to outgrow our childhood concepts of the world around us, and realize that very little in this world is black and white, and that we need to start questioning why we believe the things we think we believe. The first part simply means that entitlement to hold an opinion does not necessarily convey entitlement to act upon it - the very opposite of an absolute.For the second part - I can't be absolutely sure that the Earth is round, but the evidence is strong enough that I feel justified in calling the Flat Earth Society a bunch of idiots. Depends on your moral system - and those tend to differ.Under utilitarianism, the popularity of an action is less relevant than the total harm and benefit the action would cause...and as I illustrated above, even the harm and benefit are determined subjectively, not objectively.Most people don't seem to consider "self-consistency" to be an important part of their ethical systems, or they simply ignore/rationalize cherished beliefs that contradict their moral framework. Cognitive dissonance is such a wonderful thing. And this is where the real problem sets in - "majority rules" starts to break down when a significant proportion of the population inconsistently applies more broadly recognized standards of action. For example, almost everyone you meet today would agree that you or I should not be able to tell anyone else who they can or cannot marry. Yet, ask the same people whether gay people should be able to marry, and a very large portion will be more than happy to contradict the ethical rule they just outlined and tell gay people that they can't marry people of the same gender. They have no basis for this arbitrary distinction - "gay marriage" simply brings up thoughts that they find personally uncomfortable, and so they want to disallow it. This, however, contradicts their previously stated moral rule that people should be allowed to marry according to their own choice - so they rationalize a set of meaningless distinctions that allow them to hold mutually exclusive moral frameworks simultaneously.It's why true democracies, literal rule-by-majority, don't work quite so well. Human beings are not perfect, and are certainly not perfectly rational, and so we can't trust ourselves to consistently apply our own moral standards. So, we set up things like Constitutions and multiple co-equal branches of government specifically designed to allow majority rule while protecting against tyranny of the majority against the minority. It's still not perfect, but it beats a lot of historical alternatives.