I recently found an article by Paul Boghossian on moral relativism and moral eliminativism. He makes the argument that, when an individual realizes that a moral value is not an absolute moral fact, the individual will either adopt a relativistic or an eliminativistic approach. The relativistic approach stipulates that a value can only be "right" or "wrong" relative to the moral code under which it is evaluated. For a relativist, there is no absolute "right" or "wrong".
Boghossian wonders why one would adopt a relativistic approach instead of an eliminativistic one. For the eliminativist, the absence of an absolute moral value indicates that one should drop the normative terms of "right" and "wrong" altogether. Obviously, if there is not an absolute "right" or "wrong," then there is no way for us to measure the "rightness" or "wrongness" of an action. Boghossian equates this with moral nihilism.
In the article, Boghossian compares the former case (that of adopting relativism) to the changes that occurred when we learned of Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity. According to the theory, there is no such thing as the absolute simultaneity of two events; no two events ever occur at exactly the same time, but always relative to the viewer. We haven't abandoned the concept of time altogether because of this revelation, though. Instead, its understood that simultaneity still exists, just "relative to a (spatio-temporal) frame of reference" (original quote in Boghossian article).
Boghossian gives an example of the latter (that of adopting eliminativism) using the case of witches. Witches aren't real. When we learned this, we did not began to say that witches are not real relative to one's moral code; witches simply aren't real.
So why did we reject witches as a concept altogether, but not simultaneity? Boghossian postulates that it is because simultaneity has a "relativistic cousin" -- that is, simultaneity according to one's frame of reference -- whereas witches do not. [[I'd like to interject here and -- at the risk of sounding trite -- mention that comparing the revelation that witches do not exist to that of Einstein's Theory of Relativity is like comparing apples and oranges. It also assumes that as a society we came together in consensus right away about witches and, later, came together in an immediate consensus on Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity. This is obviously not the case, and bastardizes the history behind the societal impact caused by each revelation. But I digress.]] Boghossian wonders if there is a relativistic cousin to "right" and "wrong", and whether that cousin could be used as a moral substitute of sorts.
Later Boghossian goes on to describe the relativism of etiquette in order to compare it to moral relativism. The relativism of etiquette demonstrates that, while the kinds of manners and behaviors we ought to adopt depends largely on the region, the goal in all cases of relativistic etiquette is to avoid offending one's hosts. If one takes this as a parallel to moral relativism, as Boghossian does, then it goes to show that there are some moral absolutes. And if a moral relativist finds that there are indeed some moral values which are absolute, then that will lead them, Boghossian argues, from moral relativism to moral absolutism. On the other hand, if a moral relativist rejects all absolute moral values, Boghossian argues, then that leads to moral nihilism or moral eliminativism.
I have one big issue with Boghossian's argument: he fails to mention the "strong" relativistic process of "ranking" values. In fact, most of his argument is against the kind of "lazy relativism" that Dr. J often warns us about. Boghossian seems to think that, without absolute moral values, an individual is bound to slip into moral nihilism, where morality is meaningless. On the contrary, a relativist must justify the values and beliefs that they hold by appealing to logical and moral arguments, instead of making an appeal to authority or to an absolute value system (both are essentially the same thing, i.e. relegating your moral choice to another authority). It is through this independent justification of moral values that the moral relativist avoids moral nihilism and moral absolutism, if we are considering relativism to be a halfway point between those two, instead of what it truly is: a superior alternative.
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