Download Week 2 – Rights and Relativism

Week 2 – Rights and Relativism
Today’s schedule:
1. The language of rights.
2. The meaning of moral terms.
3. Relativism part I.
(Waluchow, pgs 42 – 58).
‘Rights-Talk’ has become the most common
means of expressing our moral obligations
toward one another.
One possible historical explanation is the
shift from regarding members of a State as
subjects, to regarding each as a citizen, i.e.,
an equal participant in the affairs of the
State.
Rights are used in all three dominant
normative contexts, i.e., moral, political and
legal.
The most influential exposition of rights was
presented by Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld. He
was tried to distinguish between four
concepts that he believed were all often
referred to as ‘rights’ by creating a ‘table of
juridical rights’. We will be concerned
primarily with the first two lines of
Hohfeld’s table:
Relation
Correlative
claim-right
duty
privilege
no-right
Opposite
no-right
duty
A claim-right, for Hohfeld, is “an
enforceable claim to someone else’s action
or non-action”(Waluchow, p. 45). Or,
Claim-Rights are claims against others who
have duties to respect them (W. p. 50).
Every claim-right is accompanied by a
correlative duty in at least one other person.
There are many forms claim-rights can
assume, some of which can be identified by
relying on the following three distinctions,
developed both by Hohfeld and Joel
Feinberg:
i.) In Personam vs. In Rem rights
ii.) Positive vs. Negative rights
iii.) Active vs. Passive rights.
Privileges or Liberties are freedoms to act
based on their being no other person that has
a right, which impose on the actor a duty to
refrain from acting in that way. That is, a
privilege just is the absence of a duty.
Claim-Rights and Privileges are what
Hohfeld identified as the primary juridical
relations. The secondary relations are
‘Powers’.
Relation
Correlative
Opposite
power
liability
disability
immunity
disability
liability
A power or immunity “is the capacity to
bring about a change in the existing pattern
of rights, duties and privileges”(Waluchow,
p. 53). E.g., when we make promises, we
grant moral rights to others.
So, the things to which we must be most
attentive when we confront the language of
rights are:
1. Is it a claim-right or a privilege?
2. Against whom is the right being
asserted?
3. Is it an In Personam right or an In Rem
right?
4. Is the right positive or negative?
The Meaning of Moral judgments/utterances
Waluchow, pgs. 58- 64.
What is the truth-status of a moral statement
like ‘It is wrong to kill innocent people’.
Cognitivists: Moral statements are presented
as true statements, whose truth can be
ascertained with the exercise of our
cognitive faculties.
But since there is little agreement on any
moral matters, how can moral statements be
true?
Non-Cognitivism, I: Ayer’s Emotivism
Moral utterances express no truth-values
– they only express the emotional state of
the speaker.
Non-Cognitivism II: Stevenson’s Emotivism
Moral utterances express attitudes,
attitudes intended to persuade those who
hear the attitude expressed
Non-Cognitivism III: Hare’s Prescriptivism
Moral utterances do not describe
anything (so they cannot be either true or
false), but rather prescribe action, i.e., tell us
to do some specific thing, instead of telling
us how things are.
Meta-Ethics….
Relativism. Waluchow, pgs 65 – 71.
Many believe that because of the lack of
consensus on moral matters across cultures
and between individuals, “there are no
universal, generally applicable moral
principles, rules and values, valid for all
times and places”(Waluchow, pgs 65-6).
The upshots of relativism are that it is the
only moral position that can easily account
for diversity, and it avoids/undermines
moral imperialism.
If relativism is true however, then the ethical
theories that we’ll be looking at in the
second semester are nothing more than their
authors’ opinion, or the state of morality in
their society.
Relativism is based on two conclusions:
1. There are no universal moral standards
2. The validity of a moral standard is a
function of either: i.) social convention
(Conventionalism)
OR
ii.) personal opinion (Subjectivism).
These two versions of 2 are the two forms
of relativism.
3 Arguments for Relativism
1. The Diversity Argument:
P1. There are radical differences in moral
standards across cultures
C1 (P2): Therefore, there are no universal
moral truths.
C2: Therefore, moral standards are a
function of the societies that accept them
2. The Demonstrability Argument
P1: There is no means by which to
demonstrate the correctness of any specific
moral standard (like the scientific method).
C: Therefore, there can be no moral truth,
just matters of opinion or societal standards.
3. The Argument from Divine Authority
P1: There is no God.
P2: Morality is a set of universal commands
issued by an appropriate commander.
P3: Since morality is universal, the only
issuer of universal commands is a universal
being, i.e., God.
C: But since there is no God, there can be no
set of universally objective moral truths.
William Graham Sumner – Folkways
Pgs. 5 – 11 in G&H.
C: The folkways appear in every culture and
are the standard of rightness in each. There
is no independent moral truth, and as such,
“in the folkways, whatever is, is
right”(Sumner, p. 5). Morals are historical,
institutional and empirical, never intuitive.
P1: Folkways develop from the experiences
of actual life, and as such, give rise to all
philosophy and science.
P2: Changes in the folkways are a function
of changes in actual living conditions.
P3: What we should be doing instead of
ethics is Ethology: the study of the
evolution, function and application of
specific social mores.
P4: Why ‘mores’ as a synonym for
‘folkways?’ ‘Mores’ incorporates social
rules as well as the notions of right and
truth.
P5: The biggest mistake in moral philosophy
is maintaining that morality is above the
mores… it is the mores.
P6: The mores are always good for the
people of a specific place/time. The only
standard of evaluation is the extent to which
mores contribute to welfare.
P7: The judgment/rejection of mores are
good only for the future or different places,
not the past.
P8: Mores gain their status through tradition;
alternatives are tested and rejected, and
those remaining become entrenched.
So, mores inform the rightness of actions in
particular times and places. And because
their evolution is a function of changing life
conditions, they give rise to a wide variety
of standards of right and wrong. It is not
possible to extend any one of these
standards across all times and places.