How Free Do You Need to Be?

Philosopher Daniel Dennett posed this question to someone who asked him whether humans have free will.  I borrowed it for a discussion of the topic at our recent Philosophy Night Live meeting.  The precise topic was "Why do we need ethics if we live in a deterministic world?"  The conversation focused mainly on the freedom/determinism issue, and we never got to the ethics part of the question.   More on that later. *

Meanwhile, let's take a closer look the general issue and then at Dennett's interesting question.  Determinism is simply the commonplace view that events in the world have causes; they can at least theoretically be explained by identifying the previous relevant events or conditions that preceded them.  A traffic accident causing injury and property damage, for example, was the result of reckless driving on the part of a drunken driver.  But other conditions were necessarily in play as well: the car he was driving (no car, no accident), the driver's failure to use a safety belt perhaps; the failure of an air bag; the unfortunate presence of another vehicle which was struck in the incident, etc.  (No event has just a single cause.)

Determinism bothers many people, because it seems to rule out free will.  Most of the time they feel they are acting freely.  On the other hand, belief in free will seems to imply that some events, e.g. deliberate human choices, have no cause; they are exempt from the universal law of cause and effect.  But that seems absurd: a human act that had no cause would be simply random, unexplainable, and how would that be different from an act of insanity?  How to resolve this paradox?

One solution is offered by libertarians (not the political variety).  Libertarianism is the view that, although most of our everyday actions are automatic or semi-conscious, the result of habit or physical reflexes and therefore determined, at least those actions that result from careful, rational deliberation about the available alternatives (e.g. Which university should I attend?) are not determined by any pre-existing conditions.  The self, libertarians insist, is the sole cause of the decision.

But who or what is the self, and how could anyone know for sure whether even their most carefully considered decisions were not the result of pre-existing conditions?  Modern depth psychology has exposed too many of our unconscious motives, biases, suppressed emotions, and other 'shadow' material for us to ever be very confident about how free any of our choices really are.  Not to mention the neuromaniacs who think everything humans do is determined by fired-up neurons in the brain.  Libertarianism is unconvincing. 

Let's be honest.  In everyday life we are all determinists.  If, after investigating a burglary at your home, the police told you the alleged burglary had no cause; it just happened; your stuff just vanished - no burglar, no other explanation, forget it, cased closed - you would probably sue the department.  Our common intuition is that everything that happens has a causal explanation, even if we never discover in a given case what the explanation is.

To be free or not  to be free - that is the question, a question that is as old as philosophy.  At the meeting, we briefly discussed a modern interpretation that seems to offer a way out.  The theory, favored by most philosophers today, is called compatibilism (or sometimes soft determinism).  The basic insight of this theory is that the traditional debate sets the bar for defining 'freedom' too high.  This was the point of philosopher Daniel Dennett's question, "How free do we need to be?"  How free, that is, to satisfy the demands of morality and legal accountability and our subjective feeling of being able to choose among real alternatives?  The answer, compatibilists think, is not the absolute freedom insisted on by libertarians which violates the principle of causality, but rather a type of freedom that exists when and only when certain conditions are present in a given situation.

Compatibilitists are determinists.  They agree that human actions, like all other natural events, are determined by pre-existing causes or conditions.  In humans, one of the causal factors is, in some cases, a process of careful deliberation.  Faced with a choice of A or B, we consider both for a while, reflecting on the relative merits.  Eventually, our feelings about A win out, and that's what we end up choosing to do.  We choose A because that's what we want to do.  And that, says the compatibilist, is exactly what freedom is: the ability to choose and act according to our desires. Call this conditional or circumstantial freedom.

Thus, compatibilists disagree with libertarians about the meaning of 'freedom.'  They claim that 'absolute freedom' is a useless fiction.  Conditional freedom is the only kind we need for understanding our practical lives, and it is compatible with determinism.  To be conditionally free means you are in control of your choices.  In the moment of free decision, there is no external coercion and no internal compulsion (psychological disorder).  You choose A because you have rationally compared it to B, and A is what you want to do.  That is why you feel free in the moment of decision.  When people have this kind of control, we say they acted freely and are responsible for what they do.  But to be free in this sense does not mean your action is uncaused or generated out of nothing by a transcendent agent, self, or soul, as libertarians claim.  All decisions and actions are conditioned.  You could have chosen B instead of A, but only if one or more of the conditions had been different.

Perhaps the easiest way to grasp this point is to see that what ultimately trips the switch of a choice, the final factor in the process of making a decision, is the strongest feeling or desire that shows up at the end of reflection.  "A or B? …...Hmmm……...not sure…….. Ah! I have it - A feels right.  That's what I'll do."  Yes, you could have chosen B, but only if the strongest desire in the moment had been different.  In the end our choices are caused by our desires, but desires don't appear out of nowhere like some random quantum events, they have causes, too, some of them known to us - habits, aspects of our character - some of them unknown, buried in the subconscious mind.  But all have a causal history; we can't create our desires out of nothing.  And that fact implies determinism.

This should not bother us, however,  Compatibilists say that conditional freedom is the only kind of freedom we need or care about.  It is all we need to judge people as responsible or not responsible for what they do, and it satisfies the justice system as a criterion for determining guilt or innocence.  Demanding more freedom than this seems metaphysically absurd; it's like demanding to be God, to be able to act ex nihilo.  As philosopher John Dewey once said, "What men have esteemed and fought for in the name of liberty is varied and complex, but certainly it has never been a metaphysical freedom of will."  
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* The short answer is that regardless of how we decide the freedom/determinism issue, as social beings we need to know how to distinguish right from wrong actions, and that's what ethics is about.

THE CLEVER SCHOOLBOY

A Philosophical Conundrum

Sometimes philosophers take a break from the heavy lifting required by metaphysics, epistemology, value theory, and other arcane inquiries, in order to have a little fun with a puzzle.  Here is one that baffled a number of professional philosophers several decades back, until British philosopher Gilbert Ryle revealed in a journal article that he had found a solution that had satisfied him for quite a long time.  I offer my own version here for your entertainment and possible philosophical profit.

The setup

A math teacher announced to his class on a Friday, “There will be a surprise test next week.  By that I mean that no student, while walking to school on the day of the test, will be able to predict the test will be given on that day.”

A clever student at the back of the class raised his hand and said, “Sir, that’s impossible.  You can’t give a surprise test next week or any other week if you announce it beforehand.  Here’s the thing:  if you don’t give us the test by next Thursday, any student walking to school on Friday would know the test has to occur that day.  But then it wouldn’t be a surprise.  Therefore, your test can’t be given on Friday.  Now, knowing that Friday is out, if the test has not been given by Wednesday, then any student walking to school on Thursday would realize the test would have to be given on that day.  But then it wouldn’t be a surprise, so the test can’t be given on Thursday, either.  The same line of thinking applies in turn to Wednesday, Tuesday, and Monday.  There are no other possible test days.  Therefore, you can’t give us a surprise test next week at all.”

The teacher praised the student for his ingenious objection and dismissed the class.  The following week, he gave the test on Tuesday surprising, in the required sense, every member of the class.

The Conundrum:  Where did the student’s argument go wrong?

Time out

You may wish to close your laptop at this point and adjourn to a coffee shop to think about this and possibly solve it on your own.  However, be forewarned - it's not easy.  If you find yourself after a while tempted to hurl your coffee mug at a wall, take a breath, return to your computer, and let the following restore your peace of mind.

The solution

Here is the argument again, this time set out in step-by-step logical form for ease of analysis:

The teacher decrees:  "There will be a surprise test next week.  By 'surprise' I mean that no student walking to school on any of the 5 days will know that the test will be given on that day."

The clever student argues to the contrary:

1. (a) If the teacher doesn’t give the test by next Thursday (i.e. by the end of the day’s class), any student walking to school on Friday would know the test would have to be given on that day.  (b) But then it wouldn’t be a surprise, which contradicts the teacher's decree.  (c) Therefore, the test can't be given on Friday.

2. (a) Now, knowing that Friday is out (can't be a surprise test day), if the test has not been given by Wednesday, then any student walking to school on Thursday would realize the test would have to be given on that day.  (b) But then it wouldn’t be a surprise.  (c) Therefore, the test can’t be given on Thursday either.

3. (a) Next, knowing that Friday and Thursday are out, any student walking to school on Wednesday would know the test has to be given on that day.  (b) But then it wouldn't be a surprise.  (c) Therefore, the test can't be given on Wednesday.

4. (a) Next, knowing that Friday, Thursday, and Wednesday are out, any student walking to school on Tuesday would know that the test has to be given on that day.  (b) But then it wouldn't be a surprise.  (c) Therefore, the test can't be given on Tuesday.

5. (a) Finally, knowing that Friday, Thursday, Wednesday, and Tuesday are out, any student walking to school on Monday would know the test has to be given on that day.  (b) But then it wouldn't be a surprise.  (c) Therefore, the test can't be given on Monday.

6. There are no other possible test days in the week.

Conclusion:  Therefore, the teacher can’t give the students a surprise test next week at all.

Problem:  The teacher administered the test on Tuesday the following week, surprising, in the required sense, everyone in the class.  So we know something is wrong with the clever student's argument.  But what exactly? 

The student's reasoning consists of a chain of 5 deductive arguments, all of which have the same structure - premise a, premise b, conclusion c - only the names of the days are different in each argument.  After Step 1, each argument depends on the one before.  That means if the first argument is flawed, the entire chain collapses.  And that is exactly what happens.  Here's why:

A deductive argument can go wrong in two basic ways:

First, a deductive argument is invalid if the conclusion does not follow from the premises, even if the premises are true.

   All men are mortal.

   Some women are mortal.

   Therefore, some women are men.

[By contrast, of course, an argument is valid if its conclusion follows necessarily from the premises.  That is, if the premises are true, the conclusion has to be true.

   All golden eagles are raptors.

   All raptors are warm-blooded.  

   Therefore, all golden eagles are warm-blooded.]

Second, a deductive argument is unsound when one or more of the premises is false, even if the conclusion does follow from the premises. 

   All humans are mortal.

   Aphrodite is a human.  (False.  Aphrodite is a goddess, not a human.)

   Therefore, Aphrodite is mortal.

Of course, an argument may be both invalid and unsound, but that is not the case with the surprise test argument.  It is valid but unsound. 

Why valid?  If you look carefully at the student's argument at Step 1, you can see that if the premises are true, the conclusion is necessarily true.  That means it's valid.  The logic is perfect.  But is the argument sound?  No.  Consider the first premise:  if the test is not given by Thursday, then it must be given on Friday.  But that is true only if the student can be certain that there will be a test.  Can he be certain of that?

The student assumes, as a matter of fact, that there will be a test next week.  Is that assumption true?  Is the student entitled to make that assumption? …. What does he know for sure?  Only that the teacher said there will be a test.  Could he logically infer from that that there will be a test?

   The teacher said there will be a test next week.

   Therefore, there will be a test next week.

No.  An inference like this is sometimes warranted.  For example, there is a scientific law that tells us that if we heat a piece of copper, it will expand - always; we know of no exceptions.  So we can be certain that every time we heat our copper pan on the stove, it will expand.  Now, is there a scientific law that states 'Every time a teacher says there will be a test next week, the test always takes place'?  Of course not.  Perhaps the student has never experienced an occasion when a teacher decreed a test but then the test didn't happen.  Even so, does that justify his thinking that such an occasion can never happen?  Certainly not.

With her decree - "There will be a surprise test next week" - the teacher was not making a prediction based on scientific law.  She was stating her intention to give a test next week.  As the cliché has it, there is many a slip between cup and lip.  Could the teacher guarantee that she would give the test next week?  Of course not.  She is not God.  She can't control how the future will actually play out despite her best intentions. 

I needn't bore you here with a list of the multitude of circumstances that might intervene to prevent the teacher from giving her test: she falls ill and can't teach on Friday, a blizzard forces a total school closure, the dog eats her test paper, etc.  She might even change her mind at the last minute and announce to the class on Friday morning, "There won't be a test today, kids.  I looked it over last night and decided it's not as good as it should be.  Over the week-end I will revise it and give you a surprise test next week."

It should be clear now that a test, announced as a surprise in the previous week, can be administered even on Friday.  So, if the test has not been given by Thursday, the surprised students would be well advised to study for the test anyway - just in case.

And what of our clever schoolboy?  We give him an A for logical brilliance but an F for not realizing the difference between an intention and a scientific prediction.

Billionaires and Philanthropy

For those of you who are still interested in the conversation we had at this blog a few weeks ago about billionaires and economic justice, here are a few additional ideas.  In a comment I added to my blogpost"How many billionaires should there be?" I wrote:

"My point is not to criticize Warren Buffett, but to argue that decisions about how to use the superfluous wealth of the super-rich should not be left up to them.  They should be social decisions."

Why do I think that?  First, because the super-rich have used social capital to amass their vast private fortunes.  The image of the self-made rich person is a myth.  The wealth of millionaires and billionaires is created by the entire society (workers, civil servants, elected officials, health care systems, etc.).  While granting that inventors and other innovators should be rewarded proportionately for their contributions to wealth creation, other contributors to the market process should have some say in how superfluous wealth is spent.  As economist Richard D. Wolff says, "Wealth is not privately created [by heroic entrepreneurs acting alone] and then collectively appropriated [through taxation]; it is collectively created and privately appropriated" - as I would put it, stolen by means of favorable tax codes, tax avoidance, pro-business, anti-labor laws and regulations, subsidies, and other mechanisms used by the rich to prevent fair distribution of wealth to society as a whole.

Secondly, because, contrary to those who think billionaires and other rich folk are needed for their valuable contributions to charities and charitable projects of various kinds (a practice now becoming known as philanthrocapitalism), the super-rich cannot be counted on to make objective judgments about which human needs worldwide deserve high priority, which projects make best use of the money to better the lives of the disadvantaged.  Not that they donate unwisely all the time, but they operate all too often from their own self-interest (need to make themselves look good or further their political agendas), from a capitalist frame of reference (money donated toward 'market solutions'), or simply to satisfy some personal preference (donating to an art museum).  The article linked below expands on this critique of 'philanthrocapitalism.'

  

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/34190-why-philanthropy-actually-hurts-rather-than-helps-some-of-the-world-s-worst-problems

Where Does Thinking Take Place?

If you would be so kind, please help me find my mind.    - Mose Allison

I often introduce a discussion about the mind-body problem by asking "Where does your thinking take place?"  Nearly everyone answers, "In my brain."  Such is the power of contemporary neuroscience with its razzle-dazzle imaging technology and brain-probing techniques.  When I reply, "Wait a minute.  What about you?  I thought it was you who does the thinking.  When I ask what you think about this or that, it's you, the person, that answers, isn't it?  Now you tell me it's your brain that does your thinking.  How did you, the person who answered my question, drop out of the story?"  People often look startled when I ask this question, because they have not thought carefully about the relationship between self, mind, and brain.  They don't realize the dramatic self-erasure that occurs when they embrace a materialistic theory of mind.  Neuroscientists have popularized the notion that mental activities like thinking, imagining, feeling, etc., are just brain states, and science is God, so people assume it must be true.*  However, this doctrine, known as physicalism or the physicalist theory of mind, is not science - there is no experiment that proves it.  It is bad philosophy.  Here is some good philosophy to help clean up the mess.

When you are thinking about something, there are at least three factors involved.  There is the agent of the thinking, that's you, a person.  Second, there is the process of thinking, moving from one idea to another, as when balancing your checkbook or writing a letter.  Third, there is what your thinking is about; thinking is always about something.  This 'aboutness'  is often called intentionality.

These three factors cannot be separated.  They are necessary components of every act of thinking.  Of course, a normally functioning brain is also necessary, along with the rest of the body it is attached to.  However, to say that thinking takes place in the brain is to attempt to cram all three of the first group of necessary components into that 3-pounds of squishy meat inside your skull.  So according to the standard view, you, your thinking, and what you are thinking about are all inside your brain.  But, of course, you have no awareness of being surrounded by or sitting on top of your brain tissue.  You are not actually aware of your brain at all.  You are aware of your body and the contents of the room you are in, and you are aware of your thoughts, but your brain is not available for inspection.  You probably don't know anything about it.  You may be living in a Matrix, but you are definitely not living inside your brain.

Are the absurdities of this story starting to become rather obvious?  First is the ridiculous notion that you, the person doing the thinking is inside your own brain at the same time as you are in the external, physical world reading an essay with eyes that are precisely not in your brain.  Philosopher Patricia Churchland goes further; she says, no, you are not in your brain; you are your brain.  A person is just a brain in a skull (the rest of the nervous system is apparently just for carrying the head around).  This kind of talk borders on lunacy.

Here's another way to see that thinking can't happen in the brain.  Let's talk about intentionality, the 'aboutness' of thought.  Thinking is always about something.  Let's assume a thinker, Sue, is thinking about the Pythagorean Theorem and let's suppose she is using a drawing like the one below to help her visualize the relationships.

                                                            a² + b²  = c²

You might remember your geometry teacher pointing out that drawings like this are not real triangles and squares; they are representations.  Lines in drawings have width and thickness; real triangles do not,   Drawings are also never perfect, whereas real triangles have perfectly straight lines and perfectly accurate angles.  They possess only two dimensions, and no physical properties like mass or volume.  Drawings are just visual representations of abstract geometric ideas.  They are not found in nature, and they cannot be made physical by any human art.  So when Sue is working on the Pythagorean theorem, is the object of her thinking - the real triangle - in her brain?  Of course not.  The brain is a physical object, so anything in it would also have to be physical.  Plenty of neurons, blood, and water in there, but no triangles.  Lots of electrical signals whizzing around, but no thinking.

This description applies to any kind of thinking, not just mathematics.  All thinking involves concepts, and concepts are non-physical.  Take justice, for example.  Can the meaning of 'justice' be found in the brain?  Certainly not.  Only neurons in there, no justice, no meanings. 

Here is my argument in brief: 1) 'mind' is not a thing; it's a collective noun we use for convenience to talk about a number of human activities that seem different from the operations of our organs and limbs; call them 'mental activities.'  Thinking is one of those.  2) that any thinking operation requires at least four necessary elements:  a person, an object, a process, and a brain; and 3) that none of the first three can be found in the brain.  They are correlated with brain states but are not themselves brain states.  It follows that the popular "thinking happens in the brain" theory is wrong.  A functioning brain is the necessary physical component of any act of thinking, but it is not sufficient to explain the other components which are not physical.  Thinking does not take place in the brain.

"Where does it take place then?  If not in the brain, then where?"  Nowhere, I'm afraid.  The trouble lies with the question.  "Where do mental activities happen?" is based on the hidden assumption that everything has to be somewhere, that is, everything we consider to be real has to have simple location in space.  That's the fundamental assumption of all materialist philosophy and science.** But why should we believe it?  Where's the proof?  There is no proof, because there is no possible way of proving anything about everything.  The first principle of physical science is not itself a scientific hypothesis.  It's an orienting metaphysical assumption that has to be taken on blind faith if physical science is ever to get off the ground.  Such assumptions, however, can be falsified, and we have seen good reasons to think this one - that all reality is material - is false.

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   * Novice philosophers might forget themselves in the embrace, but neuroscientists themselves do not.  They know that in order to discover the correlations between a mind and whatever is showing up on their MRI screens, they have to ask the experimental subject, the person who is having the experience, what it is they are experiencing. 

      ** For more on this, see my posts "Trouble With the Brain, Parts 1 and 2," October 2015.

     

How Many Billionaires Should There Be?

Recently at a lunch gathering of the White Rock Philosophers, the topic of economic justice came up, which gave me an opportunity to ask one of my favorite questions:  how many billionaires should exist in the world?  One suggested answer was: as many as there are people who put in the work to earn their billions.  Here is the best argument I know of to support this view:

1.  In a capitalist system, each individual is free to compete in the marketplace for as much wealth as they can accumulate in accordance with law.

2.  The individual is entitled to spend, save, or invest the money they earn any way they see fit.  

3.  Some individuals become billionaires or even multibillionaires in this system (after taxes).

4.  They are entitled to 100% control of their wealth because they deserve it and because the law allows it.     

5.  There is no theoretical or legal limit to the number of individuals who might become billionaires.

6.  Therefore, the number of billionaires that should exist is just the number that does exist at any given time.

My argument is for the contrary proposition:  there should be zero billionaires in the world. Given the well-known facts about inequality in capitalist societies these days, I am tempted to suggest that this view is self-evident.  To be blunt, to become a billionaire is to commit a moral crime against humanity.  However, a philosopher is required to supply supporting argument for such views.  Here is mine:

1.  Inequality of wealth is inevitable in any economic system.  It does not follow that any degree of inequality is morally justifiable.

2.  People are roughly equal with respect to their basic needs:  survival and safety, health, belonging, self-esteem, etc. (see A. Maslow's hierarchy of needs here).

3.  In a just society, an inequality is justified only if it makes the least advantaged members better off than they would be if the inequality didn't exist.  ("Better off" means 'better able to satisfy at least their basic needs.') *

4.  The vast inequality represented in the ratio between the wealth of billionaires and the poor obviously does not make the poor better off than they would be if the vast inequality didn't exist; that is, if wealth were re-distributed in a way that satisfied every person's basic needs insofar as that is possible without degrading the social order in any significant degree. 

5.  A redistribution of wealth in advanced societies to accomplish the satisfaction of needs as specified in Step 4 would leave today's billionaires still very rich.  (Economic justice does not require elimination of all inequality.)

6.  If, after the redistribution, there were some leftover billionaires, their surplus wealth - the amount not required for them to enjoy a very high standard of living - should be taxed away to be spent on public works, healthcare, education, and cultural projects that have the potential to enhance the well-being of all the citizens.

7.  This would result in the non-existence of billionaires which is what I have been arguing for - zero billionaires - exactly the number which should exist.

          * John Rawls, A Theory of Justice.

Appendix

Diagram of Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of Human Needs.  Notice that no stage of need satisfaction requires one to be super-rich.  Maslow's scheme has stood the test of time fairly well, but it reflects a study of only one culture (western, USA) and probably needs revising in some ways.  Nevertheless, the basic idea of a needs hierarchy of some sort in humans of every culture seems sound.

Are Moral Values Merely Relative?

"What is true for you is true for you, and what is true for me is true for me."

This statement, attributed to the great Sophist, Protagoras, in a conversation with Socrates, is one of the earliest statements of philosophical relativism we possess in the records of early Greek philosophy.  The doctrine has been popular with thinkers ever since who are uncomfortable or hostile to notions of absolute or objective truth. (1)  Relativism is defined in different ways in contemporary discussions, but, following Protagoras, this one from Wikipedia is the most useful for my purpose here.

 “The term [relativism] often refers to truth relativism, which is the doctrine that there are no absolute truths, i.e., that truth is always relative to some particular frame of reference, such as a language or a culture (cultural relativism)."

A radical version of this theory would imply that there is no universal truth about the shape of the earth.  If a non-scientific culture says the earth is flat, then the earth is flat.  If others believe the earth is round, then that’s the truth.  Both beliefs are equally true or valid, or if you prefer - there is no objective truth about the shape of the earth or anything else, only culturally determined beliefs, which may contradict one another.  Too bad for logic and common sense.  Life is hard.

Not that hard.  Most philosophers realize that extreme relativism is self-contradictory.  Proponents do not offer their theory as a culturally relative opinion that may be validly contradicted in another context, but rather as a universal truth that is valid in any culture, any language.  In other words, it’s both a relative and an absolute truth, which is absurd.  A theory that refutes itself leads nowhere.  For this reason, most contemporary discussions of relativism are concerned with ethics and morals. 

Ethical relativism (ER) is the philosophical theory that there is no such thing as objective moral truth.  All judgments about right and wrong, good and evil, are either just matters of individual opinion (individual relativism or subjectivism) or are determined by cultural traditions (cultural relativism).   The version of ER that is most popular among liberals and postmodern philosophers is cultural relativism.  It’s a theory they think is required by multiculturalism policies in some liberal democracies.  Many ordinary people have absorbed the theory without knowing what it is and without thinking about it very carefully. 

Why would anyone believe that cultures alone decide what is right and wrong?  One popular approach is based on a well-known generalization I call Descriptive Relativism 1:  different cultures hold conflicting beliefs about right and wrong.  Here is the argument:

• Premise:  Different cultures hold conflicting beliefs about right and wrong.
• Conclusion:  Therefore, whatever a culture believes is right or wrong really is right or wrong, and if another culture holds opposite moral beliefs, their beliefs equally valid.  In short, there are no moral truths.

That cultures differ in their moral beliefs is a well-known fact which does not provide a basis for any interesting ethical conclusions.  The argument is a non sequitur.  Different cultures have held different beliefs about all sorts of things: shape of the earth; causes of diseases; how the universe came into being, etc.  So what?  We don’t accept that contradictory beliefs about these matters are all true.  Why should we accept contradictory beliefs about morals just because cultures don’t agree on them?

Of course, the argument can be made valid by adding one more premise:

• Premise 1:  Different cultures hold conflicting beliefs about right and wrong.
• Premise 2:  There is no universal standard by which we could decide which morals are right and which are wrong in different cultures.
• Conclusion:  Therefore, whatever actions or practices a culture believes are right or wrong really are right or wrong, and if another culture holds the opposite beliefs, then what they believe is right or wrong is also really right or wrong.  There are no moral truths.

Adding Premise 2 does correct the non sequitur, but now the problem shifts to Premise 2: why should we believe it?  What is the evidence for it?  You can hardly say that the evidence is right there in Premise 1 - that cultures cannot agree on a standard for settling moral differences - that would be circular reasoning.  Without supporting evidence, Premise 2 is useless.

Let’s make a fresh start.  The problem with DR1, some philosophers think, is that it does not probe deeply enough into the nature of cultural differences.  A more sophisticated approach would be this one, call it Descriptive Relativism 2:  different cultures hold conflicting fundamental beliefs about right and wrong.  The distinction between surface morals and fundamental moral beliefs is important because many apparent moral differences among cultures disappear when they are traced back to their deeper ethical assumptions.  For example, the Aztecs believed human sacrifice was justified, because they thought it was necessary for their survival to ensure the sun would rise each day.  Everyone agrees that societies need policies that will ensure their survival, but we disagree about the human sacrifice, because we know sunrises are governed by physical laws, not by rituals aimed at appeasing national gods.  Both Aztecs and ourselves agree that  policies that benefit our societies in important ways are good. That's a shared fundamental ethical principle.  So the dispute is about factual assumptions about how the universe works, not about fundamental values.  If the facts could be made clear to the Aztecs, the practice of human sacrifice should eventually disappear and the apparent ethical conflict along with it.

Now if moral disagreements between different societies were always like this one, ethical relativism wouldn’t exist.  Everyone would agree on a few fundamental moral principles, and their disagreements would be only about the relevant factual issues which could be settled by science.  Unfortunately, fundamental differences among societies about morals do exist.

Consider the Navajo game called Chicken Polo.  Navajo men bury a chicken in the ground up to its neck and then compete on horseback to see who can knock the chicken’s head off.  They freely admit that chickens feel pain but see nothing wrong in the game nonetheless.  Our culture, or at least a large segment of it, regards such activities as morally wrong, because we hold as a fundamental principle that it is wrong to cause pain to sentient creatures for trivial reasons.  The Navajos do not hold that principle, so the cultural difference in this case is fundamental.

Closer to home, consider the belief of many religious fundamentalists that women should be subordinate to men, because God has decreed thus in the Bible or the Koran.  Secularists do not accept that any scripture is the ultimate source of moral truth.  They argue from rational grounds that women should have rights and freedoms equal to those of men.  The clash between faith-based ethics and rational ethics, therefore, is a fundamental difference.  Which is correct?  Ethical relativists say there is no way to decide.  Let’s take a closer look.

A proper discussion of cultural relativism must focus on Descriptive Relativism 2.  The question then becomes:  if different cultures hold differing fundamental beliefs about right and wrong, good and evil, does this fact entail ethical relativism?  The answer is no.

Descriptive relativism in either version is an empirical generalization, not an ethical theory.  Ethical relativism is a theory about moral truth, not about what this or that culture believes about right and wrong.  This is important, because, as we have seen, without a premise that contains a claim about moral truth, any argument for ethical relativism will commit a fallacy, a non sequitur.  The more plausible versions of ER use Descriptive Relativism 2 plus an assumption about moral truth as a basis for the theory, as follows:

The Basic Argument:

• Premise 1:  Different cultures hold conflicting fundamental beliefs about right and wrong.
• Premise 2:  There is no objective standard of moral truth by which we could decide which of the conflicting fundamental beliefs are true and which are false.
• Conclusion:  Therefore, all moral values are culturally relative.  If an act or practice is believed to be morally permissible in one culture and morally impermissible in another culture, both beliefs are correct.

The argument for Premise 2 is that, because the conflicting ethical principles are fundamental - that is, not capable of support by additional argument, there is no higher principle available to us for deciding which of the contradictory fundamental principles is wrong in any given case.  Therefore, the conclusion means that actions believed on fundamental principle to be right in a given culture really are right, and those same actions, if thought to be wrong in another culture, really are wrong despite the fact that the fundamental principles are contradictory.  Chicken Polo is right and chicken polo is wrong - really.  A corollary to this conclusion is that no society’s moral code is better than any other’s.  Some philosophers further conclude that we have no just reason to criticize another society’s morals, and it would be especially wrong to attempt to impose one’s own moral system on another society, as Great Britain for example did in India.  We may feel horror about the Saudi Arabian custom of cutting off the hands of a thief, but we have to accept it and shut up about it.

What are we to think of this apparently stronger argument?  The first thing to notice is that Premise 2 suffers from the same objection we saw in the previous argument for DR1:  what proof is there that there is no objective standard of moral truth?  Even if no such standard has been discovered so far, it doesn’t follow that none is possible.  There are, in fact, some impressive candidates.  Premise 2 would need to be buttressed by a careful examination of the various attempts by philosophers to identify a plausible universal standard of moral truth.  The relativist would also have to show that all the criticisms of ethical relativism are wrong. A tall order, as we shall see.

Let’s start with an interesting, although perhaps inconclusive, observation: most relativists do not really believe their own theory.  Ask a relativist if she is really willing to accept that, if some culture believes that killing children or sexually mutilating adolescent girls is morally permissible, then those practices really are morally acceptable.  “Of course not, but …..”  All right, let’s move on.  A theory might be right even if the person defending it doesn’t really believe in it, although that seems rather odd.  More than a few relativists have felt uncomfortable with this challenge.  However, there are other serious problems with ethical relativism.

1.  ER can’t account for the fact that we reason and argue with one another about value issues. If there is not at least one universal ethical truth, we could not reason about values at all.  We could only plead with or shout at one another to get them to accept our point of view.

2.  ER can’t explain the many moral similarities among various cultures, e.g. the universal prohibition against betraying your own tribe or nation.  Despite the differences, there is a lot of agreement among cultures about basic moral norms.  If the Basic Argument were sound, we would expect far more basic disagreements than exist in fact in order to justify the conclusion “All values are relative.”

3. ER cannot explain why so many societies in the modern era are embracing ideas of universal human rights and freedoms as found in the American Declaration of Independence and the UN Charter.  This global trend suggests strongly that a liberal system of ethics is increasingly considered by people in most societies to be better than the traditional norms they grew up with.  This is powerful evidence that universal ethical standards exist, even if philosophers may not agree on what they are.

4. Why is culture to be the arbiter of moral truth?  On relativistic premises, why not say that right and wrong are determined by the whims of the king or dictator?  Or why not by the preferences of each individual?

Do these ruminations prove the demise of ethical relativism?  Not necessarily.  They just show that a certain approach does not work.  Cultural relativism is not a convincing basis for ethical relativism.  Is there a firmer foundation?  I doubt it. One philosopher has even argued that the worst problem facing relativists is that their theory is not even intelligible.(2)  Relativists could retreat to skepticism and challenge moral philosophers opposed to ER to produce a positive account of the possibility of moral truth.  It’s a legitimate challenge, and there are a number of plausible candidates:  the Golden Rule, the No-Harm Rule, the Interest Theory version of utilitarianism (Peter Singer, Practical Ethics), theories of justice and human rights, etc.  If any one or combination of these could survive critical scrutiny, that would be the final and fatal blow to ethical relativism. 

I must leave it to you readers to pursue these inquiries on your own.

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(1)  Zogby poll findings regarding what is being taught in American universities. Studies indicate 75% of American college professors currently (2002) teach that there is no such thing as right and wrong.

(2) You can find a useful collection of recent essays pro and con on ethical relativism at the Philosophy Now website here.