Why Absolute Moral Relativism Should Be Off The Table

Posted by Christian Sötemann

In the case of moral statements there can be many degrees between absolute certainty and absolute uncertainty. 

Even empirical truths, which are thoroughly supported by conclusive evidence, cannot, by their empirical nature, have the same degree of certainty as self-evident truths. There may always be an empirical case which escapes us. And so it may be questioned whether a viable moral principle really has to be either one or the other: absolutely certain or absolutely uncertain, valuable or valueless – or whether it is good enough for it to serve as an orientation, a rule of thumb, or something useful in certain types of cases.

With this in mind, given any moral principle in front of us, it could be helpful for us to differentiate between whether:

• it is only universally applicable in an orthodox way

or

• there is an overt denial of any generalisability (even for a limited type of cases) of moral values and principles.

In the first case, we may try to reconcile a concrete situation with an abstract moral rule, without rejecting the possibility of some degree of generalisation – yet in the second case, we have what we previously discussed: generalising that we would not be able to make any kind of general statement. In the second case, we have an undifferentiated position that renders all attempts at gauging arguments about ethics futile, thus condoning an equivalence of moral stances that is hardly tenable.

This liberates the moral philosopher at least in one way: absolute moral relativism can be taken off the table, while all moral standpoints may still be subjected to critical scrutiny. If I have not found any moral philosophy that I can wholeheartedly embrace, I do not automatically have to resort to absolute moral relativism. If I have not found it yet, it does not mean that it does not exist at all. The enquiring mind need not lose all of its beacons.

To put moral relativism in its most pointed form, the doctrine insists that there are moral standpoints, yet that none of them may be considered any more valid than others. This does not oblige the moral relativist to say that everything is relative, or that there are no facts at all, such as scientific findings, or logical statements. It confines the relativism to the sphere of morality.

We need to make a further distinction. The English moral philosopher Bernard Williams pointed out that there may be a 'logically unhappy attachment' between a morality of toleration, which need not be relative, and moral relativism. Yet here we find a contradiction. If toleration is the result of moral relativism – if I should not contest anyone’s moral stance, because I judge that all such stances are similarly legitimate – I am making a general moral statement, namely: 'Accept everybody’s moral preferences.' However, such generalisation is something the moral relativist claims to avoid.

A potential argument that, superficially, seems to speak for moral relativism is that it can be one of many philosophical devices that helps us to come up with counterarguments to moral positions. Frequently, this will reveal that moral principles which were thought to be universal fail to be fully applicable – or applicable at all – in the particular case. However, this can lead to a false dilemma, suggesting only polar alternatives (either this or that, with no further options in between) when others can be found. The fact that there is a moral counterargument does not have to mean that we are only left with the conclusion that all moral viewpoints are now invalid.

Moral propositions may not have the same degree of certainty as self-evident statements, which cannot be doubted successfully – such as these:

• 'Something is.'

• 'I am currently having a conscious experience.'

These propositions present themselves as immediately true to me, since a) is something in itself, as would be any contestation of the statement, and b) even doubting or denying my conscious experience happens to be just that: a conscious experience.

Rarely do we really find a philosopher who endorses complete moral relativism, maintaining that any moral position is as valid as any other. However, occasionally such relativism slips in by default – when one shrugs off the search for a moral orientation, or deems moral judgements to be mere personal or cultural preferences.

Now and again, then, we might encounter variants of absolute moral relativism, and what we could do is this: acknowledge their value for critical discussion, then take them off the table.

Healthcare ... A Universal Moral Right

A Barber-surgeon practising blood-letting

Posted by Keith Tidman

Is health care a universal moral right — an irrefutably fundamental ‘good’ within society — that all nations ought to provide as faithfully and practically as they can? Is it a right in that all human beings, worldwide, are entitled to share in as a matter of justice, fairness, dignity, and goodness?

To be clear, no one can claim a right to health as such. As a practical matter, it is an unachievable goal — but there is a perceived right to healthcare. Where health and healthcare intersect — that is, where both are foundational to society — is in the realisation that people have a need for both. Among the distinctions, ‘health’ is a result of sundry determinants, access to adequate healthcare being just one. Other determinants comprise behaviours (such as smoking, drug use, and alcohol abuse), access to nutritious and sufficient food and potable water, absence or prevalence of violence or oppression, and rates of criminal activity, among others. And to be sure, people will continue to suffer from health disorders, despite all the best of intentions by science and medicine. ‘Healthcare’, on the other hand, is something society can and does make choices about, largely as a matter of policymaking and access to resources.

The United Nations, in Article 25 of its ‘Universal Declaration of Human Rights’, provides a framework for theories of healthcare’s essential nature:

“Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including . . . medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of . . . sickness . . . in circumstances beyond his [or her] control.”

The challenge is whether and how nations live up to that well-intentioned declaration, in the spirit of protecting the vulnerable.

At a fundamental level, healthcare ethics comprises values — judgments as to what’s right and wrong, including obligations toward the welfare of other human beings. Rights and obligations are routinely woven into the deliberations of policymakers around the world. In practice, a key challenge in ensuring just practices — and figuring out how to divvy up finite (sometimes sorely constrained) material resources and economic benefits — is how society weighs the relative value of competing demands. Those jostling demands are many and familiar: education, industrial advancement, economic growth, agricultural development, security, equality of prosperity, housing, civil peace, environmental conditions — and all the rest of the demands on resources that societies grapple with in order to prioritise spending.

These competing needs are where similar constraints and inequalities of access persist across socioeconomic demographics and groups within and across nations. Some of these needs, besides being important in their own right, also determine — even if sometimes only obliquely — to health and healthcare. Their interconnectedness and interdependence are folded into what one might label ‘entitlements’, aimed at the wellbeing of individuals and whole populations alike. They are eminently relatable, as well as part and parcel of the overarching issue of social fairness and justice.

The current vexed debate over healthcare provision within the United States among policymakers, academics, pundits, the news media, other stakeholders (such as business executives), and the public at large is just one example of how those competing needs collide. It is also evidence of how the nuts and bolts of healthcare policy rapidly become entangled in the frenzy of opposing dogmas.

On the level of ideology, the healthcare debate is a well-trodden one: how much of the solution to the availability and funding of healthcare services should rest with the public sector, including government programming, mandating, regulation, and spending; and how much (with a nod to the laissez-faire philosophy of Adam Smith in support of free markets) should rest with the private sector, incluidng businesses such as insurance companies, hospitals, and doctors? Yet often missing in all this urgency and the decisions about how to ration healthcare is that the money being spent has not resulted in best health outcomes, based on comparison of certain health metrics with select other countries.

Sparring over public-sector versus private-sector solutions to social issues — as well as over states’ rights versus federalism among the constitutionally enumerated powers — has marked American politics for generations. Healthcare has been no exception. And even in a wealthy nation like the United States, challenges in cobbling together healthcare policy have drilled down into a series of consequential factors. They include whether to exclude specified ailments from coverage, whether preexisting conditions get carved out of (affordable) insured coverage, whether to impose annual or lifetime limits on protections, how much of the nation's gross domestic product to consign to healthcare, and how many tens of millions of people might remain without healthcare or be ominously underinsured, among more — precariously resting on arbitrary decisions. True reform might require starting with a blank slate, then cherry-picking from among other countries’ models of healthcare policy, based on their lessons learned as to what did and did not work over many years. Ideas as to America’s national healthcare are still on the anvil, being hammered by Congress and others into final policy.

Amid all this policy ‘sausage making’, there’s the political sleight-of-hand rhetoric that misdirects by acts of either commission or omission within debates. Yet, do the uninsured still have a moral right to affordable healthcare? Do the underinsured still have a moral right to healthcare? Do people with preexisting conditions still have a moral right to healthcare? Do people who are older, but who do not yet qualify for age-related Medicare protections, have a moral right to healthcare? Absolutely, on all counts. The moral right to healthcare — within society’s financial means — is universal, irreducible, non-dilutable; that is, no authority may discount or deny the moral right of people to at least basic healthcare provision. Within that philosophical context of morally rightful access to healthcare, the bucket of healthcare services provided will understandably vary wildly, from one country to another, pragmatically contingent on how wealthy or poor a country is.

Of course, the needs, perceptions, priorities — and solutions — surrounding the matter of healthcare differ quite dramatically among countries. And to be clear, there’s no imperative that the provision of effective, efficient, fair healthcare services hinge on liberally democratic, Enlightenment-inspired forms of government. Apart from these or other styles of governance, there’s more fundamentally no alternative to local sovereignty in shaping policy. Consider another example of healthcare policy: the distinctly different countries of sub-Saharan Africa pose an interesting case. The value of available and robust healthcare systems is as readily recognized in this part of the world as elsewhere. However, there has been a broadly articulated belief that the healthcare provided is of poor quality. Also, healthcare is considered less important among competing national priorities — such as jobs, agriculture, poverty, corruption, and conflict, among others. Yet, surely the right to healthcare is no less essential to these many populations.

Everything is finite, of course, and healthcare resources are no exception. The provision of healthcare is subject to zero-sum budgeting: the availability of funds for healthcare must compete with the tug of providing other services — from education to defence, from housing to environmental protections, from commerce to energy, from agriculture to transportation. This reality complicates the role of government in its trying to be socially fair and responsive. Yet, it remains incumbent on governments to forge the best healthcare system that circumstances allow. Accordingly, limited resources compel nations to take a fair, rational, nondiscriminatory approach to prioritising who gets what by way of healthcare services, which medical disorders to target at the time of allocation, and how society should reasonably be expected to shoulder the burden of service delivery and costs.

As long ago as the 17th century, René Descartes declared that:

‘... the conservation of health . . . is without doubt the primary good and the foundation of all other goods of this life’. 

However, how much societies spend, and how they decide who gets what share of the available healthcare capital, are questions that continue to divide. The endgame may be summed up, to follow in the spirit of the 18th-century English philosopher Jeremy Bentham, as ‘the greatest happiness for the greatest number [of people]’ for the greatest return on investment of public and private funds dedicated to healthcare. How successfully public and private institutions — in their thinking about resources, distribution, priorities, and obligations — mobilise and agitate for greater commitment comes with implied decisions, moral and practical, about good health to be maintained or restored, lives to be saved, and general wellbeing to be sustained.

Policymakers, in channeling their nations’ integrity and conscience, are pulled in different directions by competing social imperatives. At a macro level, depending on the country, these may include different mixes of crises of the moment, political and social disorder, the shifting sands of declared ideological purity, challenges to social orthodoxy, or attention to simply satiating raw urges for influence (chasing power). In that brew of prioritisation and conflict, policymakers may struggle in coming to grips with what’s ‘too many’ or ‘too few’ resources to devote to healthcare rather than other services and perceived commitments. Decisions must take into account that healthcare is multidimensional: a social, political, economics, humanities, and ethics matter holistically rolled into one. Therefore, some models for providing healthcare turn out to be more responsible, responsive, and accountable than others. These concerns make it all the more vital for governments, institutions, philanthropic organizations, and businesses to collaborate in policymaking, public outreach, program implementation, gauging of outcomes, and decisions about change going forward.

A line is thus often drawn between healthcare needs and other national needs — with the tensions of altruism and self-interest opposed. The distinctions between decisions and actions deemed altruistic and those deemed self-interested are blurred since they must hinge on motives, which are not always transparent. In some cases, actions taken to provide healthcare nationally serve both purposes — for example, what might improve healthcare, and in turn health, on one front (continent, nation, local community) may well keep certain health disorders from another front.

The ground-level aspiration is to maintain people’s health, treat the ill, and crucially, not financially burden families, because what’s not affordable to families in effect doesn’t really exist. That nobly said, there will always be tiered access to healthcare — steered by the emptiness or fullness of coffers, political clout, effectiveness of advocacy, sense of urgency, disease burden, and beneficiaries. Tiered access prompts questions about justice, standards, and equity in healthcare’s administration — as well as about government discretion and compassion. Matters of fairness and equity are more abstract, speculative metrics than are actual healthcare outcomes with respect to a population’s wellbeing, yet the two are inseperable.

Some three centuries after Descartes’ proclamation in favour of health as ‘the primary good’, the United Nations issued to the world the ‘International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights’ and thereby placing its imprimatur on ‘the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health’. The world has made headway, where many nations have instituted intricate, encompassing healthcare systems for their own populations, while also collaborating with the governments and local communities of financially stressed nations to undergird treatments through financial aid, program design and implementation, resource distribution, teaching of indigenous populations (and local service providers), setting up of healthcare facilities, provision of preventions and cures, follow-up as to program efficacy, and accountability of responsible parties.

In short, the overarching aim is to convert ethical axioms into practical, implementable social policies and programs.

The Philosophy of Jokes

I say, I say, I say...

Posted by Martin Cohen

Ludwig Wittgenstein, that splendidly dour 20th century philosopher, usually admired for trying to make language more logical, once remarked, in his earnest Eastern European way, that a very serious work, or zery serieuse, verk in philosophy could consist entirely of jokes. 

Now Wittgenstein probably meant to shock his audience which consisted of his American friend, Norman Malcolm (who he also once, advised to avoid an academic career and to work instead on a farm) but he was also in deadly earnest. Because, humour is, as he also is on record as saying, ‘not a mood, but a way of looking at the world’. Understanding jokes, just like understanding the world, hinges on having first adopted the right kind of perspective.

So here's one to test his idea out on.

‘A traveler is staying at a monastery, where the Order has a vow of silence and can only speak at the evening meal. On his first night as they are eating, one of the monks stands up and shouts ‘Twenty two!’. Immediately the rest of the monks break out into raucous laughter. Then they return to new silence. A little while later, another shouts out ‘One hundred and ten’, to even more uproarious mirth. This goes on for two more nights with no real conversation, just different numbers being shouted out, followed by ribald laughing and much downing of ale. At last, no longer able to contain his curiosity the traveler asks the Abbot what it is all about. The Abbot explains that the monastery has only one non-religious book in it, which consists of a series of jokes each headed with its own number. Since all the monks know them by heart, instead of telling the jokes they just call out the number. 

Hearing this, the traveler decides to have a look at the book for himself. He goes to the library and carefully makes a note of the numbers of the funniest jokes. Then, that evening he stands up and calls out the number of his favourite joke – which is ‘seventy six’. But nobody laughs, instead there is an embarrassed silence. The next night he tries again, ‘One hundred and thirteen!’, he exclaims loudly into the silence - but still no response. 

After the meal he asks the Abbott if the jokes he picked were not considered funny by the monks? ‘Ooh no’, says the Abbott. ‘The jokes are funny – it’s just that some people just don't know how to tell them!’

I like that one! And incredibly, it is one of the oldest jokes around. This, we might say, is a joke with a pedigree. A version of it appears in the Philogelos, or Laughter Lover, which is a collection of some 265 jokes, written in Greek and compiled some 1,600 odd years ago. So it’s old. Nevertheless, despite its antiquity, the style of this and at least some of the other jokes is very familiar.

Clearly, humour is something that transcends communities and periods in history. It seems to draw on something common to all peoples. Yet jokes are also clearly things rooted in their times and places. At the time of this joke, monks and secret books were serious business. But the first philosophical observation to make and principle to note is that both these jokes involved one of those ‘ah-ha!’ moments.

Humour often involves a sudden, unexpected shift in perspective forcing a rapid reassessment of assumptions. Philosophy, at its best, does much the same thing.

The Pleasures of Idle Thought?

Posted by John Hansen

What is the purpose of thought?  This was the focus of a monumental series of essays, chiefly written by the English lexicographer and essayist Dr. Samuel Johnson.  His essays, however, had a sting in the tail.

During the years 1758 to 1760, the Universal Chronicle published 103 weekly essays, of which 91 were written by Dr. Johnson.  These proved to be enormously popular.  The subject of the essays was a fictional character called The Idler, whose aspiration it was to engage in the pleasures of idle thought, to “keep the mind in a state of action but not labour”. Among other things, Dr. Johnson contemplates the many forms that idleness of thought can take – of which we describe a sample here: 

• There is the kind of Idler, Dr. Johnson begins, who carries idleness as a “silent and peaceful quality, that neither raises envy by ostentation, nor hatred by opposition”.  His life will be less dreadful and more peaceful if he refrains from any serious engagement with matters, and yet he should not “languish for want of amusement”.  He needs the beguilement of ideas.

• There is the Idler, too, who is on the point of more serious thought, yet “always in a state of preparation”.  It cannot fully be classified as idleness, since he is constantly forming plans and accumulating materials for the “main affair”.  But perhaps he fears failure, or he is simply captivated by the methods of preparation.  The main affair never arrives.

• Then there is the Idler who, in his idleness, begins to feel the stirring of a certain unease.  He fills his days with petty business, and while he does so productively, yet he does not “lie quite at rest”.  When he retires from his business to be alone, he discovers little comfort.  His thoughts “do not make him sufficiently useful to others”, and make him “weary of himself”.

• In fact, in time, there is the Idler who begins to tremble at the thought that he must go home, so that friends may sleep. At this time, “all the world agrees to shut out interruption”.  While his favourite pastime has been to shut out inner reflection, yet such inner reflection now seems to press in on him from all sides.

• As life nears its end, there is the Idler who fears the end, yet in continuing idleness of thought, he seeks to ignore the fact that each moment brings him closer to his demise.  He now finds that his idle thoughts have trapped him.  His own mortality is disconcerting, yet something which he has never known how to face before.

• In his final essay, which is written in a “solemn week” of the Church – a week of “the review of life” and “the renovation of holy purposes” – Dr. Johnson expresses the hope that “my readers are already disposed to view every incident with seriousness and improve it by meditation”.  Any other approach to thought will finally be self-defeating.

There are many, writes Dr. Johnson, who when they finally understand this, find that it is too late for them to capture the moments lost.  The last good gesture of The Idler is to warn his readers that the hour may be at hand when “probation ceases and repentance will be vain”.  Idleness of thought is not after all as innocent as it seems.  It comes back to bite you.  The purpose of thought, then, is ultimately to engage with life’s biggest questions.

It seems a remarkable achievement that Dr. Johnson apparently held an overview of about 100 essays in his head, which followed a meaningful progression over a period of three full years.  These essays continue to provoke and inspire today.  All but one – which was thought to be seditious – were bound into a single volume. An edition which is still in print and still being read by “Idlers” today is recommended below.

---

Read more:

Johnson, Samuel. “The Idler.” Samuel Johnson: Selected Poetry and Prose, edited by Frank Brady and W.K. Wimsatt, University of California Press, Ltd., 1977, 241-75.

By the same author:

Eastern and Western Philosophy: Personal Identity.