H2 Knowledge and Inquiry — Moral Disagreements (27/30)

‘The presence of moral disagreements shows us that morality is completely subjective.’ Discuss. [RI Y6 CT 2023] In an increasingly polarised global landscape, it appears that moral disagreements are everywhere — we seem to lack a universal consensus on a whole host of thorny ethical dilemmas, from abortion to gene editing. While relativists might argue that the existence of pervasive moral debate points to the wholly subjective nature of moral judgements, they often fail to consider the limited extent of disagreement, as well as the implicitly universalist conception of morality that fuels moral debate in the first place. Ultimately, the existence of ethical disagreements suggests not that morality is subjective, but rather that it is incomplete — an unfortunate reality necessitated by the extremely high justificatory threshold that moral claims need to meet to constitute moral knowledge. For the moral relativist, moral disagreements ostensibly point to the inevitable subjectivity that percolates into morality. The first kind of moral disagreement they point to is moral disagreement over time — indeed, it appears that our moral knowledge evolves with the ages, making our systems of morality at different times hopelessly contradictory. For instance, for much of human history, it was considered morally acceptable to marry one’s relatives — incestuous intermarriages were commonplace in European royal families, leading to genetic abnormalities like the Habsburg jaw appearing. However, such incestuous relations would be considered sinful and immoral by modern standards of morality, revealing that moral systems can evolve over time and create disagreements. Similarly, homosexual conduct was considered immoral across much of Western Europe up to the 20th century, but many in those countries today consider it a morally acceptable lifestyle to lead. As such, it appears that we do not have a fixed, unchanging conception of morality — moral codes and standards appear to change depending on the era, making them ostensibly subjective to the specific age of history. Relativists also highlight the existence of moral disagreement across societies and cultures — indeed, some practices could be regarded as perfectly acceptable in some cultures and deeply immoral in others. Consider the example of honour killings —

while many Western cultures consider the individual’s right to life to be a fundamental one, some cultures in the Middle East believe that such a right is overridden by the duty to protect the honour and dignity of one’s family, making it morally acceptable or even necessary to kill those who have brought shame and disgrace into their families. As such, our cultural upbringing appears to heavily influence our moral judgements, rendering morality relative to each society and ultimately a subjective concept. However, such a position perhaps overstates the extent of moral disagreements in society — there are a whole host of issues on which we manage to ach