WEBVTT Kind: captions Language: en-GB 00:00:07.020 --> 00:00:19.400 Well, relativism— the simplest kind of relativism— is the view that truth is relative to individuals 00:00:19.400 --> 00:00:25.140 or at least to communities or cultures. So what’s true for one may be false for another, 00:00:25.140 --> 00:00:31.140 what’s true for one community may be false for another. There is no “Truth” with 00:00:31.140 --> 00:00:37.920 a capital T, there are many ‘truths’. So people will sometimes say “well that 00:00:37.920 --> 00:00:44.370 may be true for you but it’s not true for me”. And in its simplest form, relativism 00:00:44.370 --> 00:00:51.080 is the argument that the truth is whatever we believe it to be. So if one individual 00:00:51.080 --> 00:00:57.440 believes this is true, then for that individual, it is true! You don’t just believe it, it’s 00:00:57.440 --> 00:01:01.770 true. For this other individual, they believe it’s not true- therefore, it’s not true, 00:01:01.770 --> 00:01:08.030 and there’s no fact of the matter, as to which of these beliefs is correct. Not many 00:01:08.030 --> 00:01:14.840 relativists are relativists about all truth, they are not relativists when it comes to 00:01:14.840 --> 00:01:20.619 historical truths or mathematical truths. Usually they restrict the range of relativism 00:01:20.619 --> 00:01:26.240 to moral truths; they are moral relativists. They think that that there is no fact of the 00:01:26.240 --> 00:01:33.109 matter, no truth with a capital T, when it comes to the wrongness of female circumcision, 00:01:33.109 --> 00:01:38.149 if people in North Africa think that is morally desirable, then it’s true- for them, it 00:01:38.149 --> 00:01:44.359 is morally desirably— for Westerners, it's morally objectionable, if that's what they 00:01:44.359 --> 00:01:49.320 believe well then that’s true, well then there’s no Truth with a capital T as far 00:01:49.320 --> 00:02:00.031 as the rightness or wrongness of female circumcision is concerned. That’s moral relativism. There 00:02:00.031 --> 00:02:08.330 are various problems with moral relativism. One obvious objection you can raise is that 00:02:08.330 --> 00:02:17.040 it makes us infallible, morally speaking. I mean, surely, conceptually, it's possible 00:02:17.040 --> 00:02:23.770 for us to make mistakes morally speaking? As individuals, we can get things wrong. Or 00:02:23.770 --> 00:02:29.860 at least as communities, as cultures, we can get things wrong. We used to think that slavery 00:02:29.860 --> 00:02:35.010 was morally acceptable, and now we don’t; we realise that previously we were mistaken 00:02:35.010 --> 00:02:41.320 about that. Well, if relativism is true, then we never, we don't get things wrong, because 00:02:41.320 --> 00:02:46.200 the truth is whatever we believe it to be! So when we believe that slavery was morally 00:02:46.200 --> 00:02:51.620 acceptable, that was true, it was! That was a fact, if you like! In fact if you think 00:02:51.620 --> 00:02:56.870 through the consequences of moral relativism, you can see, to pick the most cliched example, 00:02:56.870 --> 00:03:02.710 you end up having to say something like ‘if moral truth is relative to community, the 00:03:02.710 --> 00:03:10.180 Nazis are a community, if mass-murdering Jews is considered morally acceptable by Nazis 00:03:10.180 --> 00:03:15.070 well for them it’s true that it is and who are we to judge?’ You’re going to end 00:03:15.070 --> 00:03:24.780 up endorsing that position which, frankly, no one is prepared to endorse, I take it. 00:03:24.780 --> 00:03:29.750 Along with relativism, you sometimes find a form of non-judgementalism- the view that 00:03:29.750 --> 00:03:36.930 it is wrong to judge those who have other moral points of view. And then added to that 00:03:36.930 --> 00:03:41.880 is the thought that it’s then wrong to point the finger at these other cultures and say 00:03:41.880 --> 00:03:45.060 ‘no that’s wrong, you shouldn't be doing that’. There’s an obvious problem with 00:03:45.060 --> 00:03:50.600 that kind of non-judgementalism, insofar that relativists are now pointing the finger at 00:03:50.600 --> 00:03:54.530 you and telling you that you’re doing something you shouldn't be doing, they’re making a 00:03:54.530 --> 00:04:00.130 moral judgement about you, they’re doing the very thing you shouldn’t be doing. So 00:04:00.130 --> 00:04:06.610 there’s an inconsistency in their position. 00:04:06.610 --> 00:04:13.610 Humanists tend to emphasise the importance of reasoning when it comes to morality. You 00:04:13.610 --> 00:04:17.750 should think carefully about what you believe, morally speaking, you should subject your 00:04:17.750 --> 00:04:25.729 views to close critical scrutiny; and in this way we can make moral progress. Well, you 00:04:25.729 --> 00:04:29.690 can't really hold that view if you're a moral relativist, because the view that you end 00:04:29.690 --> 00:04:35.139 up with after engaging in all that critical thinking won’t be any more true than the 00:04:35.139 --> 00:04:38.439 one you started with. They are both going to be equally true, as long as you believe 00:04:38.439 --> 00:04:44.050 its true. So if you think as a Humanist, and you probably do think this as a Humanist, 00:04:44.050 --> 00:04:49.039 that actually we can get closer to the truth, by thinking critically about morality, then 00:04:49.039 --> 00:04:52.099 again you can’t really sign up to moral relativism.