A recent discussion of the value of moral absolutes has led me to take a closer look at my personal philosophy and to try to define where it lies within the standard moral views. This will probably remain an ongoing work in progress.

Moral Absolutism

This holds that there is a single, universal moral standard that cuts across all cultures. This idea runs into some problems. First, some moral concepts may not make any sense in certain cultural contexts. A culture that has no concept of personal property cannot have theft being immoral. Whether saving face (your own or another’s) is a moral imperative would depend to a considerable degree on the degree of value your society placed on the concept of “face”. Secondly, the question remains of whose single moral standard is imposed. This is generally answered by reference to the morality imposed by a postulated creator. In fact many make the ludicrous claim that morality is impossible without belief in and fear of said creator. An obvious counterexample is Confucianism. Even acceptance of a creator may be insufficient for a single moral standard. Let us take the sixth commandment “Thou shalt not kill”: Hardly a moral absolute. My disagreement of moral absolutism is threefold:
  1. my belief system does not come with a set of moral absolutes predefined
  2. further, as a Taoist/Discordian, I do not believe in absolute truths in general
  3. I find it hard to find a set of prospective moral absolutes that are sufficiently sensible and pervasive to adopt absolutely.

Moral Relativism

This would appear to be the obvious alternative to Moral Absolutism. Moral Relativism holds that morality is defined by culture. From this two conclusions tend to be drawn:
  1. that one culture cannot judge the morality of another culture's moral code; and
  2. that it is ok to define your own moral system (including a total lack of morality).
Taken to the extreme, this seems to be an absurdity. It claims equal validity for all moral codes, no matter how dysfunctional or bizarre.

Modified Moral Relativism

I would therefore like to propose the following view of Moral Relativism:
  1. Whilst moralities vary across cultures, certain moral dictates tend to be pervasive and serve a clear and necessary function in preserving society (e.g. some sort of prohibition on killing). These can therefore, in a generalised sense, serve as the basis of a functional moral code.
  2. Some degree of variation of moral code across cultures, subcultures and individuals is normal, and even in some circumstances necessary.
  3. This variation will lead to a degree of bias in judging others' moral code.
  4. However some cultures, subcultures or individuals may be sufficiently dysfunctional that their moral code is likewise dysfunctional. It is therefore not always unreasonable to pass judgement on another's code.
  5. The validity of these judgments of dysfunctionality may however be affected to some degree by your own bias.
In essense, I am proposing a middle ground between Absolute Absolutism and Absolute Relativism. I suspect that this is how most people actually live their lives most of the time. They merely ascribe to Absolutism or Relativism in order to maintain the option to arbitrarily impose their values on others, or avoid making reasonable and necessary judgements, respectively.

Rights, Human and Otherwise

Morality is a method by which an individual or a culture adjudicates conflicting interests. Some of these interests are considered to be sufficiently important that they are termed "rights". These rights may be ascribed to individuals pervasively (human rights), conditionally (e.g. parental rights, citizenship) and to non-humans (e.g. animals rights and rights of notional individuals, e.g. corporations).

These rights yield two important questions: what rights to grant and who to grant them to?

What is human?

What constitutes human, from the viewpoint of ascribing rights? The most obvious answer is purely biological, any member of species Homo Sapiens. This definition is however problematical, as it would deny rights to any hypothetical non-human sentience (be it alien or artificial), and as it ascribes rights to entities that lack any meaningful personhood or ability to exercise rights (e.g. a person in a persistent vegetative state or a zygote).

Abortion - the “Right to Life”

I hold the concept that human rights and especially the "Right to Life" begins at conception to be absurd. This ascribes rights to a single cell. The only rationale for so ascribing would appear to be religious beliefs, but even here the main group upholding this viewpoint, conservative Christians, would appear to be on unstable ground. In spite of the fact that abortion existed in Biblical times there is no direct Biblical prohibition against abortion. The closest that Christian Anti-abortion lobby appear to be able to come up with is Exodus 21:22 which lists the penalty for an assault on a woman leading her to miscarry to be a fine. This is hardly equating abortion with murder.

Suicide and Voluntary Euthanasia - the “Right to Die”

Beyond religious convictions, there would appear to be no reason for a society to forbid, outright, a person from taking their own right. It would however have legitimate reasons for ensuring that this outcome is only a last resort and not coerced.

Capital Punishment - the “Right to Kill”

I can see a number of arguments against capital punishment:

“A Just War”

Is war ever justified? Warfare is one of the most horrific acts that humanity can visit on its fellows. As such, I would argue that it is only justified as an act of self-defense.