## 1. Historical Background



Though moral relativism did not become a prominent topic in philosophy
or elsewhere until the twentieth century, it has ancient origins. In
the classical Greek world, both the historian Herodotus and the
sophist Protagoras appeared to endorse some form of relativism (the
latter attracted the attention of Plato in the *Theaetetus*).
It should also be noted that the ancient Chinese Daoist philosopher
Zhuangzi put forward a nonobjectivist view that is sometimes
interpreted as a kind of relativism.



Among the ancient Greek philosophers, moral diversity was widely
acknowledged, but the more common nonobjectivist reaction was moral
skepticism, the view that there is no moral knowledge (the position of
the Pyrrhonian skeptic Sextus Empiricus), rather than moral
relativism, the view that moral truth or justification is relative to
a culture or society. This pattern continued through most of the
history of Western philosophy. There were certainly occasional
discussions of moral disagreement--for example in Michel de
Montaigne's *Essays* or in the dialogue David Hume
attached to *An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals*.
These discussions pertained to moral objectivity, but moral relativism
as a thesis explicitly distinguished from moral skepticism ordinarily
was not in focus. Prior to the twentieth century, moral philosophers
did not generally feel obliged to defend a position on moral
relativism.



Nonetheless, the increased awareness of moral diversity (especially
between Western and non-Western cultures) on the part of Europeans in
the modern era is an important antecedent to the contemporary concern
with moral relativism. During this time, the predominant view among
Europeans and their colonial progeny was that their moral values were
superior to the moral values of other cultures. Few thought all moral
values had equal or relative validity, or anything of that sort. The
main impetus for such a position came from cultural anthropology.
Anthropologists were fascinated with the diversity of cultures, and
they produced detailed empirical studies of them--especially
"primitive," non-Western ones. At the beginning
anthropologists accepted the assumption of European or Western
superiority. But this assumption began to be challenged in the
twentieth century, especially by some social scientists in the United
States. An early dissent came from the sociologist William Graham
Sumner, who proposed a version of moral relativism in his 1906
*Folkways*. But the most influential challenge originated with
the anthropologist Franz Boas. He and his students--in
particular, Ruth Benedict, Melville J. Herskovits, and Margaret
Mead--explicitly articulated influential forms of moral
relativism in the first half of the twentieth century. In 1947, on the
occasion of the United Nations debate about universal human rights,
the American Anthropological Association issued a statement declaring
that moral values are relative to cultures and that there is no way of
showing that the values of one culture are better than those of
another. Anthropologists have never been unanimous in asserting this,
and more recently human rights advocacy on the part of some
anthropologists has mitigated the relativist orientation of the
discipline. Nonetheless, prominent anthropologists such as Richard A.
Shweder and the late Clifford Geertz have defended relativist
positions in recent years.



An important early bridge from anthropology to philosophy was
established by Edward Westermarck (1906-8 and 1932), a social
scientist who wrote anthropological and philosophical works defending
forms of empirical as well as metaethical moral relativism. In the
latter half of the 20th century, moral philosophers began devoting
considerable attention to moral relativism and some--most notably
Richard B. Brandt (1954) and John Ladd (1957)--took quite
seriously the empirical effort of anthropology to understand the
moralities of different cultures, to the point of making such
empirical inquiries themselves (an anticipation of the recent emphasis
on experimental philosophy, to be discussed in
 section 3).
 In the past several decades there has been increasing consideration
of moral relativism, and there is now an enormous literature on the
subject (the Bibliography below is very limited). Most of these
discussions are situated in the domain of "pure
metaethics," but not all. For example, there is considerable
work on moral relativism in connection with human rights (Donnelly
2013, part 2 and Okin 1998), political philosophy (Accetti 2015,
Bilgrami 2011 and Long 2004) and feminist philosophy (Code 1995
and Khader 2019). There are also discussions of moral relativism in
applied fields such as medical ethics (Earp 2016).


## 2. Forms and Arguments



In general, the term 'relativism' refers to many different
ideas. For example, in anthropology it sometimes connotes, among other
things, the rather uncontroversial notion that anthropologists should
strive to be impartial and unprejudiced in their empirical inquires.
However, in moral philosophy 'relativism' is usually taken
to suggest an empirical, a metaethical, or a normative position. The
empirical position is usually:



> 
> *Descriptive Moral Relativism* (*DMR*). As a matter of
> empirical fact, there are deep and widespread moral disagreements
> across different societies, and these disagreements are much more
> significant than whatever agreements there may be.
> 



Sometimes what is emphasized is moral diversity rather than strict
disagreement. *DMR* is often thought to have been established
by anthropology and other empirical disciplines. However, it is not
uncontroversial: Empirical as well as philosophical objections have
been raised against it. Hence, it is one focal point of debate.



The metaethical position usually concerns the truth or justification
of moral judgments, and it has been given somewhat different
definitions. Metaethical relativists generally suppose that many
fundamental moral disagreements cannot be rationally resolved, and on
this basis they argue that moral judgments lack the moral authority or
normative force that moral objectivists usually contend these
judgments may have. Hence, metaethical relativism is in part a
negative thesis that challenges the claims of moral objectivists.
However, it often involves a positive thesis as well, namely that
moral judgments nonetheless have moral authority or normative force,
not absolutely or universally (as objectivists contend), but relative
to some group of persons such as a society or culture. This point is
typically made with respect to truth or justification (or both), and
the following definition will be a useful reference point:



> 
> *Metaethical Moral Relativism* (*MMR*). The truth or
> falsity of moral judgments, or their justification, is not absolute or
> universal, but is relative to the traditions, convictions, or
> practices of a group of persons.
> 



With respect to truth-value, this means that a moral judgment such as
'Polygamy is morally wrong' may be true relative to one
society, but false relative to another. It is not true, or false,
simply speaking. Likewise, with respect to justification, this
judgment may be justified in one society, but not another. Taken in
one way, this last point is uncontroversial: The people in one society
may have different evidence available to them than the people in the
other society. But proponents of *MMR* usually have something
stronger and more provocative in mind: That the standards of
justification in the two societies may differ from one another and
that there is no rational basis for resolving these differences. This
is why the justification of moral judgments is relative rather than
absolute.



In recent years, there has been a proliferation of different
formulations of relativism (for discussion of some of these, see
Fricker 2013, Krausz 2011 and Lopez de Sa 2011). It is
important to note several distinctions that may be made in formulating
different metaethical relativist positions. First, a distinction is
sometimes drawn between content relativism, the view that sentences
may have different contents (meanings) in different frameworks, and
truth relativism, the view that sentences have the same content in
different frameworks, but their truth-value may vary across these
frameworks (for a discussion of this distinction in terms of moral
relativism, see Prinz 2007: 180-3). In the discussions that follow,
truth relativism is ordinarily assumed. Second, it is sometimes said
that the truth or justification of moral judgments may be relative to
an individual person as well as a group of persons. In this article,
the latter will be assumed, as in the definition of *MMR*,
unless otherwise noted. Third, that to which truth or justification is
relative may be the persons making the moral judgments or the persons
about whom the judgments are made. These are sometimes called
appraiser and agent relativism respectively. Appraiser relativism
suggests that we do or should make moral judgments on the basis of our
own standards, while agent relativism implies that the relevant
standards are those of the persons we are judging (of course, in some
cases these may coincide). Appraiser relativism is the more common
position, and it will usually be assumed in the discussion that
follows. Finally, *MMR* may be offered as the best explanation
of what people already believe, or it may be put forward as a position
people ought to accept regardless of what they now believe. There will
be occasion to discuss both claims below, though the latter is
probably the more common one.



Metaethical moral relativist positions are typically contrasted with
moral objectivism. Let us say that moral objectivism maintains that
moral judgments are ordinarily true or false in an absolute or
universal sense, that some of them are true, and that people sometimes
are justified in accepting true moral judgments (and rejecting false
ones) on the basis of evidence available to any reasonable and
well-informed person. There are different ways of challenging moral
objectivism. Moral skepticism says that we are never justified in
accepting or rejecting moral judgments. Other views--variously
called moral non-cognitivism, expressivism, anti-realism, nihilism,
etc.--contend that moral judgments lack truth-value, at least
beyond the truth-value implied by the minimalist claim that to assert
that S is true is simply to assert S (a related view, the error
theory, claims that moral judgments are always false). *MMR* is
often distinguished from all of these views: Instead of denying
truth-value or justification, it affirms relative forms of these.
However, metaethical moral relativist views are sometimes regarded as
connected with positions that say moral judgments lack truth-value,
since the relativist views contend that moral judgments lack
truth-value in an absolute or universal sense. This is sometimes
simply a question of terminology, but not always. If it is said that
moral judgments lack truth-value (beyond the claim of minimalism),
then there cannot be relative truth-value in the sense that moral
relativists usually intend (though it might be contended that there is
a sense in which there could still be justification). As will be seen
below, there is a debate about the relationship between *MMR*
and non-cognitivist or expressivist positions.



Most arguments for *MMR* are based on *DMR* and the
contention that it is implausible to suppose fundamental moral
disagreements can always be resolved rationally (for overviews of
these arguments, see Plakias 2020 and Seipel 2020b). Sometimes it is
said that some moral disagreements are faultless, meaning that neither
party has made a mistake (see Kolbel 2004). For instance, Harman
(1996), Prinz (2007) and Wong (1984 and 2006) have all stressed the
importance of moral disagreements in arguing for *MMR*, and
such arguments will be considered in some detail in subsequent
sections. However, some arguments for *MMR* have a rather
different approach, and two of these should be noted here.



First, *MMR* might be defended as a consequence of the general
relativist thesis that the truth or justification of *all*
judgments is not absolute or universal, but relative to some group of
persons. For example, this general position might be maintained on the
ground that each society has its own conceptual framework and that
conceptual frameworks are incommensurable with one another. Hence, we
can only speak of truth or justification in relative terms (see the
discussion of incommensurability in the Summer 2015 archived version
of the entry on
 relativism
 (section 4.2)). This position might be thought to have the
disadvantage that it can only be put forward as true or justified
relative to some conceptual framework (the suggestion is usually that
this framework is our own), and many find it implausible with regard
to common sense judgments and judgments in the natural sciences.
However, this is one avenue to *MMR*. But most proponents of
*MMR* focus on distinctive features of morality and reject
general relativism. In fact, they often contrast morality and science
with respect to issues of truth and justification. For example, Harman
(2000b), Prinz (2007) and Wong (1996 and 2006) all associate moral
relativism with naturalism, a position that usually presupposes the
objectivity of the natural sciences.



Second, a metaethical moral relativist position might be defended by
emphasizing aspects of morality other than disagreement. For example,
Rovane (2011 and 2013) has maintained that relativism is best
understood, not as a response to disagreement, but as a response to
alternative conceptual schemes that portray different worlds that are
normatively insulated from one another. On this account, the
truth-bearers in one world are not logically related to the
truth-bearers in another world (so there cannot be strict
disagreement), and yet it is not possible to embrace both worlds (so
they are alternatives). Rovane argues that in the moral domain, but
not in the domain of the natural sciences, there may be different
worlds in this sense. Hence, a moral judgment may be true for the
occupant of one world, but not for the occupant of another. An
implication of this view, she says, is that learning and teaching
across different moral worlds might not be possible.



In a partially similar view, Velleman (2015) has claimed, on the basis
of ethnographic and historical data, that different communities
construct available action types differently. Moreover, reasons for
action are always dependent on the perspective of the particular
community since they arise out of the drive for mutual
interpretability needed for social life within the community. Hence,
there are no perspective-independent reasons. There cannot be
straight-forward disagreement across these communities because they do
not have common sets of action types. The communities may nonetheless
address the basic themes of morality, but in incompatible ways given
their different perspectives. So moralities can only have local
validity.



Both Rovane and Velleman stress moral diversity rather than moral
disagreement. They maintain, not that disagreements cannot be
rationally resolved, but that there is no basis for showing that,
among various incompatible alternatives, one is rationally superior to
another.



In addition, it is worth noting that *MMR* is sometimes
justified by appealing in a significant way to a distinctive analysis
of moral judgments in combination with a claim about moral
disagreement. For example, Prinz (2007) argues that what he calls
"moral sentimentalism" implies a form of *MMR* once
we acknowledge moral disagreements. According to moral sentimentalism,
an action is morally right (wrong) if and only if some observer of the
action has a sentiment of approbation (disapprobation) concerning it.
Prinz defends this position on the basis of a metaethical argument
that it is the most plausible account in light of empirical studies
linking moral judgments and emotions. Since people often have
conflicting sentiments about the same action, a judgment of the form
'Action *X* is right' may be true (when expressed
by a person who approves of *X*), and '*X* is
wrong' may also be true (when expressed by a person who
disapproves of *X*). On this view, the truth of such moral
judgments is relative to the sentiments of the persons who make them.
Moral sentimentalism is a crucial feature of this argument and many
philosophers would deny that moral rightness and wrongness depend on
our sentiments in this way. But most arguments for *MMR* are
not based on moral sentimentalism.



In another example, Harman (2000a) argues that a moral judgment that a
person ought to do *X* (an "inner judgment")
implies that the person has motivating reasons to do *X*, and
that a person is likely to have such reasons only if he or she has
implicitly entered into an agreement with others about what to do.
Hence, moral judgments of this kind are valid only for groups of
persons who have made such agreements. An action may be right relative
to one agreement and wrong relative to another (this combines agent
and appraisal relativism insofar as Harman assumes that the person
making the judgment and the person to whom the judgment is addressed
are both parties to the agreement).



Harman's relativism is presented as a thesis about logical form,
but the relativist implication arises only because it is supposed that
the relevant motivating reasons are not universal and so probably
arose from an agreement that some but not all persons have made. In
this sense, moral disagreement is an important feature of the
argument. But the main focus is on the internalist idea that inner
judgments imply motivating reasons, reasons that are not provided
simply by being rational, but require particular desires or intentions
that a person may or may not have. Internalism in this sense is a
controversial view, and many would say that a moral judgment can apply
to a person whether or not that person is motivated to follow it (see
the section on 'Psychological: Moral Motivation' in the
entry on
 moral epistemology).
 However, internalism is not a standard feature of most arguments for
moral relativism, and in fact some relativists are critical of
internalism (for example, see Wong 2006: ch. 7)



It is worth noting that internalism is one expression of a more
general viewpoint that emphasizes the action-guiding character of
moral judgments. Though Harman and others (for example, Dreier 1990
and 2006) have argued that a form of moral relativism provides the
best explanation of internalism, a more common argument has been that
the action-guiding character of moral judgments is best explained by a
non-cognitivist or expressivist account according to which moral
judgments lack truth-value (at least beyond the claim of minimalism).
In fact, some have claimed that the expressivist position avoids, and
is superior to, moral relativism because it accounts for the
action-guiding character of moral judgments without taking on the
problems that moral relativism is thought to involve (for instance,
see Blackburn 1998: ch. 9 and 1999, and Horgan and Timmons 2006). By
contrast, others have maintained that positions such as
non-cognitivism and expressivism are committed to a form of moral
relativism (for example, see Bloomfield 2003, Foot 2002b, and
Shafer-Landau 2003: ch 1). For an assessment of this debate, see
Miller 2011, and for a discussion of non-cognitivism and related
positions, see the entry on
 moral cognitivism vs. non-cognitivism.



Finally, the term 'moral relativism' is sometimes
associated with a normative position concerning how we ought to think
about, or behave towards, persons with whom we morally disagree.
Usually the position is formulated in terms of tolerance. In
particular, it is said that we should not interfere with the actions
of persons that are based on moral judgments we reject, when the
disagreement is not or cannot be rationally resolved. This is thought
to apply especially to relationships between our society and those
societies with which we have significant moral disagreements. Since
tolerance so-understood is a normative thesis about what we morally
ought to do, it is best regarded, not as a form of moral relativism
*per se*, but as a thesis that has often been thought to be
implied by relativist positions such as *DMR* and *MMR*.
Despite the popularity of this thought, most philosophers believe it
is mistaken. The main question is what philosophical relationship, if
any, obtains between moral relativism and tolerance.



The remainder of this entry will discuss *DMR*, the contention
that it is unlikely that fundamental moral disagreements can be
rationally resolved, arguments for and challenges to *MMR*,
mixed positions that combine moral relativism and moral objectivism,
and the relationship between moral relativism and tolerance. But first
there needs to be some consideration of the recent contributions of
experimental philosophy to these discussions.


## 3. Experimental Philosophy



Experimental philosophy is an approach to philosophy that explicitly
draws on experimental knowledge established by the sciences to address
philosophical questions (see the entry on
 experimental moral philosophy).
 There are three significant ways in which experimental philosophy has
played an important role in discussions of moral relativism. These
concern the extent to which there is moral disagreement or moral
diversity among people (that is, *DMR*), the extent to which
folk morality is committed to an objectivist or relativist
understanding of moral judgments (that is, the views of ordinary
people concerning *MMR*), and the extent to which acceptance of
moral relativism affects moral attitudes such as tolerance (that is,
ways in which views concerning *MMR* causally influence whether
or not people have tolerant attitudes).



The first of these has a long history in discussions of moral
relativism and in fact may be considered one of the earliest instances
of experimental moral philosophy. As was seen in
 section 1,
 for more than a century the work of anthropologists and other social
scientists has contributed to the development of thought about moral
relativism, both by purporting to provide empirical evidence for
extensive cross-cultural disagreement and diversity about morality,
and by proposing the notion that moral codes are true only relative to
a culture as the best explanation of this. That is, these scientists
have provided empirical grounds for accepting *DMR*, and they
have suggested that some form of *MMR* is a reasonable
inference from this data (though these positions were not always
clearly distinguished). More importantly, the work cited in
 section 1
 by Brandt (1954) and Ladd (1957), involving both empirical
investigations into the moral values of Native Americans and
philosophical reflection on the significance of these investigations
vis-a-vis moral relativism, are significant examples of moral
philosophers engaging in empirical inquiry in support of philosophical
aims. Their empirical work did not immediately inspire other other
philosophers to engage in similar research. Experimental philosophy in
this sense--experiments or other empirical investigations conducted by
philosophers--did not become prominent until nearly a half-century
later. Nowadays philosophers do sometimes conduct experiments to
investigate the extent of moral disagreement (for example, see the
study of Western and East Asian values cited in Doris and Plakias
2008). What has been much more common in recent decades has been the
citation by philosophers of empirical studies by anthropologists to
establish facts about moral disagreement or diversity (for example,
see Prinz 2007, Velleman 2015, and Wong 1984 and 2006). There has been
a renewed interest in ethics by some anthropologists in the last few
years (see Klenk 2019 and Laidlaw 2017), but this has not yet
attracted much attention by philosophers. There is more about these
issues in
 section 4.



The second concern, the extent to which ordinary people accept some
form of moral objectivism or some form of *MMR* (or some other
non-objectivist position), has been the subject of considerable
experimental research in recent years. This research has sometimes
been conducted by psychologists (or other scientists), sometimes by
philosophers, and increasingly sometimes by both working together (for
overviews of this literature, see Polzler and Wright 2019 and
Sarkissian 2016). In the past, philosophers with a variety of
meta-ethical commitments have sometimes claimed that in everyday moral
practices people implicitly suppose that moral objectivism in some
sense is correct (for example, see Blackburn 1984: 180 and Jackson
1998: 137). By contrast, on occasion some philosophers have maintained
that ordinary people sometimes have attitudes that conflict with
objectivism. For instance, Wong has argued that in some moral
disagreements people grant that the person with the conflicting moral
judgment is reasonable in accepting the judgment to the extent that
these people are unsure if their own position is uniquely right--what
he calls "moral ambivalence" (see Wong 2006: ch. 1). So
who are correct, philosophers who claim that ordinary people accept a
form of objectivism (folk moral objectivism) or philosophers who think
that ordinary people at least sometimes accept something closer to
*MMR* (folk moral relativism)?



Recent empirical research suggests that both positions may have some
merit: the meta-ethical views of ordinary people are rather complex. A
common method for measuring whether people are objectivists or
relativists about a moral statement is to present them with a
disagreement between two parties concerning the statement and to
ask them if at most only one party could be correct. A response that
only one could be correct indicates commitment to objectivism, while a
response that more than one could be correct suggests commitment to
relativism (or some non-objectivist position). Several studies
employing this and related methodologies have provided evidence
that, while many people are objectivists about morality, a significant
number are not objectivists (for example, see Nichols 2004). Moreover,
some studies have shown interesting correlations with these
differences. For instance, being in a competitive rather than
cooperative interaction and belief in a punishing God correlate
with more objectivist intuitions (see Fisher et al. 2017 and
Sarkissian and Phelan 2019) while openness to experience and to
alternative possibilities are more common among those with
non-objectivist intuitions (see Feltz and Cokely 2008 and Goodwin and
Darley 2010). In addition, some studies purport to show that there may
be causal relationships as well as correlations. For example, the
desire to punish generates objectivist intuitions (see Rose and
Nichols Forthcoming).



Other studies have shown different kinds of complexity. People are
more likely to be objectivists about some moral issues (such as
robbery) than they are about other moral issues (such as abortion).
These differences also have correlations that might be partly
explanatory: regarding an issue as objective correlates with strength
of belief and perception of consensus on the issue (see Goodwin and
Darley 2008 and 2010; cf. Ayars and Nichols 2020). Moreover, people
are more likely to be objectivists about some issues than others even
when they are allowed to determine for themselves which issues count
as moral issues (see Wright et al. 2013).



Finally, it is more more probable that people give objectivist
responses when they think that the parties to a moral disagreement
share the same culture than when they think that the disagreeing
parties belong to a very different culture. This might suggest that
many of those who give objectivist responses are tacitly assuming a
kind of objectivity on the assumption that the disagreeing parties
have a common moral framework, but not in circumstances in which there
are different moral frameworks (see Sarkissian et al. 2011).



In short, empirical work about folk meta-ethical outlooks suggests
that there is considerable diversity in the extent to which, and the
circumstances under which, people express moral objectivist views or
moral non-objectivist views such as *MMR*. This might be taken
to indicate that some people are objectivists and some are not. But it
might also be taken to show that some people are "meta-ethical
pluralists": they are objectivists about some moral issues, but
they are relativists about other moral issues (see Polzler
2017, Wright 2018, and Wright, Grandjean and McWhite 2013).
That is, perhaps some people implicitly deny the common assumption
among philosophers that all moral beliefs should be given the same
meta-ethical analysis.



Various questions may be raised about the value and significance of
this experimental work. In recent years an important issue in
psychology has been the extent to which experimental results can be
replicated. It has been argued that the replication rate in
experimental philosophy is comparatively high (see Cova et al.
2018) and some studies of people's acceptance of moral
objectivity have been replicated (for example, see Wright 2018).
Another issue is whether the samples of these studies are sufficiently
diverse to be indicative of the meta-ethical commitments of all human
beings. Once again, there have been concerns that psychology studies
have been unrepresentative (for example, because they rely too heavily
on undergraduate students in the United States). However, at
least some studies pertaining to moral objectivity have included a
more diverse group of subjects (for example, Beebe et al. 2015
and Sarkissian et al. 2011). A different question is to what
extent these studies actually measure acceptance of moral objectivism
or moral relativism. Many studies focus on moral objectivism and
these may leave unclear people's views about a position such as
MMR (Since there are a variety of positions that reject objectivism).
However, some studies have focused on moral relativism specifically
(for example, Sarkissian et al. 2011).



In any case, some philosophers may wonder about the philosophical
relevance of this experimental research. One response is that it could
affect criteria of success in meta-ethics. For example, it is
sometimes suggested that most people are moral objectivists rather
than moral relativists, and that a meta-ethical position such as moral
realism gains credibility because it is in accord with folk morality
so understood (see Smith 1991). The studies just cited and others
appear to challenge the factual premise of this meta-ethical criterion
(see Sarkissian 2017), and it has been argued that the best
interpretation of the empirical data is that many people accept a form
of relativism (see Beebe Forthcoming). Another response is that some
of the complexity revealed in these studies might lead philosophers to
consider more seriously the philosophical viability of a pluralist or
mixed meta-ethical position according to which, for instance, moral
objectivism is correct in some respects, but *MMR* is correct
in other respects (in this connection, see Gill 2008 and
Sinnott-Armstrong 2009). There is more on this issue in
 section 7.
 In any case, there is increasing recognition of the importance of
interpreting the significance of the experimental evidence for
meta-ethics with care (see Bush and Moss 2020, Hopster 2019
and Polzler and Wright 2020).



The final area in which experimental philosophy has contributed to
discussions of moral relativism pertains to the relationship between
relativism and moral attitudes such as tolerance. It is sometimes
claimed that some forms of moral relativism provide a reason for
tolerance (see
 section 8).
 But are moral relativists more likely to be tolerant than moral
objectivists? Some recent psychological studies suggest that the
answer may be "yes." There is some correlation between
accepting moral relativism and being
more tolerant (Collier-Spruel et al. 2019), and there
is some correlation between regarding a moral issue as objective
and being less tolerant (Wright et al. 2008 and 2014),
though it is also clear that other factors are relevant to whether
behavior is tolerant or intolerant.



Insofar as these studies suggest that there is some correlation
between acceptance of moral relativism and tolerance, this might be
regarded as an unsurprising result for those who have argued that
moral relativism provides a rational basis for tolerance. Of course, a
psychological relationship does not show that there is a logical
relationship. But some support might be derived from the fact that
people are behaving in what, for this position, is a rational way. In
addition, it has been claimed that an advantage of moral relativism is
that, even though it does not provide a reason for tolerance,
acceptance of it makes people more tolerant (see Prinz 2007: 208).
These studies would provide support for this empirical claim.


## 4. Descriptive Moral Relativism



Most discussions of moral relativism begin with, and are rooted
in, *DMR*. Though this is not sufficient to establish
*MMR*, the most common rationales for *MMR* would be
undermined if *DMR* (or some descriptive thesis about
significant moral disagreement or diversity) were incorrect. Moreover,
if *DMR* were generally rejected, it is likely that
*MMR* would have few proponents. Hence, it is important to
consider whether or not *DMR* is correct. Defenders of
*DMR* usually take it to be well-established by cultural
anthropology and other empirically-based disciplines, and many believe
it is obvious to anyone with an elementary understanding of the
history and cultures of the world. Examples of moral practices that
appear sharply at odds with moral outlooks common in the United States
are not hard to come by: polygamy, arranged marriages, suicide as a
requirement of honor or widowhood, severe punishments for blasphemy or
adultery, female circumcision or genital mutilation (as it is
variously called), and so on (for a review of some of the literature,
see Prinz 2007: 187-95). At a more general level, Wong (1984) has
argued that at least two different approaches to morality may be found
in the world: a virtue-centered morality that emphasizes the good of
the community, and a rights-centered morality that stresses the value
of individual freedom.



Though it is obvious that there are some moral disagreements, it is
another matter to say that these disagreements are deep and
widespread, and that they are much more significant than whatever
agreements there may be. Philosophers have raised two kinds of
objection to this contention: *a priori* arguments that
*DMR* could not be true, and *a posteriori* arguments
that *DMR* is probably not true or at least has not been
established to be true.



*A priori* objections maintain that we can know *DMR* is
false on the basis of philosophical considerations, without recourse
to empirical evidence. One argument, expressed in general form by
Donald Davidson (1984a), states that disagreement presupposes
considerable agreement (see the entry on
 Donald Davidson). 
According to Davidson, a methodological constraint on the translation
of the language of another society is that we must think they agree
with us on most matters. For example, suppose we believed there were
numerous disagreements between us and another society about trees. As
the disagreements piled up, we reasonably would begin to think we had
mistranslated a word in the language of the other society as
'tree': It is more likely that (what we take to be) their
false beliefs about trees are really beliefs about something else. By
generalization, it follows that there could not be extensive
disagreements about trees between our society and the other one. Of
course, there could be some disagreements. But these disagreements
would presuppose substantial agreements in other respects. Davidson
(1984b [2004a] and 1995 [2004b]) and others (for example, Cooper 1978
and Myers 2004) have claimed that this argument applies to moral
concepts. If they are right, then there cannot be extensive
disagreements about morality, and the agreements are more significant
than the disagreements. *DMR* cannot be true.



Davidson's argument is controversial. One response is that, even
if it were compelling in some cases, it would not have force with
respect to moral concepts. 'Tree' is an ordinary,
descriptive concept based on direct observation. In view of this,
mistranslation seems more likely than substantial disagreement. But
what about concepts concerning what is amusing, interesting, or
exciting? These have to do with human reactions to the world, and it
may be said that our knowledge of human nature suggests that some
reactions vary widely. A claim that there is much disagreement about
what people find amusing--about what makes them laugh--does
not immediately generate the suspicion of mistranslation. If moral
concepts were more similar to 'amusing' than to
'tree', as some believe, then the Davidsonian argument
might not undermine *DMR* even if it were convincing in other
cases. Davidson, however, believed the argument applies across the
board, to evaluations as well as empirical beliefs. Another response
to his argument is to claim that, even if it does apply to
evaluations, it would only apply to very basic ones and would leave
room for substantial disagreements beyond these (if this were the
case, then Davidson would have established only what I call a mixed
position in
 section 7).
 For some critical responses to the Davidsonian critique of
relativism, see Gowans 2004: 144-6, Prinz 2007: 195-9 and
Rovane 2013: 247-62.



Another *a priori* objection to *DMR* was suggested by
Philippa Foot (1978a and 1978b) in a response to emotivism. Just as
there are shared criteria of 'rude' such that not just
anything could be considered rude, she argued, there are shared
criteria of moral concepts such that not just anything could be a
moral virtue or obligation. For example, there are substantial
constraints on what could be considered courage. Hence, there are
significant limits to the extent of moral disagreements.



One response to this argument, interpreted as an objection to
*DMR*, is that it faces a dilemma. On the one hand, if
'courage' is understood broadly, in terms of confronting a
difficulty to achieve some perceived good, then it is likely that most
everyone values courage. However, this leaves room for very different
conceptions of courage. Both warriors and pacifists may value it, but
they may regard very different kinds of actions as courageous. This
puts less pressure on *DMR*, a point Foot later conceded to
some extent (see
 section 7)).
 On the other hand, if courage is defined narrowly, for example, as
the virtue of a warrior who faces the threat of death in battle (as
suggested by Aristotle), then there may be little disagreement about
the scope of the concept, but considerable disagreement about whether
courage so-defined should be valued (pacifists would say no). A
proponent of *DMR* might say that this is also a significant
moral disagreement. Against this, it may be said that our
understanding of human nature and culture shows that everyone values
courage understood within some fairly significant limits. This is a
more empirical point, in line with the objections in the last
paragraph of this section.



Some versions of the *a priori* approach emphasize the
constraints imposed by "thinner" moral concepts such as
goodness, rightness, or morality itself (for example, see Garcia
1988). Once again, a defender of *DMR* might say that, if these
concepts have enough content to preclude significant disagreement in
their application, then it is likely that many societies do not apply
them at all--a form of moral disagreement in itself. Another
response would be to argue, following R.M. Hare (1981), that a formal
analysis, for example in terms of a kind of prescriptivity, is
plausible with respect to some thinner moral concepts, and that this
is consistent with significant moral disagreements. However, the *a
priori* critics question the adequacy of any such analysis. Much
of this debate concerns the acceptability of formal versus material
definitions of morality (see the entry on the
 definition of morality).



The second approach to rejecting *DMR* focuses on the
interpretation of the empirical evidence that purportedly supports
this thesis. Some objections point to obstacles that face any attempt
to understand human cultures empirically. For example, it may be said
that the supposed evidence is incomplete or inaccurate because the
observers are biased. In support of this, it may be claimed that
anthropologists often have had preconceptions rooted in disciplinary
paradigms or political ideologies that have led them to misrepresent
or misinterpret the empirical data. Or it may be said that even the
most objective observers would have difficulty accurately
understanding a society's actual moral values on account of
phenomena such as self-deception and weakness of will. These concerns
point to substantial issues in the methodology of the social sciences.
However, even if they were valid, they would only cast doubt on
whether *DMR* had been established: They would not necessarily
give us reason to think it is false. Of course, this would be an
important objection to someone who claims *DMR* is established
or relies on *DMR* to argue for *MMR*.



Another objection, more directly pertinent to *DMR*, is that
anthropologists have tacitly and mistakenly assumed that cultures are
rather discrete, homogenous, and static entities--rather like the
shapes in a Piet Mondrian painting or a checkerboard. In fact,
according to this contention, cultures typically are rather
heterogeneous and complex internally, with many dissenting voices.
Moreover, they often interact and sometimes influence one another, and
they may change over time. From this perspective, the world of
cultures is closer to an animated Jackson Pollock painting than to the
unambiguous configuration suggested by the first image. If these
contentions were correct, then it would be more difficult to know the
moral values of different cultures and hence to know whether or not
*DMR* is true. As before, this would not show that it is false
(in fact, the point about heterogeneity might point the other way).
However, we will see later that these contentions also pose challenges
to *MMR*.



Other critics try to establish that the empirical evidence cited in
support of *DMR* does not really show that there are
significant moral disagreements, and is consistent with considerable
moral agreement. A prominent contention is that purported moral
disagreements may result from applying a general moral value (about
which there is no disagreement) in different circumstances or in the
same circumstances where there is a factual disagreement about what
these circumstances are. Either way, there is no real moral
disagreement in these cases. For example, everyone might agree on the
importance of promoting human welfare (and even on the nature of human
welfare). But this may be promoted differently in different, or
differently understood, circumstances. Another contention is that
moral disagreements may be explained by religious disagreements: It is
only because specific religious assumptions are made (for instance,
about the soul) that there are moral disagreements. Once again, the
apparent moral disagreement is really a disagreement of a different
kind--here, about the nature of the soul. There is no genuine
moral disagreement. Of course, these possibilities would have to be
established as the best explanation of the disagreements in question
to constitute an objection to *DMR*.



Finally, some objections maintain that proponents of *DMR* fail
to recognize that there is significant empirical evidence for
considerable moral *agreement* across different societies (see
Sauer 2019). Several kinds of agreement have been proposed. For
example, the role-reversal test implied by the Golden Rule ("Do
unto others as you would have them do unto you") has been
prominent beyond Western traditions: A version of it is also endorsed
in *The Analects* of Confucius, some traditional Buddhist
texts, and elsewhere (see Wattles 1996). Another form of this claim
maintains that basic moral prohibitions against lying, stealing,
adultery, killing human beings, etc. are found across many different
and otherwise diverse societies. Yet another contention is that the
international human rights movement indicates substantial moral
agreement (see Donnelly 2013: ch. 4). On the basis of evidence of this
kind, some such as Sissela Bok (1995) and Michael Walzer (1994) have
proposed that there is a universal minimal morality, whatever other
moral differences there may be. In a similar vein, Hans Kung
(1996) and others have maintained that there is a common "global
ethic" across the world's major religious traditions
regarding respect for human life, distributive justice, truthfulness,
and the moral equality of men and women. These contentions, which have
received increased support in recent years, must be subjected to the
same critical scrutiny as those put forward in support of
*DMR*. However, if they were correct, they would cast doubt on
*DMR*. In the final analysis, there may be significant
agreements as well as disagreements in people's moral values. If
this were the case, it would complicate the empirical background of
the metaethical debate, and it might suggest the need for more nuanced
alternatives than the standard positions.


## 5. Are Moral Disagreements Rationally Resolvable?



Philosophers generally agree that, even if *DMR* were true
without qualification, it would not directly follow that *MMR*
is true. In particular, if moral disagreements could be resolved
rationally for the most part, then disagreement-based arguments for
*MMR* would be undermined, and there would be little incentive
to endorse the position. Such resolvability, at least in principle, is
what moral objectivism would lead us to expect. One of the main points
of contention between proponents of *MMR* and their objectivist
critics concerns the possibility of rationally resolving moral
disagreements. It might be thought that the defender of *MMR*
needs to show conclusively that the moral disagreements identified in
*DMR* cannot be rationally resolved, or again that the moral
objectivist must show conclusively that they can be. Neither is a
reasonable expectation. Indeed, it is unclear what would count as
conclusively arguing for either conclusion. The center of the debate
concerns what plausibly may be expected. Adherents of *MMR*
attempt to show why rational resolution is an unlikely prospect, while
their objectivist critics try to show why to a large extent this is
likely, or at least not unlikely.



Moral objectivists can allow that there are special cases in which
moral disagreements cannot be rationally resolved, for example on
account of vagueness or indeterminacy in the concepts involved. Their
main claim is that ordinarily there is a rational basis for overcoming
disagreements (not that people would actually come to agree).
Objectivists maintain that, typically, at least one party in a moral
disagreement accepts the moral judgment on account of some factual or
logical mistake, and that revealing such mistakes would be sufficient
to rationally resolve the disagreement. They suggest that whatever
genuine moral disagreements there are usually can be resolved in this
fashion. In addition, objectivists sometimes offer an analysis of why
people make such mistakes. For example, people may be influenced by
passion, prejudice, ideology, self-interest, and the like. In general,
objectivists think, insofar as people set these influences aside, and
are reasonable and well-informed, there is generally a basis for
resolving their moral differences. However, though these claims are
often made, it is another matter to establish empirically that
self-interest is the source of disagreement, and it has been argued
that there are considerable obstacles to doing this (see Seipel
2020a). (Objectivists might also say that at least some agreements
about moral truths reflect the fact that, with respect to matters
pertaining to these truths, people generally have been reasonable and
well-informed.)



Proponents of *MMR* may allow that moral disagreements
sometimes are rationally resolved. In particular, they may grant that
this often happens when the parties to a moral dispute share a moral
framework. The characteristic relativist contention is that a common
moral framework is often lacking, especially in moral disagreements
between one society and another, and that differences in moral
frameworks usually cannot be explained simply by supposing that one
society or the other is making factual or logical mistakes. These
moral disagreements are ultimately rooted in fundamentally different
moral orientations, and there is usually no reason to think these
differences result from the fact that, in relevant respects, one side
is less reasonable or well-informed than the other. They are faultless
disagreements. This conclusion might rest on the observation that it
is not evident that mistakes are at the root of these disagreement.
But it might also depend on a theory, developed to explain such
observations, that the frameworks are incommensurable: They do not
have enough in common, in terms of either shared concepts or shared
standards, to resolve their differences, and there is no impartial
third standpoint, accessible to any reasonable and well-informed
person, that could be invoked to resolve the conflict.



Various objectivist responses may be made to this argument. One is the
Davidsonian approach, already considered, that precludes the
possibility of incommensurable moral frameworks. Another response is
that incommensurability does not preclude the possibility of
rationally resolving differences between moral frameworks. For
example, Alasdair MacIntyre (1988: ch. 18 and 1994) has argued that,
in some circumstances, it is possible to realize, through an exercise
in imagination, that a conflicting and incommensurable moral tradition
is rationally superior to one's own tradition. However, the most
common objectivist response is to claim that some specific moral
framework is rationally superior to all others. For example, it might
be argued, following Kant, that pure practical reason implies a
fundamental moral principle such as the Categorical Imperative (see
 Kant's moral philosophy),
 or it might be claimed, following Aristotle, that human nature is
such that virtues such as courage, temperance, and justice are
necessary for any plausible conception of a good life (see the
sections on
 the human good and the function argument
 in the entry on Aristotle's ethics, and the entry on
 virtue ethics).
 If such an argument were sound, it might provide a compelling
response to the relativist contention that conflicts between moral
frameworks cannot be rationally resolved.



Proponents of *MMR* are unimpressed by these responses. They
may say that the Davidsonian account cannot assure sufficient common
ground to resolve conflicts between moral frameworks (or to ensure
that there is really only one framework), and that MacIntyre's
approach is likely to work at best only in some cases. And they
usually consider debates about the Kantian and Aristotelian arguments
to be as difficult to resolve rationally as the conflicts between
moral frameworks the relativists originally invoked. They may add that
the fact that moral objectivists disagree among themselves about which
objectivist theory is correct is further indication of the difficulty
of resolving fundamental moral conflicts.



A rather different objectivist challenge is that the position of the
proponent of *MMR* is inconsistent. The relativist argument is
that we should reject moral objectivism because there is little
prospect of rationally resolving fundamental moral disagreements.
However, it may be pointed out, the relativist should acknowledge that
there is no more prospect of rationally resolving disagreements about
*MMR*. By parity of reasoning, he or she should grant that
there is no objective truth concerning *MMR*.



To this familiar kind of objection, there are two equally familiar
responses. One is to concede the objection and maintain that
*MMR* is true and justified in some metaethical frameworks, but
not others: It is not an objective truth that any reasonable and
well-informed person has reason to accept. This may seem to concede a
great deal, but for someone who is a relativist through and through,
or at least is a relativist about metaethical claims, this would be
the only option. The other response is to contest the claim that there
is parity of reasoning in the two cases. This would require showing
that the dispute about the irresolvability of moral disagreements (a
metaethical debate) can be rationally resolved in a way that
fundamental moral disagreements (substantive normative debates)
themselves cannot. For example, the metaethical debate might be
rationally resolved in favor of the relativist, while the substantive
normative debates cannot be resolved.


## 6. Metaethical Moral Relativism



Even if it were established that there are deep and widespread moral
disagreements that cannot be rationally resolved, and that these
disagreements are more significant than whatever agreements there may
be, it would not immediately follow that *MMR* is correct.
Other nonobjectivist conclusions might be drawn. In particular,
opponents of objectivism might argue for moral skepticism, that we
cannot know moral truths, or for a view that moral judgments lack
truth-value (understood to imply a rejection of relative truth-value).
Hence, proponents of *MMR* face two very different groups of
critics: assorted kinds of moral objectivists and various sorts of
moral nonobjectivists. The defender of *MMR* needs to establish
that *MMR* is superior to all these positions, and this would
require a comparative assessment of their respective advantages and
disadvantages. It is beyond the scope of this article to consider the
alternative positions (see the entries on
 moral cognitivism vs. non-cognitivism,
 moral anti-realism,
 moral epistemology,
 moral realism, and
 moral skepticism).
 What can be considered are the challenges the proponent of
*MMR* faces and what may be said in response to them. Some
critics of *MMR* have raised questions about the coherence of
the position (for example, Boghossian 2011 and 2017).



For example, it might be thought that *MMR*, with respect to
truth-value, would have the result that a moral judgment such as
"suicide is morally right" (S) could be both true and
false--true when valid for one group and false when invalid for
another. But this appears to be an untenable position: most people
would grant that nothing can be both true and false. Of course, some
persons could be justified in affirming S and other persons justified
in denying it, since the two groups could have different evidence. But
it is another matter to say S is both true and false.



A standard relativist response is to say that moral truth is relative
in some sense. On this view, *S* is not true or false
absolutely speaking, but it may be true-relative-to-*X* and
false-relative-to-*Y* (where *X* and *Y* refer to
the moral codes of different societies). This means that suicide is
right for persons in a society governed by *X*, but it is not
right for persons in a society governed by *Y*; and, the
relativist may contend, there is no inconsistency in this conjunction
properly understood.



It might be objected that the notion of relative truth fails to
capture the sense in which 'right' and 'wrong'
are normative terms about what ought to be as opposed to what is the
case. The statement "suicide is morally right" is
normative in this sense, but the statement "suicide is morally
right for persons in a society governed by moral code X" is not
normative, but descriptive: it tells us what persons who accept moral
code X think, and as such it is something everyone could agree with,
irrespective of their own moral code, if in fact this is what moral
code X says. In response, it might be said that there are expressions
of relativist moral statements that are normative. For instance,
"suicide is morally right for us," spoken by and to
members of the group referred to by 'us', is not merely a
description of what they believe: it tells them what they are morally
permitted to do (in this sense, it is action-guiding).



Such relativist formulations may also give rise to a related and very
common objection. Relativism often presents itself as an
interpretation of moral disagreements: It is said to be the best
explanation of rationally irresolvable or faultless moral
disagreements. However, once moral truth is regarded as relative, the
disagreements seem to disappear. For example, someone accepting
*X* who affirms *S* is saying suicide is right for
persons accepting *X*, while someone accepting *Y* who
denies *S* is saying suicide is not right for persons accepting
*Y*. It might well be that they are both correct and hence that
they are not disagreeing with one another (rather as two people in
different places might both be correct when one says the sun is
shining and the other says it is not, or as two people in different
countries may both be correct when one says something is illegal and
the other says it is not). The relativist explanation dissolves the
disagreement. But, then, why did it appear as a disagreement in the
first place? An objectivist might say this is because people thinking
this assume that moral truth is absolute rather than relative. If this
were correct, the relativist could not maintain that *MMR*
captures what people already believe. The contention would have to be
that they should believe it, and the argument for relativism would
have to be formulated in those terms. For example, the relativist
might contend that *MMR* is the most plausible position to
adopt insofar as moral judgments often give practically conflicting
directives and neither judgment can be shown to be rationally superior
to the other.



Another common objection, though probably more so outside philosophy
than within it, is that *MMR* cannot account for the fact that
some practices such as the holocaust in Germany or slavery in the
United States are obviously objectively wrong. This point is usually
expressed in a tone of outrage, often with the suggestion that
relativists pose a threat to civilized society (or something of this
sort). Proponents of *MMR* might respond that this simply begs
the question, and in one sense they are right. However, this objection
might reflect a more sophisticated epistemology, for example, that we
have more reason to accept these objectivist intuitions than we have
to accept any argument put forward in favor of *MMR*. This
would bring us back to the arguments of the last section. Another
relativist response would be to say that the practices in question,
though widely accepted, were wrong according to the fundamental
standards of the societies (for example, there were arguments against
slavery presented in the United States prior to the Civil War). This
would not show that the practices are objectively wrong, but it might
mitigate the force of the critique. However, though this response may
be plausible in some cases, it is not obvious that it always would be
convincing.



This last response brings out the fact that a proponent of
*MMR* needs a clear specification of that to which truth is
relative. For example, if *S* is true-relative-to the moral
code of a society, does this mean it is true-relative-to what people
in the society think the moral code says or to what the fundamental
standards of the moral code actually imply? These might not be the
same. It is often supposed that truths can be undiscovered or that
people can make mistakes about them. As just noted, a moral relativist
could make sense of this by supposing that it is the fundamental
standards of a moral code that are authoritative for people in a
society that accepts that code. Hence, what is morally
true-relative-to the moral code of a society is whatever the
fundamental standards of the code would actually warrant. By this
criterion, there could be moral truths that are unknown to people in
the society that accepts the code, or these people could be mistaken
in thinking something is a moral truth.



A similar point arises from the fact that it is sometimes thought to
be an advantage of *MMR* that it maintains a substantial notion
of intersubjective truth or justification: It avoids the defects of
moral objectivism, on the one hand, and of moral skepticism and
theories that disregard moral truth-value altogether, on the other
hand, because it maintains that moral judgments do not have truth in
an absolute sense, but they do have truth relative to the moral code
of a society (and similarly for justification). This is thought to be
an advantage because, notwithstanding the supposed difficulties with
moral objectivism, morality is widely regarded as "not merely
subjective," and *MMR* can capture this. However, this
purported advantage raises an important question for relativism: Why
suppose moral judgments have truth-value relative to a society as
opposed to no truth-value at all? If the relativist claims that a set
of fundamental standards is authoritative for persons in a society, it
may be asked why they have this authority. This question may arise in
quite practical ways. For example, suppose a dissident challenges some
of the fundamental standards of his or her society. Is this person
necessarily wrong?



Various answers may be given to these questions. For example, it may
be said that the standards that are authoritative in a society are
those that reasonable and well-informed members of the society would
generally accept. This might seem to provide a basis for normative
authority. However, if this approach were taken, it may be asked why
that authority rests only on reasonable and well-informed members of
the society. Why not a wider group? Why not all reasonable and
well-informed persons?



A different response would be to say that the standards that are
authoritative for a society are the ones persons have agreed to follow
as a result of some negotiation or bargaining process (as seen above,
Harman has argued that we should understand some moral judgments in
these terms). Once again, this might seem to lend those standards some
authority. Still, it may be asked whether they really have authority
or perhaps whether they have the right kind. For example, suppose the
agreement had been reached in circumstances in which a few members of
society held great power over the others (in the real world, the most
likely scenario). Those with less power might have been prudent to
make the agreement, but it is not obvious that such an agreement would
create genuine normative authority--a point the dissident
challenging the standards might well make. Moreover, if all moral
values are understood in this way, how do we explain the authority of
the contention that people should follow a set of values because they
agreed to do so? Must there be a prior agreement to do what we agree
to do?



A related objection concerns the specification of the society to which
moral justification or truth are said to be relative. People typically
belong to many different groups defined by various criteria: culture,
religion, political territory, ethnicity, race, gender, etc. Moreover,
while it is sometimes claimed that the values of a group defined by
one of these criteria have authority for members of the group, such
claims are often challenged. The specification of the relevant group
is itself a morally significant question, and there appears to be no
objective map of the world that displays its division into social
groups to which the truth or justification of moral judgments are
relative. A proponent of *MMR* needs a plausible way of
identifying the group of persons to which moral truth or justification
are relative.



Moreover, not only do people typically belong to more than one group,
as defined by the aforementioned criteria, the values that are
authoritative in each group a person belongs to may not always be the
same. If I belong to a religion and a nationality, and their values
concerning abortion are diametrically opposed, then which value is
correct for me? This raises the question whether there is a basis for
resolving the conflict consistent with *MMR* (the two groups
might have conflicting fundamental standards) and whether in this
circumstance *MMR* would entail that there is a genuine moral
dilemma (meaning that abortion is both right and wrong for me). This
point is not necessarily an objection, but a defender of *MMR*
would have to confront these issues and develop a convincing position
concerning them.



The fact that social groups are defined by different criteria, and
that persons commonly belong to more than one social group, might be
taken as a reason to move from relativism to a form of subjectivism.
That is, instead of saying that the truth or justification of moral
judgments is relative to a group, we should say it is relative to each
individual (as noted above, relativism is sometimes defined to include
both positions). This revision might defuse the issues just discussed,
but it would abandon the notion of intersubjectivity with respect to
truth or justification--what for many proponents of *MMR*
is a chief advantage of the position. Moreover, a proponent of this
subjectivist account would need to explain in what sense, if any,
moral values have normative authority for a person as opposed to
simply being accepted. The fact that we sometimes think our moral
values have been mistaken is often thought to imply that we believe
they have some authority that does not consist in the mere fact that
we accept them.



Another set of concerns arises from purported facts about similarities
among and interactions across different societies vis-a-vis
morality. People in one society sometimes make moral judgments about
people in another society on the basis of moral standards they take to
be authoritative for both societies. In addition, conflicts between
societies are sometimes resolved because one society changes its moral
outlook and comes to share at least some of the moral values of the
other society. More generally, sometimes people in one society think
they learn from the moral values of another society: They come to
believe that the moral values of another society are better in some
respects than their own (previously accepted) values. The Mondrian
image of a world divided into distinct societies, each with it own
distinctive moral values, makes it difficult to account for these
considerations. If this image is abandoned as unrealistic, and is
replaced by one that acknowledges greater moral overlap and
interaction among societies (recall the Pollock image), then the
proponent of *MMR* needs to give a plausible account of these
dynamics. This is related to the problem of authority raised earlier:
These considerations suggest that people sometimes acknowledge moral
authority that extends beyond their own society, and a relativist
needs to show why this makes sense or why people are mistaken in this
acknowledgement.


## 7. Mixed Positions: A Rapprochement between Relativists and Objectivists?



Discussions of moral relativism often assume (as mostly has been
assumed here so far) that moral relativism is the correct account of
all moral judgments or of none. But perhaps it is the correct account
of some moral judgments but not others or, more vaguely, the best
account of morality vis-a-vis these issues would acknowledge
both relativist and objectivist elements. Such a mixed position might
be motivated by some of the philosophical questions already raised
(recall also the suggestion in the section on
 experimental philosophy
 that some people may be "meta-ethical pluralists"). On
the empirical level, it might be thought that there are many
substantial moral disagreements but also some striking moral
agreements across different societies. On the metaethical plane, it
might be supposed that, though many disagreements are not likely to be
rationally resolved, other disagreements may be (and perhaps that the
cross-cultural agreements we find have a rational basis). The first
point would lead to a weaker form of *DMR* The second point,
the more important one, would imply a modified form of *MMR*
(see the suggestions in the last paragraph of
 section 4).
 This approach has attracted some support, interestingly, from both
sides of the debate: relativists who have embraced an objective
constraint, and (more commonly) objectivists who have allowed some
relativist dimensions. Here are some prominent examples of these mixed
metaethical outlooks.



David Copp (1995) maintains that it is true that something is morally
wrong only if it is wrong in relation to the justified moral code of
some society, and a code is justified in a society only if the society
would be rationally required to select it. Since which code it would
be rationally required to select depends in part on the non-moral
values of the society, and since these values differ from one society
to another, something may be morally wrong for one society but not for
another. Copp calls this position a form of moral relativism. However,
he believes this relativism is significantly mitigated by the fact
that which code a society is rationally required to select also
depends on the basic needs of the society. Copp thinks all societies
have the same basic needs. For example, every society has a need to
maintain its population and system of cooperation from one generation
to the next. Moreover, since meeting these basic needs is the most
fundamental factor in determining the rationality of selecting a code,
Copp thinks the content of all justified moral codes will tend to be
quite similar. For instance, any such code will require that
persons's basic needs for such things as physical survival,
self-respect and friendship be promoted (these are said to be
necessary for minimal rational agency). The theory is mixed insofar as
the rationality of selecting a code depends partly on common features
of human nature (basic needs) and partly on diverse features of
different societies (values). Whether or not justified moral codes
(and hence moral truths) would tend to be substantially similar,
despite differences, as Copp argues, would depend on both the claim
that all societies have the same basic needs and the claim that these
needs are much more important than other values in determining which
moral code it is rational for a society to select.



Wong (1996) defended a partly similar position, though one intended to
allow for greater diversity in correct moral codes. He argued that
more than one morality may be true, but there are limits on which
moralities are true. The first point is a form of metaethical
relativism: It says one morality may be true for one society and a
conflicting morality may be true for another society. Hence, there is
no one objectively correct morality for all societies. The second
point, however, is a concession to moral objectivism. It acknowledges
that objective factors concerning human nature and the human situation
should determine whether or not, or to what extent, a given morality
could be one of the true ones. The mere fact that a morality is
accepted by a society does not guarantee that it has normative
authority in that society. For example, given our biological and
psychological make-up, not just anything could count as a good way of
life. Again, given that most persons are somewhat self-interested and
that society requires some measure of cooperation, any plausible
morality will include a value of reciprocity (good in return for good
on some proportional basis). Since these objective limitations are
quite broad, they are insufficient in themselves to establish a
specific and detailed morality: Many particular moralities are
consistent with them, and the choice among these moralities must be
determined by the cultures of different societies.



Wong has developed this approach at length in more recent work (2006).
His "pluralistic relativism" continues to emphasize that
there are universal constraints on what could be a true morality. The
constraints are based on a naturalistic understanding of human nature
and the circumstances of human life. For Wong, given a variety of
human needs and the depth of self-interest, morality's function
is to promote both social co-operation and individual flourishing. In
addition, morality requires that persons have both effective agency
and effective identity, and these can only be fostered in personal
contexts such as the family. Hence, the impersonal perspective must be
limited by the personal perspective. Any true morality would have to
respect requirements such as these.



Nonetheless, according to Wong, the universal constraints are
sufficiently open-ended that there is more than one way to respect
them. Hence, there can be more than one true morality. This is
pluralistic relativism. For Wong, the different true moralities need
not be, and typically are not, completely different from one another.
In fact, they often share some values (such as individual rights and
social utility), but assign them different priorities.



Wong presents pluralistic relativism as the best explanation of what
he calls "moral ambivalence," the phenomenon of morally
disagreeing with someone while recognizing that the person is still
reasonable in making the conflicting judgment--to the point that
one's confidence in being uniquely right is shaken. The extent
to which moral ambivalence is widespread is an empirical question
 (see section 3).
 In any case, Wong presents a sustained and detailed argument
that an empirically-based understanding of the nature and conditions
of human life both limits and underdetermines what a true morality
could be. In many respects, his position is the most sophisticated
form of relativism developed to date, and it has the resources to
confront a number of the issues raised in the last section (for some
critical responses to Wong and his replies, see Xiao and Huang 2014;
for more recent discussion, see Li 2019, Vicente and Arrieta
2016, and Wong 2020).



A somewhat similar mixed position has been advanced, though more
tentatively, by Foot (2002a and 2002b; see also Scanlon 1995 and 1998:
ch. 8). She argued that there are conceptual limitations on what could
count as a moral code (as seen in
 section 4),
 and that there are common features of human nature that set limits on
what a good life could be. For these reasons, there are some objective
moral truths--for example, that the Nazi attempt to exterminate
the Jews was morally wrong. However, Foot maintained, these
considerations do not ensure that all moral disagreements can be
rationally resolved. Hence, in some cases, a moral judgment may be
true by reference to the standards of one society and false by
reference to the standards of another society--but neither true
nor false in any absolute sense (just as we might say with respect to
standards of beauty).



Foot came to this mixed view from the direction of objectivism (in the
form of a virtue theory), and it might be contended by some
objectivists that she has conceded too much. Since there are objective
criteria, what appear as rationally irresolvable disagreements might
be resolvable through greater understanding of human nature. Or the
objective criteria might establish that in some limited cases it is an
objective moral truth that conflicting moral practices are both
morally permissible. In view of such considerations, objectivists
might argue, it is not necessary to have recourse to the otherwise
problematic notion of relative moral truth.



A position related to Foot's has been advanced by Martha
Nussbaum (1993). With explicit reference to Aristotle, she argued that
there is one objectively correct understanding of the human good, and
that this understanding provides a basis for criticizing the moral
traditions of different societies. The specifics of this account are
explained by a set of experiences or concerns, said to be common to
all human beings and societies, such as fear, bodily appetite,
distribution of resources, management of personal property, etc.
Corresponding to each of these is a conception of living well, a
virtue, namely the familiar Aristotelian virtues such as courage,
moderation, justice, and generosity. Nussbaum acknowledged that there
are disagreements about these virtues, and she raised an obvious
relativist objection herself: Even if the experiences are universal,
does human nature establish that there is one objectively correct way
of living well with respect to each of these areas? In response,
Nussbaum conceded that sometimes there may be more than one
objectively correct conception of these virtues and that the
specification of the conception may depend on the practices of a
particular community.



As with Foot, Nussbaum came to this mixed position from the
objectivist side of the debate. Some moral objectivists may think she
has given up too much, and for a related reason many moral relativists
may believe she has established rather little. For example, bodily
appetites are indeed universal experiences, but there has been a wide
range of responses to these--for example, across a spectrum from
asceticism to hedonism. This appears to be one of the central areas of
moral disagreement. In order to maintain her objectivist credentials,
Nussbaum needs to show that human nature substantially constrains
which of these responses could be morally appropriate. Some
objectivists may say she has not shown this, but could, while
relativists may doubt she could show it.



Mixed positions along the lines of those just discussed suppose that
morality is objective in some respects, on account of some features of
human nature, and relative in other respects. For the respects in
which morality is relative, it is up to particular societies or
individuals to determine which moral values to embrace. Hence, the
authority of morality depends partly on objective factors and partly
on the decisions of groups or individuals. Insofar as this is true,
such mixed positions need to say something about the basis for these
decisions and how conflicts are to be resolved (for example, when
individuals dissent from groups or when people belong to different
groups with conflicting values). The objective features of mixed
positions may help resolve these issues, or may limit their import,
but at the point where these features give out there remain some of
the standard concerns about relativism (such as those raised in the
last section).



Another approach might be construed as a mixed position, though it was
not put forward in these terms. Isaiah Berlin (1998) argued that,
though some moral values are universal, there are also many objective
values that conflict and are not commensurable with one another. He
called his position pluralism and rejected the label
'relativism' (see the entry on
 Isaiah Berlin).
 But if incommensurability implies that these conflicts cannot be
rationally resolved, then it might suggest a concession to
relativism.



Against such a position, an objectivist may ask why we should think
objective goods are incommensurable: If *X* and *Y* are
both objectively good, then why not say that the statement
'*X* is better than *Y*' (or a more
restrictive comparative statement specifying respects or
circumstances) is objectively true or false, even if this is difficult
to know? Berlin's view was that there are many examples of
conflicting goods--for example, justice and mercy, or liberty and
equality--where it is implausible to suppose they are
commensurable.



Finally, it should also be noted that a rather different kind of mixed
position was proposed by Bernard Williams (1981 and 1985: ch. 9). He
rejected what he called "strict relational relativism,"
that ethical conceptions have validity only relative to a society. But
he endorsed another form of relativism. This was explained by
reference to a distinction between a "notional
confrontation," where a divergent outlook is known but not a
real option for us, and a "real confrontation," where a
divergent outlook is a real option for us--something we might
embrace without losing our grip on reality. Williams's
"relativism of distance" says ethical appraisals are
appropriate in real confrontations, but not in notional ones. For
example, we could never embrace the outlook of a medieval samurai:
Since this is a notional confrontation, it would be inappropriate to
describe this outlook as just or unjust. This is the sense in which
relativism is correct. But in real confrontations, relativism
unhelpfully discourages the evaluation of another outlook that is a
genuine option for us (for a development of Williams's position
by reference to the recent experimental literature, see Gaitan
and Viciana 2018).



Williams was a strong critic of most forms of moral objectivism, yet
he also criticized many of the nonobjectivist alternatives to
objectivism. His outlook is not easily classified in terms of standard
metaethical positions. With respect to his relativism of distance, it
may be wondered why appraisals are inappropriate in notional
confrontations: Why should the fact that an outlook is not a real
option preclude us from thinking it is just or unjust? On the other
hand, in real confrontations Williams thought the language of
appraisal was appropriate, but he also thought these confrontations
could involve rationally irresolvable disagreements. Though Williams
rejects strict relational relativism, objectivists may argue that his
position suffers from defects as serious as those that attend
*MMR*. If the confrontations are real because the two outlooks
have something in common, objectivists might ask, could this not
provide a basis for resolving these disagreements?



The central theme in mixed positions is that neither relativism nor
objectivism is wholly correct: At least in the terms in which they are
often expressed, these alternatives are subject to serious objections,
and yet they are motivated by genuine concerns. It might seem that a
mixed position could be developed that would give us the best of both
worlds (there are a number of other proposals along these lines; for
example see Hampshire 1983 and 1989). However, an implication of most
mixed positions (this does not apply to Williams) seems to be that, in
some respect, some moral judgments are objectively true (or
justified), while others have only relative truth (or justification).
This should not be confused with the claim that an action may be right
in some circumstances but not others. For example, a consequentialist
view that polygamy is right in one society and wrong in another
because it has good consequences in the first society and bad
consequences in the second would not be a mixed position because the
judgments "Polygamy is right in circumstances *A*"
and "Polygamy is wrong in circumstances *B*" could
both be true in an absolute sense. By contrast, a mixed position might
say that "Polygamy is right" is true relative to one
society and false relative to another (where the two societies differ,
not necessarily in circumstances, but in fundamental values), while
other moral judgments have absolute truth-value. This is a rather
disunified conception of morality, and it invites many questions. A
proponent of a mixed view would have to show that it is an accurate
portrayal of our moral practices, or that it is a plausible proposal
for reforming them.


## 8. Relativism and Tolerance



Relativism is sometimes associated with a normative position, usually
pertaining to how people ought to regard or behave towards those with
whom they morally disagree. The most prominent normative position in
this connection concerns tolerance. In recent years, the idea that we
should be tolerant has been increasingly accepted in some circles. At
the same time, others have challenged this idea, and the philosophical
understanding and justification of tolerance has become less obvious
(see Heyd 1996 and the entry on
 toleration).
 The question here is whether moral relativism has something to
contribute to these discussions, in particular, whether *DMR*
or *MMR* provide support for tolerance (for discussion, see
Graham 1996, Harrison 1976, Ivanhoe 2009, Kim and Wreen 2003, Prinz
2007: pp. 207-13 and Wong 1984: ch. 12). In this context,
tolerance does not ordinarily mean indifference or absence of
disapproval: It means having a policy of not interfering with the
actions of persons that are based on moral judgments we reject, when
the disagreement is not or cannot be rationally resolved. The context
of discussion is often, but not always, moral disagreements between
two societies. Does moral relativism provide support for tolerance in
this sense?



Though many people seem to think it does, philosophers often resist
supposing that there is a philosophical connection between accepting a
metaethical position and reaching a practical conclusion (however, see
Gillespie 2016). Hence, it is often thought that,
though *DMR* may provide the occasion for tolerance, but
it could not imply that tolerance is morally obligatory or even
permissible. *DMR* simply tells us there are moral
disagreements. Recognition of this fact, by itself, entails nothing
about how we should act towards those with whom we disagree.
*MMR* fares no better. For one thing, *MMR* cannot very
well imply that it is an objective moral truth that we should be
tolerant: *MMR* denies that there are such truths. (A mixed
position could contend that tolerance is the only objective moral
truth, all others being relative; but it would have to be shown that
this is more than an *ad hoc* maneuver.) It might be said that
*MMR* implies that tolerance is a relative truth. However, even
this is problematic. According to *MMR*, understood to concern
truth, the truth-value of statements may vary from society to society.
Hence, the statement, "people ought to be tolerant"
(*T*), may be true in some societies and false in others.
*MMR* by itself does not entail that *T* is true in any
society, and may in fact have the result that T is false in some
societies (a similar point may be made with respect to
justification).



Some objectivists may add that in some cases we should be tolerant of
those with whom we morally disagree, but that only objectivists can
establish this as an objective moral truth (for example, by drawing on
arguments in the liberal tradition from Locke or Mill). To the
objection that moral objectivism implies intolerance (or imperialism),
objectivists typically contend that the fact that we regard a society
as morally wrong in some respect does not entail that we should
interfere with it.



Nonetheless, the thought persists among some relativists that there is
a philosophically significant connection between relativism and
tolerance. Perhaps the conjunction of *MMR* and an ethical
principle could give us a reason for tolerance we would not have on
the basis of the ethical principle alone. Such an approach has been
proposed by Wong (1984: ch. 12). The principle is, roughly speaking,
that we should not interfere with people unless we could justify this
interference to them (if they were rational and well-informed in
relevant respects). Wong called this "the justification
principle." Of course, it is already a tolerance principle of
sorts. The idea is that it gains broader scope if *MMR* is
correct. Let us suppose the statement that there is an individual
right to freedom of speech is true and justified for our society, but
is false and unjustified in another society in which the press is
restricted for the good of the community. In this case, given
*MMR*, our society might not be able to justify interference to
the restrictive society concerning freedom of the press. Any
justification we could give would appeal to values that are
authoritative for us, not them, and no appeal to logic or facts alone
would give them a reason to accept our justification.



If the justification principle were widely accepted, this argument
might explain why some people have had good reason to think there is a
connection between relativism and tolerance. But there is a question
about whether the position is stable. Wong derived the justification
principle from Kant, and Kant rejected *MMR*. If we were to
accept *MMR*, would we still have reason to accept the
justification principle? Wong thought we might, perhaps on the basis
of considerations quite independent of Kant. In any case, this
argument would only show that *MMR* plays a role in an argument
for tolerance that is relevant to people in a society that accepted
the justification principle. The argument does not establish that
there is a general connection between relativism and tolerance. Nor
does it undermine the contention that *MMR* may have the result
that T is true in some societies and false in others.



In his more recent defense of pluralistic relativism (2006), Wong has
argued that, since some serious moral disagreements are inevitable,
any adequate morality will include the value of what he calls
accommodation. This involves a commitment to peaceful and non-coercive
relationships with persons with whom we disagree. Accommodation
appears to be related to tolerance, but Wong argues for more than
this: we should also try to learn from others, compromise with them,
preserve relationships with them, etc. Wong's defense of
accommodation is immune to the objection that relativism cannot be a
basis for such a universal value because his defense purports to be
based on considerations that any adequate morality should recognize.
However, for this reason, though it presupposes the considerations
supporting the relativist dimension of his position (there is no
single true morality), it argues from the non-relativist dimension
(there are universal constraints any morality should accept, in
particular, that one function of morality is to promote social
co-operation). Hence, it is not strictly speaking an argument from
relativism to accommodation.



As was noted in
 section 3,
 aside from the philosophical question whether or not some form of
moral relativism provides a reason for attitudes such as tolerance,
there is the psychological question whether or not people who accept
relativism are more likely to be tolerant. As was seen, there is some
evidence that relativists are more tolerant than objectivists, and it
has been claimed that, even if relativism does not justify tolerance,
it would be a positive feature of relativism that acceptance of it
makes people more tolerant (see Prinz 2007: 208). Of course, this
judgment presupposes that, in some sense, it is good to be
tolerant.