Philosophy Essay
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Chapter 2— Relativism
Simon Blackburn
Relativism in ethical theory is the doctrine that ethical truth is somehow relative to a background body of doctrine, or theory, or form of life or "whirl of organism". It is
an expression of the idea that there is no one true body of doctrine in ethics. There are different views, and some are "true for" some people, while others are true for
others.
This should be distinguished from what it is sometimes thought of in ethics itself, a practical stance that encourages toleration of different societies or different
approaches to practical living. This toleration could in principle coincide with an absolutist theory of ethics, according to which there is just one correct body of ethical
doctrine. For that one correct body of doctrine could, in principle, include the view that it is permissible or even obligatory to tolerate people who do things differently.
Nevertheless the practical attitude of fairly universal toleration is often felt to be a consequence of the theoretical stance that there is no one truth. That is, once the
theorist takes the view that there are pluralities of ethical truths, each relative to the different positions of people, it becomes quite natural to draw the conclusion that
toleration is the only warranted stance. For if "they have their truth" and we have ours, it would seem at best a brute exercise of power to coerce them into our ways,
or ostracize them or go to war with them for doing it differently. Thus the postmodernist Richard Rorty takes himself to have dismantled any conception of absolute
ethical truth, and indeed draws the conclusion that only a light, ironic, aesthetic stance to practical problems is justified. 1 Rorty is not unique in this. Many people, and
many ethical theorists, believe that without some "robust" or "objective" conception of moral truth, our right to hold judgments with a sufficient degree of conviction
evaporates. If we want to oppose cruelty, or defend free speech, or outlaw child sex, we need the conviction that it is not "just us", voicing a contingent or accidental
aspect of how we feel. We want to hold that truth is on our side: absolute truth, even God's truth. This is why relativism is usually seen as a disturbing challenge to
moral authority: a challenge that it is the business of a proper moral theory to answer.Co py ri gh t @ 20 00 . Jo hn W il ey a nd S on s, I nc .
Al l ri gh ts r es er ve d. M ay n ot b e re pr od uc ed i n an y fo rm w it ho ut p er mi ss io n fr om t he p ub li sh er ,
ex ce pt f ai r us es p er mi tt ed u nd er U .S . or a pp li ca bl e co py ri gh t la w.
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In this essay I shall compare a number of approaches to ethical theory, in terms of how they react to relativism. I shall start with the theory I myself defend, which is a
kind of "projectivism" or "expressivism". I shall argue in the next section that, perhaps surprisingly, this metaphysically undemanding view of ethics in fact puts us in a
very strong position to make the right reaction to relativism. I then say how certain other approaches, while superficially better able to defend themselves against
relativism, in fact open up disturbing relativistic options. While ostensibly protecting our authority, they in fact undermine it.
Expressivism holds that the key to ethics lies in the practical stances that we need to take up, to express to each other, and to discuss and negotiate. As the
expressivist tradition has always emphasized, ethics is at bottom about practice. It is about choices and actions. Ethics concerns what to do, and what not to do; who
to admire and who to avoid; where to draw lines, and where not to; what feelings to cultivate, and which ones to repress. Our ethic is shown in our cluster of
dispositions to encourage and to discourage various choices, characters, and feelings. A sincere moral opinion is the expression of one of these dispositions. For this
reason ethics can, fundamentally, be expressed in terms of prescriptions, and in some systems, like that of the Old Testament, this is indeed how it is given: thou shalt
do this, and not do that. But prescriptions only get us part of the way. Attitudes need comparison and ranking as well as simple expression. "This is better than that"
can get expression as "admire this more than that", but the replacement would be strained. And we have an ethical language that goes beyond simple imperatival forms
for good and sufficient reason, namely to bring to the business of systematizing and reasoning about attitude the elegant framework of propositional logic.
Because practice is so important, these dispositions need discussion. They need to be queried, and sometimes qualified and rejected and replaced. These queries can
take the form of asking whether a particular opinion is true or right. But the appearance should not mislead us. As Wittgenstein often reminds us, p is true means that
p. 2 Asking whether a moral judgment is true or right is no more than asking whether to accept it. And asking that is asking which attitude or policy or stance to
endorse.
All this should be platitudinous. But in fact in many peoples' minds it rings all kinds of alarm bells. It sounds to them to be an invitation to some alarming downgrading
of ethics. It seems to undermine the "absolute" or binding or authoritative character that we associate with moral and ethical imperatives.3 Some people who share the
basic orientation have encouraged these anxieties. Bernard Williams believes that ethics cannot be what it seems.4 And famously, John Mackie, in his "error theory"
supposes that there are elements in our ethical practice that could only be justified if something more were true: some kind of "objectivity" or "authority" or "tobe
doneness'' built into the frame of the world. But this something more is not true, so firstorder ethical practice is founded on a mistake.5
I take these views to be natural, but also to be rejected. I don't think firstorder ethical practice embodies any mistake at all. Particular ethical views, of course, may
be mistaken. But the categories of ethics and the states of mind of those who findCo py ri gh t @ 20 00 . Jo hn W il ey a nd S on s, I nc .
Al l ri gh ts r es er ve d. M ay n ot b e re pr od uc ed i n an y fo rm w it ho ut p er mi ss io n fr om t he p ub li sh er , ex ce pt f ai r us es
pe rm it te d un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .
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they need them and express themselves in terms of them are quite in order. Or rather, if they are not (as some people think that the concept of a "right", for example, is
of doubtful use) then it is an ethical problem, not one of logic or metaphysics or the theory of what ethics is. One sign of this is that Mackie himself never showed what
a practice of expressing and comparing and encouraging and discouraging practical stances would look like if it were free of the mistake. I would suppose that it
would come to look exactly like ours (even if started somewhat differently, in some impoverished form). And this shows that there is no mistake embedded in the very
structure of our reasonings.
Expressivism and Relativism
There is no problem of relativism for the expressivist, because there is no problem of moral truth. Since moral opinion is not in the business of representing the world,
but of assessing choices and actions and attitudes in the world, to wonder which attitude is right is to wonder which attitude to adopt or endorse. Suppose, then, to
take a reallife example, that I adopt and express an attitude: say, that women should be educated. Suppose I meet a member of the Afghan Taliban, who holds the
reverse. This may certainly pose me a practical problem: in fact at least two practical problems. First, I would like to be able to change his attitude. And second, even
if I can't do that, I would like to be able to stop him from implementing it. But I may not know how to go about either of these things, and there lie my practical
difficulties.
The relativist will get up at this point and say, "well, it is true for the Taliban that women should not be educated". But what can that mean? Surely it is just a bad way
of saying that the Taliban hold that women should not be educated, which we already knew. It is not a way of putting that opinion in a favorable light. "True for them"
sounds a qualified kind of truth, like "it is true in Greenland that it freezes all winter", as opposed to "it is not true in Carolina that it freezes all winter". But seeing the
Taliban's view as true in any kind of way must involve putting it into a favorable light. And if anyone wants to put that opinion in a favorable light, he has some very
hard work to do, and we can promise in advance that he will fail. Why? Because nothing worth respecting speaks in favor of the view. There is no favorable light in
which it can be put; it is a view that can only appear attractive when the light is very dim. If you think otherwise, I am against you and I will express this by saying that
you are wrong. I reject your opinions, and this I voice by word and deed.
The relativist will try again. He will say: "well, it is merely your attitude against his". Part of this is right: it is indeed my attitude against his. That is what ethical conflict is.
The part that is wrong is the "merely". What is "mere" about a conflict of attitude? The world's worst conflicts are those of policy, choice, and practice. They are the
most important conflicts there are. By comparison, mere conflicts ofCo py ri gh t @ 20 00 . Jo hn W il ey a nd S on s, I nc .
Al l ri gh ts r es er ve d. M ay n ot b e re pr od uc ed i n an y fo rm w it ho ut p er mi ss io n fr om t he p ub li sh er , ex ce pt f ai r
us es p er mi tt ed u nd er U .S . or a pp li ca bl e co py ri gh t la w.
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opinion can fade into insignificance. It need not matter at all to me that you hold that the distance to the moon is half a million miles, although I hold that it is nearer a
quarter of a million. The difference need not translate into actions that bother me. But if your attitude to me is contempt or disgust, that matters a great deal.
No doubt this mistakes the intended import of the word "mere". It is not that conflict of attitude is unimportant. The relativist will say "it is your attitude against his and
neither of you can show that the other is wrong". The conflict is "merely" a conflict of attitude in the sense that there is no proof procedure. This, I should say,
contains a grain of truth, although only a very small grain. For, after all, it is strictly false. I can show that the Taliban is wrong by the simplest means: any educated
female is a perfectly good illustration of his error. My wife shows how wrong he is, and so do millions of other women. Probably the complaint is that I cannot show
the Taliban himself that he is wrong for, after all, he is blind to the illustration or takes it the wrong way. But even this is not axiomatic. It may be possible to show the
Taliban himself that he is wrong. We may be able to increase his experience of women, to undermine the delusive authorities on which he relies, to enlarge his
sympathies and so on. It is unlikely to be a quick process, but whoever thought that it should be? It is also probably a process that is more likely to be successful if
attempted by someone nearer to the Taliban's frame of mind: a more liberal Muslim, for example.
The only grain of truth in the remark is that there is no algorithm for success. There is no proof procedure nor any empirical process of working on the Taliban that is
guaranteed in advance to bring him to my opinion. But that's just how it is. It is always contingent, and sometimes chancy, whether we can move a dissident towards
concurrence with our own sympathies and attitudes. If that worries anyone, they would do well to reflect that the same is true in empirical and even mathematical or
logical cases. The problem with the Taliban is that he is blind to what illustrates his error, and that may be true of people in these other cases. I can show that daffodils
are yellow, but I cannot necessarily show to some particular dissident that they are yellow, if he refuses to look, or looks but is blind to colors. I can show that
contradictions are false, but I cannot necessarily show it to some enthusiast who holds in advance that all logic is a patriarchal plot of which I am a part.
One formula that has attracted some admiration in recent discussions of relativism, is that on such an issue we can simply say "there is nothing else to think". 6 This may
just be a flowery way of nailing our colors to the mast, but otherwise it strikes me as overdoing it. I think it is unfair to the Taliban to deny that he indeed thinks
something else. It dehumanizes him, making him into some kind of mad dog, unable to think about choice, action, and ways of life at all. Whereas in fact he voices a
genuine attitude, and a practical policy, for which he has his delusive reasons. That is why we are in conflict. Otherwise he would represent nothing but a kind of
obstacle to our own policies, something, in Strawson's words, to be "managed or handled or cured or trained".7 I have no sympathy with the Taliban, but I would not
myself wish to put him outside the pale of human thought. We cannot conjure away attitudes of separatism and divisiveness, either of class or raceCo py ri gh t @ 20 00 . Jo hn W il ey a nd S on s, I nc .
Al l ri gh ts r es er ve d. M ay n ot b e re pr od uc ed i n an y fo rm w it ho ut p er mi ss io n fr om t he p ub li sh er , ex ce pt
fa ir u se s pe rm it te d un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .
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or gender, by a kind of legislation that the people who hold them are beyond interpretation.
Well now, says the relativist as a last resort, but isn't expressivism usually classed as an antirealist view of ethics (denying that ethical facts or properties have the same
kind of status as real facts or real properties)? And doesn't this mean that there are no facts of an ethical or normative kind? And then aren't all attitudes
fundamentally on an equal footing? The answers are: yes, expressivism is usually characterized as antirealist; but no, this does not mean that there are no facts of an
ethical or normative kind, and finally, even if it did, this would not mean that all attitudes are on all fours.
Antirealism, or as I prefer to call it quasirealism, refuses to give ethical facts a typical explanatory role. This is already heralded when we turn our backs on ethical
representation. A representation of something as F is typically explained by the fact that it is F. A representation answers to what is represented. Expressivism holds
that ethical facts do not play this explanatory role. We cannot, except by analogy, talk of ethical perception. If we want a slogan we can say that the way of the world,
and that includes the mental world, is independent of the normative. Oughts do not explain is's. Our moral understandings are not explained by independent moral
structures, to which we are lucky enough to be sensitive.
Why does this not imply that there are no moral facts? Minimalism shows us why not. I have already given you a moral opinion of mine: women should be educated.
Here is another way of putting it: it is true that women should be educated. Here is another: it is a fact that women should be educated. If we like we can go further up
this progression, which I call Ramsey's ladder: it is true that it is a fact . . . ; it is really true that it is a fact . . . ; and, soon, but not quite yet, I shall suggest that we can
add objectivity to the list. 8
And why does that not imply that divergent moral opinions are on an equal footing? Well, all the expressivist can hear that as meaning is that they are all equally good.
And that is just not true. The Taliban's opinion on the education of women is not as good as mine. In fact, it is diametrically wrong, wrong root and branch. But notice
that this would be so even if we were less minimalist than I have been about facts. Suppose a substantive or robust theory of truth were developed, giving us some
notion of correspondence. Suppose it proceeds by isolating some metaphysical category of Facts (note the uppercase). And suppose finally that for the kinds of
reason I have outlined, there are no normative or ethical Facts (all these doctrines belong to the Tractatus LogicoPhilosophicus). This would be a metaphysical
result. So it clearly could not imply that all moral opinions are on an equal footing. It could not imply, for instance, that it is permissible to hold that women should not
be educated. It could at best imply that in holding this you do not trespass against the uppercase Facts. But that is all right. It was not that (or, not simply that) that is
wrong with the Taliban view. The main thing that is wrong with the view is that it is inhumane, cruel, arbitrary, and so on. The metaphysics cannot imply that it is all
right to be like that!
I have said that there is no problem of relativism, and tried a little to explain why this is so. I shall finish this part of the discussion by entering a very small concessive
remark, something that can perhaps serve to salvage a little pride for the relativist.Co py ri gh t @ 20 00 . Jo hn W il ey a nd S on s, I nc .
Al l ri gh ts r es er ve d. M ay n ot b e re pr od uc ed i n an y fo rm w it ho ut p er mi ss io n fr om t he p ub li sh er , ex ce pt f ai r us es p er mi tt ed
un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .
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There are cases like that of the Taliban, but there are also cases where travel broadens the mind. We might start off by thinking that our attitude is the only permissible
attitude, or our ways are the only permissible ways, and that all others are wrong. But exposure to other people, or other cultures or times can make us change our
minds. They do it differently — yet we cannot condemn them, or find it in our hearts to maintain the superiority of our ways. So we become a degree more tolerant.
And this is often exactly as it should be.
I suspect that the relativist generalizes too rapidly from this kind of progression, assuming that because it is as it should be in some cases, it must be so in all cases. So
that simple exposure to alternative opinion should be enough to dissolve any allegiance we hold to our own attitudes or principles. The error comes in forgetting the
qualification that we "cannot condemn them, or find it in our hearts to maintain the superiority of our ways". When this is true, toleration is indeed the right upshot. But
it is not always true.
If I go to other countries, I find other funerary practices. This might shock me, initially. But I learn that the essential human practices of dealing with death and grief and
survival share their core function beneath their surface diversities. After this I cannot find it in my heart to maintain the superiority of our ways: it becomes a matter of
choice whether we cremate, or bury, or leave for the vultures, and a good thing too. But if I go to Afghanistan, the situation is different. I can, and should, maintain
exactly what I started with. If I become infected by the Taliban attitude to women, that is unfortunate and represents a deterioration in my own moral fibre. If the
Taliban are seductive enough in other ways, I may have to be on my guard against this.
Clearly, then, there remain moral problems connected with multiculturalism. There is no moral problem of relativism. But there are particular problems of when to
tolerate and when to oppose, and the answers to these may not all be easy, or all given in advance. We have to ask whether we are faced just with an alternative,
equally good, solution to some problem of living, that can cheerfully be acknowledged in the spirit of an alternative convention, or whether, on the other hand, we are
faced with something that must be opposed. Slavery, the oppressions of caste systems, the systematic degradation of women, child labor and many other facets of
societies are not alternative equally good solutions to problems of living. They are things that must be opposed.
So the expressivist or quasirealist approach gives a complete defense against relativism, acknowledging only particular problems that have to be solved, when they
come up, like all moral problems. We have to approach them deploying the beliefs and attitudes that we hold, and bringing them to bear as best we can. If I am
worried about whether, say, to tolerate lesbian parenthood or the use of cannabis as alternative lifestyles of whether to oppose them as impermissible aberrations, this
is what I have to do. They may get put in the same category as the divergent funerary rites, or they may go with the Taliban. But each issue has to be fought on its
merits. There is no problem of relativism, but only individual problems of living.Co py ri gh t @ 20 00 . Jo hn W il ey a nd S on s, I nc .
Al l ri gh ts r es er ve d. M ay n ot b e re pr od uc ed i n an y fo rm w it ho ut p er mi ss io n fr om t he p ub li sh er , ex ce pt f ai r us es
pe rm it te d un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .
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Approaches That Have Problems with Relativism
Why do I think it an advantage of quasirealism that it solves this issue so easily? Cannot other approaches say the same things? The difficulty is this. Many
philosophical attempts to understand the nature of ethics look for more "robust" or "substantive" conceptions of ethical truth. Frequently they try to model ethical truth
on other areas: science and a teleology for human beings in the case of some kinds of naturalism; mathematics, in the case of a priori and constructivist approaches;
secondary qualities in the case of some contemporary "moral sense" theories. Such theories typically arise in response to a felt need for some substantive conception of
moral truth. Now where there is a need, there is also a danger. The danger is that what you get actually fails to fill the need in the right way. It is here that relativism
becomes a problem. I shall illustrate the threat with three examples.
The first example is the kind of theory associated with John McDowell, that uses the rulefollowing considerations to defend a close analogy between ethics and
secondaryquality perception. This gets into difficulties over relativism, because both the rulefollowing considerations and the analogy with secondary quality
perception encourage relativism. Roughly, in each case we can envisage a situation in which there are different "whirls of organism". There are organisms that whirl the
Taliban way, and see women as inferior beings whose highest purpose is passively to serve the pleasures of men, and organisms that whirl the Western or
enlightenment way. There are organisms that whirl the way dogs do when it comes to smells, and organisms that whirl our way. If truth was found in the "responses" or
the "practice" or the "shared consensus" of organisms, then it is very hard to see why these individual communities of shared response are not generating their own
truths. This is how we do think of it in the case of secondary qualities. The dog inhabits, literally, a different world of smells from the human being. And there is no
saying that just one of us is "right''. So relativism becomes a real threat, because the theory looks as if it has to allow for a plurality of truths. There are defensive moves
possible (one can always remark that one element of our whirl of organism is to set ourselves against those who whirl another way) but the danger is very real.
For a second theory that courts danger, consider the very different view of Christine Korsgaard — a kind of constructivism. 9 Korsgaard fears the contingent,
changeable world of desire and attitude enough to want an entirely different source of normativity, which she finds in such notions as selflegislation, and the nature of
practical identity. Now although Korsgaard herself believes that there is a kind of Kantian straightjacket on the shape our selflegislations must take, the problem of
relativism is more impressive than this solution to it. For on the face of it, you can have pluralities of selflegislating persons whose identities are happily bound up in
various constraints they set themselves under, but who unfortunately find these constraints in entirely different places. Some conceive it their duty to privilege men over
women, others do not. Some would find their identities threatened if they broke certain dietary prohibitions, while others do not care at all. If the "construcCo py ri gh t @ 20 00 . Jo hn W il ey a nd S on s, I nc .
Al l ri gh ts r es er ve d. M ay n ot b e re pr od uc ed i n an y fo rm w it ho ut p er mi ss io n fr om t he p ub li sh er , ex ce pt
fa ir u se s pe rm it te d un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .
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tion" or selflegislation generated moral truth, once more we seem to have a plurality of truths, and relativism strikes. And I should say that the same result awaits the
less rationalistic, more political, version of constructivism that seems visible in some of Rawls's more recent work. That is, whereas in Rawls's original work we might
have thought that the framework of a decent society emerged as the necessary consequence of rational choice, in the later work we have a more relativized conception
of the kinds of structure that we can justify to each other, given conditions of political dialogue that are themselves contingent and local. The shift in emphasis seems to
me wholly admirable, but it leaves the door open to relativistic fears that the more ambitious Kantian coloring once closed. 10
Finally, the same kind of result looks to threaten any neoAristotelian theory that seeks to tie moral choice to some conception of "flourishing". The problem is again
that there is a plurality of ways in which flourishing can be had. Some flourish one way, some another. It is not just that there is, as Bernard Williams memorably put it,
no particular tie between behaving admirably and flourishing "by the ecological standard of the bright eye and the glossy coat". It also remains disappointingly true that
in such a flexible animal as the human being, entirely different conceptions of flourishing will support entirely different conceptions of what to do and what to admire.
We have only to think of the Taliban conception of what it is in a woman to flourish (a conception, incidentally, that we can easily envisage being shared by their
women, at least after a generation or two). Once more if moral truth is found "in" such ideas, then given the plurality of ideas, we have the relativistic plurality of truths.
It is, then, a distinct advantage of quasirealism that it keeps free of all that. Of course, this is not to deny that conceptions of what counts as flourishing should inform
our attitudes. But when the conceptions are contestable, we are under no pressure at all to think that they generate different and contesting systems of ethical truth.
They only generate the need to choose, and to defend our choice with the best story we can find.
Objectivity and Relativism
Objectivity is very important to many philosophers of ethics. Can the view I have sketched defend a sufficiently robust concept of objectivity to satisfy us? Here too I
shall urge that there is no problem.
Objectivity, I say, is desirable. It is a virtue. But what does it mean? We can think of this by considering the flaws and failures that denote its absence. First, there are
flaws of bias. Two considerations are equal, but the biased judge weighs one more heavily than the other. Two people have equal claims, but one is preferred to the
other. The most obvious cases are ones in which only a certain range of considerations ought to affect an issue, but others are surreptitiously introduced. Thus, I hold
that some restricted range of considerations ought to influence a hiring decision. IfCo py ri gh t @ 20 00 . Jo hn W il ey a nd S on s, I nc .
Al l ri gh ts r es er ve d. M ay n ot b e re pr od uc ed i n an y fo rm w it ho ut p er mi ss io n fr om t he p ub li sh er , ex ce pt f ai r
us es p er mi tt ed u nd er U .S . or a pp li ca bl e co py ri gh t la w.
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my college introduces another — say, trying to reject a candidate because of age or gender or haircut — then he is not being objective. He is indulging his bias.
Famously, we are not good at knowing when this is true of ourselves, and the mechanisms of selfdeception are familiar enough. The colleague may not actually
advance age or gender or haircut as a reason. But if, sufficiently often or sufficiently predictably, the reasons he does advance all turn out to discriminate against those
of the wrong age or gender, or unusual haircuts, we know what is going on. And we may know it before he does.
Worse, epistemologically at any rate, than bias is blindness. For as well as objective decisions, we talk of objective views of things. A person may fail to give an
objective appreciation of the situation because he fails to see the situation at all. A person who does not appreciate what is going on cannot give an objective view of a
situation. To be objective, our view has to have taken enough into consideration. It has to be sensitive to what matters.
In the case of both decisions and views this formula seems to work. To be objective is to be sensitive to the right aspects of the situation, and in the right way. This
means that normativity is built into the concept at the center, and of course we can expect disagreements. My colleague may believe that he is right to discriminate as
he does. That is, he has some story defending his discriminations, and he may try to get us to listen to it. Then once more we have a practical problem. We may find
ourselves listening to him, or we may know in advance that it is no use doing so. It is not given that we never budge from our antecedent opinions, but it is not given
that we simply roll over and agree with his either.
Can the expressivist or quasirealist select an appropriate range of considerations as the right range? Can he privilege the decisionmaking of the unbiased judge, or
the point of view of the informed, largeminded spectator who sees the situation in its entirety? Of course. I am against my colleague who lets his hiring decision be
influenced by the age, gender or haircut of the applicant, and I express this by saying that he is sensitive to the wrong considerations. He is biased, not objective. I am
impatient with people who get their opinions from the gutter press, because that press does not give a full enough selection of facts to justify their attitudes. I privilege
the betterinformed.
Let us return to the Taliban. You have already heard me saying that the Taliban are wrong. But can the expressivist or quasirealist say that there is anything
objectively wrong about their views? They are certainly sensitive to the wrong considerations — that is given by the fact that they let educational policies get decided
by gender. I should also say that they are blind to the nature of women and the possibilities open to them. They are insensitive to most of the important aspects of
women's lives. So certainly, it is a plain fact they show deficiencies of objectivity. They are objectively wrong.
What else might the worry about objectivity be? It might be a way of reintroducing the demand for proof, that we met in the last section. Someone might, I suppose,
seek to use the notion so that someone is objectively wrong if and only if there is a guarantee in advance that there is a cognitive procedure for changing his opinCo py ri gh t @ 20 00 . Jo hn W il ey a nd S on s, I nc .
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ion to coincide with ours. But this would be an unfortunate usage: witness my illustration that there is no such procedure even in the straightforward empirical cases
where people are happiest talking of objective error.
One thought people may have in mind, when they hanker after objectivity, is this. If we are wrong about literal objects, such as what lies in our path, we expect to be
tripped up. Objects make themselves felt. The Captain of the Titanic was wrong about an object, and as a result lost his ship. We might hope to show that if the
Taliban are "objectively" wrong, then there is disaster lying in wait for them: an equivalent to being tripped up. This is one side of the thought that we have already met,
that associates ethical truth with flourishing, and issues in Aristotelianism. The idea will be that the objectivity of the Taliban mistake will be manifested in the relative
impoverishment or loss of flourishing lives. Just as people think that the economic errors of communism were finally exhibited in the collapse of eastern European
communism, so they might hold that errors of morality will be illustrated in the collapse of lives built on those errors.
If that is the idea, the expressivist tradition certainly does not have to oppose it, although I myself would not believe it for a moment. It may be true that there are such
tight constraints on flourishing that any deviation from a good ethic destroys it. Or rather, we should say, it could have been true. For it is not really a sensible thought
to keep open, after all we know about human beings. It is much better to think of the alignment between flourishing and behaving well as highly contingent, and not
only contingent, but politically contingent. That is, it is up to a society to create an alignment between behaving well and flourishing. As Hume argues in the third book
of the Treatise, commercial societies implement attitudes and procedures so that people who renege on their word get tripped up. 11 If they do not get tripped up,
because, for instance, transactions are not repeated, then the alignment breaks down, and we get individual cases in which the cheat flourishes.
It would be up to the world community to ensure that a society that refuses to educate its women is tripped up — that is, somehow penalized in ways that eventually
result in reform. When it comes to things like caste systems or oppression of minorities, I see no reason at all for thinking that nature puts into place mechanisms for
tripping up those who hold the wrong attitudes. It is "set us as a task", in Kantian terms, to put into place the sticks and carrots that will hopefully introduce
improvement.
Here, many modern options in moral philosophy are hopelessly impoverished by their Aristotelian and Kantian trappings. Those trappings enable one group to believe
piously that the Taliban will not flourish, and that this is the bottom line: this is what is wrong with them. They enable the other group to think that they have
transgressed against some rational constraint on practical reasoning, and that this is the bottom line: this is what is wrong with them. Whereas the real truth is that what
is wrong with them is neither of these things. So far as I can predict the Taliban might well flourish, again by the ecological standard of the bright eye and the bushy
coat, if the rest of the world does nothing about it. They may flourish by any standards they themselves would recognize (and as already mentioned, that could inCo py ri gh t @ 20 00 . Jo hn W il ey a nd S on s, I nc .
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clude female members of the society). And it is pieinthesky to believe that there is some theorem of practical reasoning against which they trespass, or that this is
what is wrong with them. (In fact, in current Kantian versions, it is piebeyondthesky, since subjection to the categorical imperative arises from a transcendental
autonomy: something like an act of selflegislation that happens at no time and no place). What is truly wrong with the Taliban is more straightforward than either of
these things. What is wrong with them is that they oppress their women, impoverish their lives, and keep them in a state of ignorant superstition. Why should we feel
any urge to say more than that? Isn't it bad enough?
The idea behind saying "they are objectively wrong" on this suggestion was that they are wrong in the kind of way that those who are wrong about objects are: they get
tripped up. The world itself contains the mechanisms for correcting their ways, and preferably in ways that they cannot ignore. I have suggested that this is too
optimistic. And again, we might reflect that it is pretty optimistic even in many empirical cases. Certainly if I am wrong about whether there is a cliff or iceberg in front
of me, the world will trip me up. But it I am wrong about less immediate matters, I can go happily with my errors to the grave. If you disagree with me about the O. J.
Simpson verdict, one of us is objectively wrong, but neither of us is particularly likely to suffer because of it. The connection between objectivity and flourishing is not
so very close in everyday empirical cases, so it is unwise to ask for it to be closer in the delicate cases of ethics.
So we should not hear the word "objectivity" as any kind of stick with which to beat the expressivist. Looking at it the other way, if someone calls our opinion about
an ethical issue "subjective" we can hear the charge in a number of ways that matter. He may be imputing hidden bias. He may be imputing lack of knowledge, or lack
of ability to deploy the right knowledge. He may think that the issue is genuinely one on which it is possible to be in two minds, and that any more definite attitude is
only one option, or one unattractive option. All these are charges we may have to listen to, and on occasion they may be justified. But there is no single general charge,
always waiting to be made. My judgment, like that of others, will doubtless show particular flaws of this kind in particular situations, and it is then up to the critic to
press the particular charge he has in mind. And that too is just part of the human situation.
Authority:
The Last Word
In his recent book of that title, Thomas Nagel sets up and considers a "relativist" challenge to the authority of norms, not only in ethics but potentially in other areas too,
such as logic, mathematics, or science. His hatefigure is the postmodernist or relativist who hears the right opinion, and even echoes it, but adds always the
qualification or rider: that is just us. Nagel opposes to the bitter end this last word. He even invokes a kind of Platonic image of harmony between our ways and the
norCo py ri gh t @ 20 00 . Jo hn W il ey a nd S on s, I nc .
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mative orders that govern the universe. If that is to be the alternative, it is preferable to the relativism, whatever metaphysical anxieties it provokes. Nagel's anxiety, and
the cost he is prepared to pay for a remedy for it, and undoubtedly widelyshared. Yet the angst is unfounded, and the cost does not have to be paid. This is fortunate,
for I believe it cannot be paid: there is no proof awaiting us that our normative attitudes harmonize with the normative order governing the universe, whatever that might
be.
I agree with Nagel that there is something flattening or dispiriting about the relativistic last word. And it is surely intended by many postmodernists as a debunking
signal: a flag showing that they have seen through the authority of whatever norms are in question. They may go on to voice acceptance of the norms, but, to Nagel's
ear, the protestation will sound hollow. They can't give the norms the authority they really deserve. And in Nagel's view, only the Platonist can do that.
This dialogue mistakenly assumes there to be One Big Question, when in fact there are only a lot of little questions. Nagel thinks the relativist challenge points us
towards a large metaphysical hole: a gap in our ontology or view of the world that we must desperately try to overcome. I believe, instead, that it amounts at best to an
attempt to undermine our first order confidences, and that such attempts are to be met piecemeal, depending upon the case in hand.
Here is an illustration from recent work by the late Jean Hampton. Consider the scientific norm of insisting upon double blind tests for the efficacy of new drugs (so
that nobody involved knows which is a real drug and which is a placebo). Suppose some halfhearted experimentalist, who says "we like to do double blind tests", and
then adds "but that is just us". Surely the right response is to ask what the little word "just" is doing. It insinuates the double blind methodology is optional, so that there
would be nothing wrong about doing the tests without it. But that, we suppose, is a shocking mistake. Tests conducted without it have a high probability of saying that
a drug is efficacious when it is not, or vice versa, and this is what we wanted to avoid. If our experimentalist denies this, he had better have a story, and most scientists
would bet in advance that he will not have one.
Another good way of putting it is this. Let us give the dissident that it is just us. But let us add some words of selfawareness. It is just us, able as we are to conduct
reliable tests. Or, it is just us, forearming ourselves against misleading results. There is nothing to be ashamed of in these words of selfdescription. On the contrary,
there is something to be proud of, because learning to avoid the experimental pitfalls presumably took some doing. So we can agree with Nagel that better last words
than "that is just us" should be found. But we stay within our firstorder normative space as we find them. This makes it plain that the issue with the relativist is
fundamentally one of confidence. But if our last words are happy enough, our confidence is wellfounded, and no challenge to it exists.
My response is the same if an ethical attitude is challenged. I am in favor of education for women. Suppose now not a Taliban, but some weary postmodernist, saying
"I am in favor of it too. But that is just us". Again the "just" insinuates that this is somehow an optional attitude, that there is nothing wrong with people suchCo py ri gh t @ 20 00 . Jo hn W il ey a nd S on s, I nc .
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as the Taliban who happen to whirl the other way. But I am unsympathetic to this degree of toleration — the kind of open mindedness that comes when all one's
brains have fallen out, as it is sometimes put. Putting it positively I can add words of selfdescription: it is just us, free from the politics of arbitrary discrimination, free
from culturally embedded misogyny, maintaining ideals of equality and freedoms of selfdevelopment for all. These words ring well in my ear: it is just us, and we are
doing well. Putting it negatively, I can expound as I have done on the way the Taliban attitude is not optional. There is indeed something wrong with it and them, and I
can go on to detail some of what it is.
Of course in all this I am speaking in my own voice. That is inevitable. But so long as my own voice is not one to be embarrassed by, it is also of no interest.
Notice that this is not an open invitation to be smug. Suppose I announce my hostility to legalized cannabis. Someone comes along and, perhaps pointing to countries
where cannabis is legal and things seem to go on fine, says "we may hold it right to criminalize cannabis, but that is just us". I try for words of selfdescription: just us,
aware of the dangers; just us, able to discriminate harmless drugs from harmful ones. And here, suddenly, the words may not ring all that happily. Either the
descriptions are unjustified or false, or they are not things to be proud of. They may even be things about which to be embarrassed "just us, ignorant of the real
consequences, or just us, believing what we are told in the gutter press". When this happens something has to give. We either have to find better words, or change our
habit of being embarrassed by ignorance or gullibility, or come to soften our opposition to cannabis. Or, perhaps, "carelessness and inattention" can provide a remedy,
for one human response to finding that the last words of selfdescription are embarrassing is, unfortunately, just to kick over the table, refusing to listen. But that too is
an embarrassing last description of our state.
We can conclude by noticing one final issue that perhaps troubles people who think about these things. I suspect it lies behind the kind of moral imperative people feel
to transcend quasirealism. It may partly explain why, as I put it in my book Ruling Passions they think quasirealism smells of sulphur.
As we have seen, people hanker after algorithms, or procedures guaranteed in advance to prove that their opponents are wrong, or preferably to prove to them that
they are wrong. They want this security. But suppose, as I am afraid is true, they cannot always find such procedures. Well, in fact attitudes and politics are going to
continue. In practice, however much a Professor beats his breast about the need for an algorithm in the class room, out of the study he will discipline his children, sit as
a magistrate, campaign for one party or another, lament the Taliban, just as if he had one. But one strand from Kant will lead the Professor to be embarrassed about
some of this. For the attitudes and the politics will eventually have a coercive edge. There will come a case in which he is wrong to do it. And people think that this
trespasses against the respect due to persons, or against the dignity of persons — and this worries them. People thinking like this fear that they can only be justified in
coercive measures if, at least in principle, the object of those measures ought to be assenting to them, and this in turn would only be so if somewhere thereCo py ri gh t @ 20 00 . Jo hn W il ey a nd S on s, I nc .
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is the missing algorithm. It is as if, when I lock you up, if what I do is just, then you must be tacitly in possession of thoughts that would lead to you assenting to your
fate. You could reason to my conclusion, even if in fact you choose not to. Otherwise, so the line goes, I fail to respect you as a person, or infringe your dignity and
even your rights.
I do not have too much sympathy with this line of thought. It seems to me only in fairyland that everyone has at some deep level an appreciation of the right and the
good. It is wishful thinking to suppose that at the end of every just piece of sentencing there is a prisoner who tacitly accepts the justice of the sentence.
Human beings do dirty things, and their cultures let them get away with them. If a Taliban living in a western jurisdiction is indicted for the notuncommon crime of
burning his wife to death for some petty shortcoming or misdemeanor, he may feel unjustly treated. His whole culture may back him in this resentment. He may feel it
atrocious that his crime attracts the same penalty as if he had killed a male relative. And he may have no principles within him that could even ideally be deployed to
change his feelings. But that does not give me, the westerner, the least reason either for changing the judgment, or for feeling guilty about enforcing the penalty. Nor do
I trespass against dignity and due respect. The Taliban deserves no respect for his attitude to women or for his action. Nor does his selfjustification express any kind
of dignity. He brought it all upon himself, by himself refusing to treat half of humankind with due dignity and respect.
A weaker and more plausible requirement is that coercion should only be exercised against someone if it would be reasonable to expect people to agree that this is a
case where coercion is necessary. The agreement sought after would not necessarily be that of the criminal, for as we have already described, the criminal may be
blind to what shows the error of his ways. But so long as reasonable people see the error of his ways, coercion may be justified. This seems to be right, but it really
amounts to little more than an equation between behavior being justified, and it being seen by reasonable people that it is justified. "Reasonable" is here functioning in
what we might call a Humefriendly sense. It does not mark the delivery of pure practical reason, uncontaminated by our contingent concerns, and sympathies and
attitudes. It means an appeal to people who are objective, in the sense described above, and who having thought the matter through, sifted and refined their attitudes,
decide that the criminal should indeed be subject to coercion. Perhaps it does trespass against the dignity or respect due to a person if we coerce him or her although
our policy does not meet this condition. But that means only that we trespass against these things when our policy is unjustified. I am quite prepared to believe that this
is true, but it is not as substantive a truth as we might have hoped to find.
It would, of course, be nice if all criminals were penitents, and if the dignity of people and the respect due to them were always so great that there was no need for
coercive measures in the first place. And no doubt these things are true in fairyland. In the real world, we have to do the best we can, and here, as elsewhere, the task
of the philosopher is partly to enable us to do this without the confusions and guilt that so often bedevil practical reasonings.Co py ri gh t @ 20 00 . Jo hn W il ey a nd S on s, I nc .
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Notes
1. Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. xv, 173.
2. Most famously, at Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1953), §136.
3. Some writers make a distinction, whereby the moral is a subset of the ethical. Ethics is concerned with the whole field of evaluation, choice, and action, whereas
morality is concerned more with obligations and duties. In this essay the distinction is not important, and I shall talk indifferently of the moral and the ethical.
4. Bernard Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (London: Fontana, 1985).
5. John Mackie, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (Harmonsworth.: Penguin Books, 1977).
6. David Wiggins, "Moral Cognitivism, Moral Relativism, and Motivating Beliefs," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 91 (1990–91): 61–86.
7. Peter Strawson, "Freedom and Resentment" in Studies in the Philosophy of Thought and Action (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968), p. 79.
8. For more on Ramsey's ladder, see my Ruling Passions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 78, 294–7.
9. Christine Korsgaard, The Sources of Normativity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
10. The major works contrasted here are of course A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1972), and Political Liberalism (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1993).
11. David Hume. Treatise of Human Nature, ed. L. A. Selby Bigge (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1888), III, ii, 5, p. 516ff.Co py ri gh t @ 20 00 . Jo hn W il ey a nd S on s, I nc .
Al l ri gh ts r es er ve d. M ay n ot b e re pr od uc ed i n an y fo rm w it ho ut p er mi ss io n fr om t he p ub li sh er ,
ex ce pt f ai r us es p er mi tt ed u nd er U .S . or a pp li ca bl e co py ri gh t la w.
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