[MD] The Moral Landscape

[Steven Peterson]

Hi Mark,

Mark:
> In my opinion, a
> culture cannot be wrong about what is moral because it creates the morality,
> does not interpret it.

Steve:
If I follow you correctly, your position is that morality is simply a
matter of agreement with a particular society. The only sense in which
we can say anything about the morality of stoning homosexuals is that
societies forbid it and others demand it.

Neither Harris, Pirsig, nor I subscribe to this sort of relativism.
Our claims about morality can have truth-value and be as objective as
our scientific claims. The fact that there is no broad agreement on
morals does not mean that there is no truth of the matter. It just
means that at least some people are wrong. There is more
cross-cultural agreement on the belief that cruelty is wrong than on
the truth of evolution. But amount of agreement or diagreement is
irrelevent to whether or not there is in principle an answer to moral
or scientific questions.

Morals aren't asserted to be objective in the Platonic sense of
existing independently of human experience. They are not ontologically
objective, but moral truths can be epistemically objective in the
sense that when making such judgments we are not lying to ourselves,
not overly biased in favor of personal interest, etc. Such scientific
objectivity is not understood as not having values but as valuing
reliable chains of evidence that lead us to good conclusions. This
scientific objectivity can be applied to studying morals--determining
what we ought to do so as to maximize wellbeing in a given set of
circumstances.

Best,
Steve