this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2025
806 points (99.3% liked)
People Twitter
6446 readers
1883 users here now
People tweeting stuff. We allow tweets from anyone.
RULES:
- Mark NSFW content.
- No doxxing people.
- Must be a pic of the tweet or similar. No direct links to the tweet.
- No bullying or international politcs
- Be excellent to each other.
- Provide an archived link to the tweet (or similar) being shown if it's a major figure or a politician.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I just commented elsewhere in this thread, but isn't moral realism a thing for this exact situation? Is his post not a self report on his inability to identify a moral framework that fits his students worldview, or at least to explain the harm that arises if one has a self contradictory worldview and help them realize that and potentially arrive at a more consistent view? Seems like this comment section is filled with a lot of people that understand their moral framework more than this professor, but obviously are not in the field. Can you please elaborate on the issues here? Like I think abortions are fine, but I understand that others think it's murder. I don't think they're bad people for that, but I understand if they think I'm a bad person for my views. How we deal with it on a societal level is obviously even more complicated. I don't see how there's a problem there.
It seems like ALL is doing a lot of heavy lifting in your comment. Do they really believe ALL morality is relative and are also always insanely judgy if things contradict their beliefs?
I think the issue is that students aren't consistent. They'll fall back on relativism or subjectivism when they don't really have a strong opinion, or perceive there to be a lot of controversy about the subject that they don't want to have to argue about. But fundamentally, whether there's an objective and universal answer to some moral question or not really doesn't depend on whether there's controversy about it, or whether it's convenient or cool to argue about.
I think that there are parts of morality that really are culturally relative and subjective, and parts that aren't. Variation in cultural norms is totally okay, as long as we don't sacrifice the objective, universal stuff. (Like don't harm people unnecessarily, etc.). The contours of the former and the latter are up for debate, and we shouldn't presume that anybody knows the exact boundary.
Your beliefs seem to align with what the students are saying and generally with moral realism.
You just said "I think that there are parts of morality that really are culturally relative and subjective, and parts that aren't." so you can view some morality as subjective and some as necessarily universal. That is what most people default to and what you seem to saying is wrong with the students. You state they aren't consistent, but you're also not consistent. Sometimes subjectivity is right sometimes it's not. I'm not seeing a distinction, so please elaborate on it if I'm missing it.