Well, it happened yet again. Another professor of mine at HBU uttered a very erroneous idea recently. The class is business ethics, and the professor has only rarely articulated an argument that is both sound and valid. He, in an attempt to refute moral relativism, partially dismissed it because according to him it is "lazy." Ironically, despite the impossibility of moral relativism, his own proposed moral framework is even lazier--in fact, it is the laziest possible system of moral beliefs!
According to this professor some moral truths are "self-evident." This is entirely untrue, but I find it highly amusing that the person who calls seeing conflicting moral beliefs, realizing that they cannot all be true, and concluding that ethical truths are relative lazy thinks that just having a feeling is the legitimate pathway to moral knowledge. Moral relativism is fallacious, impossible, and only believed by intellectual insects, but it still takes far more effort to survey the vast discrepancies between moral beliefs and actively consider them than it does to just have a moral feeling and automatically conclude that it must reflect some moral reality.
For something to be self-evident, it must require no other foundation for it to be known--it must prove itself in some way, since it cannot rely on other premises to be confirmed. It must be evident in itself. Only logical axioms and necessary truths have this property. They cannot be denied without contradiction and they cannot be false. Moral claims, on the other hand, do not possess this property. One can deny them without any contradiction whatsoever. And they are certainly not evident in themselves! For moral truths to exist a moral standard must exist, and for a moral standard to exist there must be a moral authority above humans. There is no other way for there to be such a thing as morality, and even if morality exists that does not mean that moral truths are known by intuition or conscience, for neither can soundly inform us of moral truths [1].
This means that the existence of morality and specific moral truths cannot be self-evident, since to know that these moral prescriptions exist and to know what they are one must first discover if there is a deity (without which there could be no moral authority), then inquire into the nature of this deity, find if it has a moral nature, and then see if the moral nature of this deity can be known. Moral truths by their very nature cannot be immediately known, since they are true even if people do not agree, meaning that conscience can never be legitimately appealed to as a route to moral knowledge because conscience is just a subjective emotive tool, one that cannot even inform someone if his or her conscience is accurate.
Moral nihilism and moral realism are the only moral systems which are even logically possible, with moral skepticism being a position of uncertainty as to which is correct or what specific moral truths exist. Either there is no right or wrong or moral truths are objectively binding whether or not we are aware of them. There are no other legitimate options. Moral relativism contradicts the inviolable laws of logic. A thing is what it is, and a thing cannot be and not be in the same way at once. Yet moral relativism holds that two or more people can believe different moral ideas--mutually exclusive ones--and somehow still all be correct at the same time. This is impossible, and, besides, it does not follow from disagreement about morality that no objective moral truths exist (this is a major non sequitur fallacy).
Ultimately, a moral relativist is often arguing for moral nihilism with some additions, holding that there are no moral truths while also arguing that his or her subjective preferences or feelings have some moral significance. This is just an asinine position; it, in a sense, clings to moral nihilism (which could never be proven even if it is true) while going beyond it. I need to be clear that moral beliefs are almost entirely relative to one's subjective conscience or culture. But the plurality of moral beliefs one can find in no way means that moral truths are relative or that they do not exist, only that moral beliefs are relative and that moral consensus does not exist. And if moral consensus did exist, this would prove only that everyone agrees, not that they are correct.
Moral relativism is actually less lazy than what my business ethics professor believes is the proper moral epistemology. Neither moral relativism nor the belief that humans can "just know" moral truths is correct, as both are refuted in full by logic. Moral relativism is indeed objectively impossible (moral nihilism would be the closest possible thing), but thinking that you can know moral truths by immediate introspection or by pangs of conscience is a far lazier belief, one that, like relativism, cannot be true.
[1]. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/03/the-nature-of-conscience.html
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