Not sure why this got removed from 196lemmy…blahaj.zone but it would be real nice if moderation on Lemmy gave you some sort of notification of what you did wrong. Like an automatic DM or something
You’re being downvoted because that was clearly bad faith. Slavery doesn’t have group consensus among all involved, not even all non-slaves.
Consensus obviously cant mean every single person agreeing, its about what the widespread view in the culture is.
Either way its a hypothetical, doesnt matter if such a culture never existed in reality: suppose slavery was condone by some culture. Wouldnt that have made it moral?
Going by the meme: if a society is mysognist you would be wiling to agree its correct for them and womens rights activist in that society should stop (theyre going against what the culture has decided is moral, making the activist immoral)?
suppose slavery was condone by some culture. Wouldnt that have made it moral?
By definition, yes.
Southern whites in the pre Civil War period considered slavery to be a moral good.
Other cultures disagreed, to the point that this particular culture was all but destroyed.
When I asked if slavery was right for them, I wasnt trying to describe their attitudes. I am saying that a consequence of thinking cultural relativism is true is that you must admit that they were correct in the attitudes they held (because their culture agreed it was right).
The point is that slavery was seen as morally acceptable at some time and the moral relativist is forced to say that that means slavery was okay during that time. Most people here want to be moral relativists but they don’t want to accept its consequences.
No they understand just fine. Here’s a quote from an ethics book that gets at the same issue:
The extreme sexism at the heart of honor killings is but one of many examples that raise doubts about cultural relativism. After all, societies are sometimes based on principles of slavery, of warlike aggression, of religious bigotry or ethnic oppression. Cultural relativism would turn these core ideals into iron-clad moral duties, making cooperation with slavery, sexism, and racism the moral duty of all citizens of those societies. The iconoclast—the person deeply opposed to conventional wisdom—would, by definition, always be morally mistaken. This has struck many people as seriously implausible.
Russ Shafer-Landau - The fundamentals of ethics p.293 (“Some Implications of Ethical Subjectivism and Cultural Relativism”)
