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Moral Relativism and Moral Objectivity (Great Debates in Philosophy)

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Moral Relativism and Moral Objectivity is both thought provoking and profound. The authors of the book present their ideas in tremendous depth, yet the language is very accessible. Harman writes with incredible intuitive appeal, and Thomson writes with rigorous and astounding clarity. The book is absolutely captivating. The authors cover everything from philosophy of language to epistemology. Unfortunately, at the end of the day, it is difficult to decide who 'the winner' is. While this might be regrettable, one shouldn't always expect to `find the answers' when reading philosophy. Rather, one should feel like one has gained simply by deepening one's own thoughtful reflections.

Part of the reason that it is difficult, with this book, to decide who the winner of the debate is, has to do with the structure of the debate itself. The authors wrote their essays independently of each other; they framed the issues quite differently from each other, and when responding to each other, they reframed their opponent's position to meet their own frameworks. For example, Harman claims that moral statements are only true or false in relation to various moral frameworks. Moral Relativism is the position that there are many moral frameworks, none of which is more privileged than any other. Moral Objectivity, as Harman maintains, is the claim that there is only one moral framework. However, Thomson believes that "moral assessment is pointless unless it can be found out about some moral sentences that they are true", this she takes to be what is at the heart of Moral Objectivity. Moral Skepticism she defines as the claim that "it is not possible to find out about any moral sentence that it is true." In her reply to Harman's essay, Thomson reformulates Harman's position as claiming that moral sentences are incomplete; she considers Harman a Moral Skeptic. Thomson sees the issue as primarily epistemic. It is easy to see how this might confuse some people. However, such is the nature of debate and philosophy in general. The hardest part of philosophy is to define the issues concretely. In this sense, the book is enlightening. Moral Relativism and Moral Objectivity is definitely worth reading; the authors introduce two drastically different perspectives on a very important subject.

Harman is unclear. Thomson, in her half of the book, writes that she cannot understand him. As best I can tell, he's saying that moral debate is just a power struggle. That's what he's got to say in order to uphold his view that moral judgments are just emotings devoid of truth value. Of course, if you believe something false, you'll probably have to strain to accept other false things, too, but if you write unclearly enough, so that even your coauthor admittedly cannot understand you, perhaps you can hide your false beliefs from view. For her part Thomson says that after the book was commissioned, she realized that what she was going to write was false, but, since it was too late by then, she'd tell it to us anyway. The whole thing is unconscienable. There are so many bad philosophers around that, if the good ones go bad, we'll be in deep trouble.