How Conventionalism or Normative Ethical Relativism Fails

Question 1

1st Failure: On Conventionalism or Normative Ethical Relativism What is the connection between culture and morality?

Answer 1

If there were no cultures, there would be no morality.
Example: Two people living on opposite ends of a desert island.

Question 2

2nd Failure: On Conventionalism or N.E.R., how is criticism affected?

Answer 2

It makes it impossible to criticize another society’s practices such as the injustice of totalitarian governments or racist administrations.

Question 3

3rd Failure: Which part of society determines one’s moral obligations?

Answer 3

Is it the population at large, the ruler, or some other moral standard? It’s unclear.

Question 4

4th Failure: How does Conventionalism violate our deepest moral intuitions?

Answer 4

Some things are wrong regardless of what society says.

Question 5

5th Failure: What is the problem with immoral laws on Conventionalism?

Answer 5

There would be no immoral laws.

Question 6

6th Failure: What is the Reformer’s Dilemma?

Answer 6

Social reformers would be committing an act of immorality because they oppose the status quo. (Martin Luther King Jr.)

Question 7

7th Failure: What is the problem with moral improvement?

Answer 7

A social code can never be improved, only changed.

Question 8

7a: What are some examples of changes that can’t be considered moral improvements?

Answer 8

1. Abolishing apartheid
2. Adopting policies of habeas corpus
3. Allowing freedom of speech

Question 9

8th Failure: How does Conventionalism conflate the legal with the moral?

Answer 9

Something may be legal but immoral at the same time.

Question 10

What is the acronym for Normative Ethical Relativism?

Answer 10

Lucid Ice
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Law
Unclear 
Culture
Intuition
Dilemma

Improvement
Criticism
Equate