Monday, 24 August 2015

The holy is not of good morals

When I was a child growing up in a country area of Australia, no one would say a bad word about priests, bishops, cardinals or popes. Happily, that has changed and today these people are no longer given undeserved respect merely for being a religious person dressed up gaudy and expensive clothes.

In "Peruvian Cardinal Accused of Papal Plagiarism" (2015), the BBC News reports that Lima's Catholic Cardinal excused himself for plagiarising, in at least one case for copying and pasting six paragraphs, because he did not want to repeatedly have to add the citations to his writing, which a leading Peruvian newspaper now refuses to publish.

When I saw this  few days ago, I thought it was a good example of the evils of plagiarism. What the cardinal did was certainly plagiarism. It was stealing the work, the ideas and the words of other people and pretending they were his own. It was also dishonest. Juan Luis Cipriani, the Catholic Cardinal of Lima seems to me to have proven himself a thief and a liar. And it is right for the Peruvian newspaper to punish him be refusing to publish any more of his writing: I don't know what this man might have been teaching his followers, but given his known record as a thief and liar, I would be very suspicious of his teachings, especially any teachings he might have about morals.

And that brings me to the other response that occurred to me. I've just written a morning coffee blog comment replying to a comment by Ice which states the idea that moral beliefs are purely subjective and therefore not true or false, so that, for example, murder is perfectly OK if a person thinks it is. This version of subjectivism about moral statements is slightly different to another idea in some of the blog comments responding to Law's thesis: some people have suggested that moral statements and beliefs are true or false according to the society that they come from, a view that is usually called moral relativism, and that is a bit different to subjectivism. Ice cites, as a source of the idea that moral statements are subjective, the book Sophie's World, which I believe gives a very general introduction to some ideas in philosophy. As I noted in my comment, if this book does say that moral beliefs are merely relative or subjective, that they cannot be true or false, then it does not represent the ideas of the majority of people who study and moral philosophy. A large survey of professional philosophers carried out in 2009 shows that a small majority, 56.4%, favour moral realism over the different versions of anti-realism or other options ("The PhilPapers Surveys," n.d.).

In "Carving the Roast Beast," Law discusses racism, and the slavery that most people in all societies thought was morally acceptable in part because of racism. I think that analysing the example of slavery and following through the logical reasoning can lead to deductions which can help us to decide whether we really accept either moral relativism or subjectivism. I don't think the reasoning here is easy, but neither was the reasoning that led to us deciding, however much the popes and others hated it, that the Sun did not circle the Earth, which was long believed by every Western person to be at the centre of the universe.

But I would prefer to let you try out the examples and ideas to see where they might lead. Law, Gemma and the Wilson family clearly do not believe in moral relativism or subjectivism. Are they wrong in this? Are we wrong to say that murder is any more morally wrong than a subjective preference for red wine to white wine?

__________
References
Peruvian cardinal accused of papal plagiarism. (2015, August 17). BBC News. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-33966717

The PhilPapers Surveys: Preliminary Survey results. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://philpapers.org/surveys/results.pl

1 comment:

  1. A note on my second source.
    If I had only said "a majority" in my response, I would not have cited the source, but the statistic 56.4% is a definitely not my idea. I had to check (do research) to get it, and having put it in my writing, I did need to cite the source for this idea.

    The date is written as n.d. (= no date) because the page is generated afresh each time it's viewed. The survey was carried out in 2009, and you can learn more about that if you follow the link "back to contents" at the bottom of the page.

    The survey was for professional philosophers and post-graduate students in philosophy, so no explanation of the questions is given. They all reflect deep controversies in philosophy, but you don't need to know what most of them are about. The one that is important, is numer 14 down the list: "Meta-ethics: moral realism or moral anti-realism?. Both subjectivism and relativism are anti-realist versions of ideas about moral statements and beliefs. As you can see, only 27.7% of philosophers agree with these accounts of moral beliefs.

    But while you're on the page, you might also like to browse to see what other competing views philosophers, who disagree and argue with each other at least as much as any other group of academics, hold on various controversial questions. Again, do not worry if you are not clear about what some of the questions mean.

    ReplyDelete

Before you click the blue "Publish" button for your first comment on a post, check ✔ the "Notify me" box. You want to know when your classmates contribute to a discussion you have joined.

A thoughtful response should normally mean writing for five to ten minutes. After you state your main idea, some details, explanation, examples or other follow up will help your readers.

Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.