Eric Lau

 Discuss the claim that some areas of

knowledge are discovered and others are
invented. (Nov 2009/May 2010)

 To understand something you need to rely on
your own experience and culture. Does this
mean that it is impossible to have objective
knowledge? (Nov 2008/May 2009)
 Anthropologists, in their studies of different
cultures, point to a range of practices
considered morally acceptable in some
societies but condemned in others, including
infanticide, genocide, polygamy, racism,
sexism, and torture. Such differences may
lead us to question whether there are any
universal moral principles or whether morality
is merely a matter of "cultural taste.”
 Anthropologists like Franz Boas and Margaret
Mead explicitly articulated influential forms of
moral relativism in the twentieth century. In
Coming of Age in Samoa (1928), Mead
argued that the tribal women deferred
marriage for years to enjoy casual sex,
challenging the assumption that chastity was
a universal value.
 In 1947, on the occasion of the United
Nations debate about universal human rights,
the American Anthropological Association
issued a statement declaring that moral
values are relative to cultures and that there
is no way of showing that the values of one
culture are better than those of another.
Isthere such a thing as
universal morality?
 To prove that there is indeed a concept of
universal morality, I need to show:

 (1) There is a set of universal moral

principles, or at least 1 moral principle, that
applies to all humans.

 (2) We can use universal moral principles to

judge values of different cultures.
 Moral relativism: morality vary from culture to
culture. There is no universal moral truth that
applies to all cultures. Every moral code is
socially constructed.

 Analogy: The concept of the dragon is

constructed by humans. If we deny its
existence, it’ll cease to exist. It is invented.
 The underlying assumption behind moral
relativism is that humans do not have
anything that is morally common. They are
likely to be born with blank slates.

 Being born with blank slates, humans are

largely shaped by the environment and
cultures and thus they develop moral codes
which are unique and cannot be judged.
 Universal Morality is a set of Right and Wrong
that applies to all humans, even if humans
were to deny its existence.

 Analogy: The pull of gravity is an objective

fact. Even if we deny its existence, gravity will
still pull us down when we jump from a
building. The existence of gravity is not
dependent on human’s acknowledgement.
 Each society has its moral code which may
resemble or deviate from Universal Morality.
For example, certain societies encourage
cannibalism. But Universal Morality is used to
judge whether cannibalism is right or wrong.

 Analogy: We have theories about how gravity

works. However, reality will tell us which
theory is right and which one is wrong.
 Universal morality assumes that all humans
(except in rare cases like people with severe
disabilities) are born with something in
common—conscience, empathy and reason.

 And the contents of the universal moral

principles (e.g. the concepts of justice and
fairness) are innate in us, although due to
cultural influences and other circumstances,
we may suppress or distort the moral
principles.
 Some people have claimed that morality or
ethics is subjective because people cannot
agree on what is the right thing to do.

 However, Universal Morality does not require

any consensus for its existence. It exists
happily, even if no humans were to discover
it. But it applies to all humans nonetheless.
 Without universal morality, how can we claim
that the Khmer Rouge regime was wrong?

 If moral relativism were to be true, we would

have to accept that the Khmer Rouge leaders
were justified in killing as their culture
permitted it. Anyone who judges them to be
wrong is merely imposing his non-universal
ideals and preferences on others and being
snobbish.
 Address the first Real Life Situation

 Relativism is based on facts discovered by

sociologists and anthropologists. The fact is
simply that individuals and cultures do have
very different values and moralities. You can’t
imagine any morality so weird that it hasn’t
been taught by some society (head-hunting,
infanticide, etc).
 While there are differences between cultures
and civilisations, these have never amounted
to anything like a total difference.

 Men have differed as to whether you should

have one wife or four. But they have always
agreed that you must not simply have any
woman you liked.
 Another universal moral principle is: random
killing should not be condoned.

 There are societies that allow systematic

killing of other tribes or racial groups but no
society will allow random killing. If any
society explicitly allows random killing, it will
no longer exist.
 For cultures that condone cruel acts like
infanticide, terrorism and honour killing, they
often base their acts on some noble values
e.g. honour in the family must be restored so
a sister who was raped must be killed.

 Osama bin Laden thought that he was doing

God’s work by bombing the Twin Towers.
Twisted logic can lead to deviation from
universal morality. Evil is the denial of
universal morality.
 We are conditioned by society, differently
conditioned by different society. If I had been
born in a Hindu society, I would have Hindu
values today. So individuals cannot be
blamed or praised for the values they hold.
That is the way they are.
 We are conditioned/influenced by society but
we still have the choice to select what values
we want to adopt. Even if we were born in a
Hindu society, we could still adopt non-Hindu
values.

 Thus, we have the freedom to choose our

values, no matter what our culture is. With
freedom to choose comes moral
responsibility.
 The consequence of relativism is tolerance;
the consequence of universal morality is
intolerance and dogmatism and trying to
impose your values on others because you
think everyone ought to believe your way.
 For a relativist to claim that toleration is
better than dogmatism is for him to appeal to
certain standards. He is judging that one
value is better than the other.

 By touting ‘toleration/suspension of belief’

as the supreme good, is the relativist not
imposing his value on others?

 It is not easy to be a consistent relativist.

 Moral choices are conditioned by the
situation, and that’s relative to thousands of
things. There can’t be the same rules for all
situations. You can imagine an exception to
every rule in some situation. For instance, it
can be good to kill if you kill a terrorist, good
to lie if you are lying to the Nazis. There is no
absolute morality; it’s always dependent on
the situation.
 To be fair, it is easier to list universal moral
principles that apply to all situations in
defining the minimum standard of human
behaviour (‘random killing is wrong’).

 It is more difficult to articulate moral

principles that can resolve ethical dilemmas
or that define the highest standard of human
behaviour (Love thy neighbour as thyself).
Thus, we often have to make exceptions.
 This is because ethical dilemmas are
ultimately conflicts between two good values
e.g. the conflict between the right to life and
the right to freedom in the cases of abortion
and euthanasia. These dilemmas are unlikely
to garner unanimous decisions.

 What constitutes the highest standard of

human behaviour is also a matter of intense
debate as it involves religious values as well
and different people have different religions.
 In any case, to prove that universal morality
does exist, one just have to show that there is
indeed ONE moral principle that applies to all
cases without exception.

 One does not have to show that all moral

principles have no exceptions. Is it fair to
expect ethics to be as certain as
mathematics?
 Nuremberg Trials in 1945-1946

 Nazi leaders were tried before the UN

Declaration of Human Rights (1948) was
created. They were tried for war crimes and
crimes against humanity but these crimes
were not even defined when the Nazis
committed the atrocities.
 Critics condemned the Nuremberg trials for
being a retroactive (ex post facto) trial.

 But the Nuremberg trials derived their

legitimacy from the assumption of universal
morality—that the Nazis were wrong in killing
the Jews even though the Nazi laws did not
define these acts as criminal acts and the
Nazi culture encouraged the massacre.
 An amoral situation

 A few animals eat their young but why don’t

we condemn them for their actions?

 Can we assume that these animals have the

concept of universal morality?
 Thus, I have shown that there is such a thing
as universal morality.

 1) Certain universal principles— ‘random

killing is wrong’ and ‘one cannot have any
woman that one wants’—apply to all humans.

 2) Despite cultural conditioning and differing

laws, one can still use universal morality to
judge if an act is right or wrong, especially in
the case of war crimes.
 http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-
relativism/
 http://www.scu.edu/ethics/practicing/decisio
n/ethicalrelativism.html
 http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/ww
two/nuremberg_article_01.shtml
 C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (London:
HarperCollins, 1993), pp.15-24.
 Peter Kreeft, The Best Things in Life (Illinois:

IVP, 1984), pp.158-189.

 Try to rehearse beforehand and not read
constantly from the notes or the screen.
 Charge your laptop
 Get the printouts ready
 Set up the room and the projector by the time

the teachers get to class