Moral Relativism vs. Moral Authority

Born in Hawaii—a crossroads of culture between Far East and Far West—of a white mother from Kansas and a black father from Kenya and raised partially in Indonesia by a Muslim stepfather, an African-American man with an unlikely background and an even more unlikely name, Barack Hussein Obama, arose to become President of the United States. Does that globalized pedigree, along with a prodigious intellect, give him a unique moral authority?

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Posted by mjgeddes  on  06/06  at  08:26 AM

Mike,

Best moral theory for me is that of Alan Fiske, who came up with three different types of human relationship:

(1) Authority-based : relationships based on status and 'face', and the exercise of powers according to rankings.

(2) Exchange-based: relationships based on exchanges and reputation (you scratch my back I've scratch yours), an abstract version of which is of course market economics.

(3) Communitarian-based: relationships based on community spirit (belonging and sharing), such as for example a family, friendship or non-profit.

Reason I like this theory best is that there's a neat fit to my own triple-aspect ontology of reality.

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Dr J is bit too quick to dismiss certain aspects though. I think one needs to be careful to not to assume that some aspects are 'superior' to others; more likely they have different ares of applicability.

For instance, superfically you may not like the 'Authority' based type of relationship, but sometimes it's actually appropriate to the situation. For instance, if you saw someone being brutually assualted on the street and their money stolen you would not attempt to engage in a 'democratic discussion' (communitarian-based) with the thug about this, nor would you try to strike a deal with the thug (exchange-based). Instead you would call the police, who would simply exert force (authority) to restraint the thug.

So you see that sometimes authoritarianism is valid (especially in matters such as law and order and defence). Thus, which aspect of morality is 'best' may not be the right way of looking at things. All aspects can be valid depending on the context and specific situation.

Posted by Mjgeddes  on  06/08  at  11:02 AM

Interesting how of the five foundations of morals one finds that conservatives seem to weight each equally as compared to liberals who only rely on two ( on the left hand side of the graphic no less). While the good director attibutes this to a higher level of values while denigrating the other foundations as "monkey brain" reflexes I think the case could be made that the conservative morals are more nuanced and balanced relying on all foundations more or less equally while the liberal morals are more childlike and unsophisticated based on the individual desire rather than what is best for the group (if I can slant my descriptionas the good director did his)

Posted by cwk  on  12/23  at  03:31 AM

@Mjgeddes or is that conservatives go for votes instead of the actual people who are voting.

Posted by cwk  on  12/23  at  04:05 AM

@Mjgeddes If you would take the test it has questions such as, does knowing if someone is good in math help determine one of their actions as good or bad...the conservative answer would be yes. If that is not childlike and unsophisticated then I don't know what is.

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