Just stumbled on this column which claims that science and its acceptance of uncertainty is the best foundation for ethical behavior.

It argues that certainty is a godlike claim which mortals cannot actually achieve. But the arrogance of having certainty was the foundation of the Holocaust -- not relativism.

Similar to this are those who think following God's word is the only way to have a solid ethical foundation. They say only an outside moral structure can avoid being eroded by fashion and relativism. The flaw with this is that it does not escape the problem of interpretation. You may think you are following God's inerrant word, but it's still an interpretation. It's from a book that went through multiple interpretations and is now reformulated again in your mind. Once anything leaves God's lips, it is being interpreted by the receiver. The interpretation is as open to corruption as any secular moral code. Anyone with the absolute truth has full license to make it prevail, and boom you've got the Holocaust, or Bush ordering torture or Clinton bombing a pharmaceutical factory in Libya.

This is a good point and an effective tack to take with Christians. Christians typically see themselves as following an objective moral code passed down by God and thus insulated from secular moral relativism. In reality Christians operate with a great deal of relativism and this is easy to demonstrate.

I'm not sure anything provides moral certainty

Yeah I agree with this and I think it was the point of the linked article.

so it is! reading is fundamental. I didn't click the link obviously

Well, the same principle works in reverse. If moral objectivity exists then the good/evil of moral relativists are determined by that, regardless of their beliefs.

Nitting a little bit, and no expertise claimed, but I'm guessing most WW2 era Germans including soldiers if answering honestly without threat of reprisal wouldn't have claimed to be certain the actions of the state were ethically correct. Seems to me totalitarianism/fascism is causally more of an issue with the holocaust than widespread ethical certainty.

Have you said more than: if there is a god, then god exists ?

That's not the reverse and is not relevant to the argument. The claim is that even if there is a god and a fixed moral framework, it cannot provide more certain moral guidance to mortals than an openly contrived set of human principles.

Quite possibly, and even the leaders might have secret disbelief. But they have to present the program as truth. You cannot justify destroying the opposition without claiming certainty. Fascism was strewn with pseudo intellectual crap that could only prevail through dogmatic certainty coupled with violence. Conspiritard stuff about Jews causing the depression. How would birthers come to power in America without enforcing cult beliefs with arms? The fascism you say is the real culprit behind the Holocaust depends on exclusive claims to truth.

I'm not willing to claim that an epidemic of generic certainty is the culprit. This isn't leading up to an indictment of religion. I think secularists are just as vulnerable to enchantment. See also Scientology; Khmer Rouge; Cultural Revolution

Have you said anything other than "If interpretation is relative, then interpretation is relative"?

Even once you convince "Joe Christian" that his morality is indeed relative he still won't agree to the above. Some Christians think speeding is ok and some think its sin - so there we go moral relativism.

However, Joe Christian will still maintain his relative view of morality, based on God's perfect instruction, is still superior to any arbitrary secular view.

I think most "Joe Christians" would agree that their understanding of God's "objective morality" is subjective. I don't think they would agree that it is relative.

Sometimes the word "certain" gets used in different ways. For example, consider this very simple moral system: every action is morally good. Now what does certainty mean for this system? If you take an action, then my moral system here is simple enough that it follows trivially that your action is good. I am completely certain that under my moral system your action is good. (...or at least up to a sort of metauncertainty with basic logic, definitions of what "actions" are, and the like). But I am not at all certain that my moral system corresponds to some sort of absolute truth about the universe. In fact, I am quite sure I just made it up to illustrate a point. Either way, we get these two uses: certainty about the existence of some absolute moral system, and certainty about applying said moral system.

I guess I was using relative and subjective interchangeably. For example our subjective view of God's law leads us to relative morality. For example, I think going 10 over speed limit is sin, my neighbor thinks going 20 over is sin, and his neighbour goes whatever speed he likes without a second thought.

I consider this moral relativism. But your right - Joe Christian likely won't agree to the label "relative" morality.

In times past people could be excommunicated for going to the movies or going roller skating, now those activities are generally non-issues for Christians.

This is true, and it might be a bit paradoxal for some religions that the reigning doctrine changes over time. However for the individual whose beliefs usually represent a small section of these beliefs it isn't as problematic.

However my point was more that many confuse "subjective" with "relative", and they are not really interchangeable. A subjective interpretation of morality is not in opposition to the view that objective morality exists, but a relative interpretation of morality would be.

I am doubtful that certainty is the right way to understand what is going on here. I see little reason to think that having more certainty is characteristic of either religious or fascist claims in contrast to scientific ones (here is an amusing illustration). People often confuse a belief accepted on non-rational, or even irrational grounds as a belief that is claimed to be certain. That is a mistake. Just because rational reasons aren't adequate to change a person's belief doesn't mean that the strength with which they hold it is particularly strong. Rather, in that case you just aren't using the right lever.

The bolded seems quite far-fetched to me.

This is a curious argument. It rather seems like the conclusion you (or Critchley, I am not sure how much you assent to his thesis) mean to push above is that relativism or uncertainty is a better basis for morality than certainty or the absolute truth claimed by religion. But rather than argue for this, you claim that the basis for morality claimed by religion is itself relativistic and uncertain. So then where is the criticism? Isn't that exactly how it should be on your own grounds?

^^^Although morality is not fixed, the belief that it is can intensify intolerance, that's the criticism.

If we took a Nazi claiming racial superiority, and a scientist insisting the earth is ancient, and put them into ice water to see who changed their mind first, I think you might be right. The strength with which the two individuals held onto beliefs might not be different, or the scientist might come out ahead.

But Bronowski (the guy in the video) is talking about a social movement, not simply the strength of mind of the individual. The Nazi political movement made truth claims and insisted on them with a system of violence and social pressure. Students in isolated hamlets drove out teachers who were not with the program. They enforced a black and white conformity about what was politically correct. I think this is what Bronowski was getting at. And again, i don't see how you get the Holocaust without enforcing a set of ideas as absolute truth.

It should be noted that the Nazis did affirm their ideology with both science and medicine. Now one might argue that this wasn't "true science", but such easy dismissals doesn't really lend the overall argument much credit.

There are many horrible atrocities commited by normative science. A quick look at the illustrious history of psychiatry should serve as a grim reminder of this.

BH,

Are you absolutely sure about this?

If so it seems you are just pitting one form of absolutism against another. This may or may not be ironic depending on how you use the word

Sure, this seems reasonable enough I guess. I don't think that intolerance is the great sin of the Nazis though.

I would say that the problem is not that the Nazi political movement made truth claims, but that the truth claims they made were false and that they backed up these false claims with violence. I also am suspicious about that Nazi ideology is a good example of a black and white, non-relativistic ideology. Communism is like this I think, but Naziism was not. I don't think the Nazis generally claimed that what they were doing was good for everyone, but rather that it was good for the Germans in particular, and since they had a view of human history as a negative sum competitive struggle with other peoples this was supposedly justified.

As for your final comment, I disagree heartily. For instance, the Mongol conquests were also horrific, but without an accompanying ideology that was pressed on the conquered people.

Let's not get reductive. Violence was essential, but so was the ideology. Without nationalist enchantment, you don't get goon squads to serve you.

Where's the claim that the ideology needed to appeal to anyone but Germans? Yes, the struggle to be the surviving race was a part of it. They weren't claiming a universal ethic -- just one for the master race. When using the term "certainty" I'm not suggesting they had a theory of everything for everyone. In their little movement they claimed exclusive truths about the things they chose to address.

No one is saying that populist ideology is the only path to brutality. In Germany at that time, you don't get the Holocaust without a jingoistic ideology that brooks no argument.

Did you watch the clip? I'm answering a lot of criticisms of things never claimed.

This doesn't address my criticism of your position. You want to criticize the Nazis for making truth claims at all, I want to criticize them for the specific truth claims they made. There is no preference from the example of the Nazis to either of these claims, and hence no preference for your overall thesis.

I guess I don't know what you mean by relativistic and absolute, etc.

Okay? But at other times and places you do?

No, the indictment is for believing too intensely. For their extreme, intolerant, certainty about their social truths. The specifics are bad too. I did not follow the immediately following sentences.

You are jumping to conclusions about my or the link's positions with great velocity.

I don't know what this means.

Christians (or athiests) operating with a great deal of relativism has no impact of the truth or falsehood of an absolute moral platform.

Even you can see the breakdown of your argument, can't you?

Nope, I am gonna need you to spell it out for me

If everyone is operating in the realm of moral relativity does it matter if an absolute morality exists?

The point is an absolute moral platform only exists in peoples minds. In reality everyone operates with varying degrees of moral relativity.

His point is that absolute morality would intuitively seem to necessitate ontological correspondence; that the truth of any moral statement is not dependent on our own judgment thereof.

The classic religious example would be a God that judges two people doing A in the same manner, regardless if one believes A was the right thing to do and the other thinks A was the wrong thing to do.