MikeH wrote:[...] relativism provides excuse for any and every action.
McCulloch wrote:Does it really? Or is this just the strawman version of moral relativism often put forward by absolutists?
Definitions:MikeH wrote:No, it really does. By definition, it has to.
rel·a·tiv·ism (rěl'ə-tĭ-vĭz'əm)
n. Philosophy
A theory, especially in ethics or aesthetics, that conceptions of truth and moral values are not absolute but are relative to the persons or groups holding them.
See: Moral Relativism at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Thus it seems that many criticisms of moral relativism are in essence strawman arguments.Moral relativism has the unusual distinction — both within philosophy and outside it — of being attributed to others, almost always as a criticism, far more often than it is explicitly professed by anyone.