Relative With Low Variance Is Absolute

The argument between moral absolutists and moral relativists has been raging for decades, and it's a stupid argument. Not because one side is obviously right, but because both sides are right, both sides are wrong, and both sides actually hold the same view. They just won't admit it.

How do you know something is wrong? #

Every round of this debate comes down to the same question: how do you know that something is immoral?

The absolutist usually points to a deity. That runs into an immediate practical problem. Even if you believe in a divine moral law, God doesn't tell you what to do in each specific situation. Morality is situational. So the believer, just like everyone else, ends up having to decide what is moral and what isn't, case by case. (There's also the small matter that many of the laws in the Bible are plainly evil, but that's not my main point here.)

How society actually decides #

Here is how morality really gets defined today: by majority agreement. Different countries have different arrangements. Sometimes it's a parliament, sometimes it isn't. But in the end we decide together what is acceptable and what isn't, and that is what we call moral.

That sounds like pure relativism, and in a sense it is. Different societies can reach different definitions of morality, and sometimes they do.

But it turns out that societies are not that different in what they consider moral. So what keeps them all roughly in sync? Human nature. Every society is made of the same animal, with the same genetic makeup and the same basic self-interest. Nobody wants to be murdered, robbed or lied to, so every society that wants to last ends up with roughly the same core rules.

So morality is relative, but relative with very low variance. And relative with very low variance is, for all practical purposes, absolute.

That is exactly why the argument never ends. The relativist is right about how morality works. The absolutist is right about how it turns out.

Why it feels absolute #

Most people can't feel the difference between something that is 99.9999% wrong and something that is 100% wrong. When nearly every human who ever lived agrees that murdering your neighbour is wrong, the feeling is indistinguishable from certainty.

This explains a group that confuses both camps: secular people who insist that some things are absolutely wrong but have no god to ground it in. They aren't confused. They're rounding up. The number is so close to one that it's practically the same thing.

Both camps have dissenters #

Neither framework gets everyone on board.

If I'm a relativist and I say parliament decides what's moral, there will always be people who object to what parliament decides, including people who think murder is perfectly fine. And I'm not even talking about psychopaths.

The absolutist has the same problem. To buy into the framework you have to believe in God and believe the commandments are divine. Many people don't. And many who do believe still argue that the commandments need updating, or read them very differently.

So both camps end up with the same structure: a framework held by majority consensus, with a minority that objects.

There is no metaphysical wrong #

The obvious objection is that I'm only describing how societies decide morality, not what is actually moral. A majority can be wrong, the absolutist says, because there is a real right and wrong out there.

I see no evidence for it. The idea of a metaphysical wrong is our own invention, born from our need to feel confident in our laws. We want a backbone to rely on, a guarantee that the rules we enforce are good ones. Religion, in part, exists to provide that guarantee. But the world shows no hint of offering it. We are on our own.

Absolutists are practical relativists #

Absolutists say their morals never change. History says otherwise. They didn't come to oppose slavery because the Bible demanded abolition. The Bible endorses slavery. Society changed, and they found interpretations that let them keep calling their morals eternal while changing them like everyone else. They can see that scripture gets reinterpreted, age after age, to keep up with society. Refusing to admit it is lying through their teeth.

Why hold on to the label, then? Partly because of that need for a backbone, the comfort of saying "it was always wrong." And partly because absolute laws do have a small practical advantage. People are a little less likely to break a law they believe is enforced by God and punished by eternal damnation than one they believe is just a social agreement. I think the effect is small. Most people keep the rules either way. But it's real enough to make the absolutist label useful.

Why this doesn't collapse into "anything goes" #

The absolutist's favourite warning is: if morality is relative, what stops everyone deciding that murder is fine?

The answer is that it wouldn't matter which philosophy you held. If everyone decided murder was fine, human society would have no future, relative or absolute. You can't get truly hostile creatures to form a society. Morality depends on the fact that we share a common core and actually want to live together. If that ever broke down, the absolutist would be right that society collapses, but the reason would be that humans no longer wanted a society, not that they had stopped believing in absolutes.

Not the final version #

As a relativist, I don't think our current morality is the last word. It keeps changing, and it isn't always moving in the same direction. But historically it has mostly moved one way, because living conditions have improved. Richer, safer societies can afford to widen the circle of people they care about.

That is progress without an absolute. Morality isn't being pulled toward some cosmic target. It's being pushed by the conditions we live in.

So stop arguing about whether morality is absolute or relative. It's relative. It just varies so little that it looks absolute, and that's all the absolute anyone ever needed.