Alonzo Fyfe

I am working on the next section of my Ethics Without God series, and wrote up a section that I call the Location Analogy.

It is intended to answer such questions as how subjective morality can be concerned with 'harm to others.'

I would appreciate any comments anybody would care to provide.



B. The Location Analogy

Over the course of the years, I came to refer to the set of ideas like those that I defend here as "objective moral relativism." Given the common disposition of people to see objective morality and relativism as mutually exclusive options, this raised a few eyebrows. That was the idea. But I needed a way to get the listener to understand the idea of objective relativism -- to get past the habit of seeing his as a contradiction. The best and easiest analogy that I came up with was location.

Pick anything in the world and imagine telling me where it is at. You know where it is, and you want to report this fact to somebody else. Go ahead, imagine it.

I guarantee that the description of this fact involved the location of something else. Where are the car keys? They could be hanging on the key rack, or in the coat pocket, or in the purse, or sitting on the dining room table, or you could have left them at home. No matter what, the description of the location of the car keys involved describing its location relative to some other thing. You can't describe location any other way.

Location, then, is a relative property. The location of anything in the universe can only be known in virtue of how it stands in relation to something else. There are no absolute locations.

Does this make locations subjective? Of course not. We can't change the location of something merely by willing it so. Certainly, we can arbitrarily decide to give the location of the keys either relative to the purse or the dining-room table. However, none of this has any affect on where the keys are at. We can not will them into our pocket merely by saying, 'the keys are in my pocket'. Location, then, is an objective property.

This, then, is objective relativism. Location describes a relational property -- where one thing stands in relation to other. But it is an objective property -- we can use different frames of reference but nothing we do along these lines can change where the keys are actually at.

Value describes relationships between states of affairs and desires. When we want to know the value of something, we can only give it (so long as our answer is true) by reporting how it stands in relation to some set of desires. Value properties are relational (thus, relativism), but this relationship is an objective fact about the world as subject to scientific investigation as any other objective fact in the world (thus, relativism). This, then, is the nature of objective moral relativism.


Which Relation?

With respect to location, it is also interesting to note that when asked where something is, we can give an infinite number of equally accurate answers. Yet, somehow, we are able to pick out of that infinite set exactly which relationship would best answer the question we are asked.

Question: "Where are your keys?" Answer: "At home."

For an employee asking another employee for access to a locked room at work, this is a perfectly legitimate answer. Now let is look at a different situation. A husband and wife are frantically preparing to go to an important engagement. The wife comes up to the bedroom where the husband is still debating which tie to wear and says, "I will get the car. Where are your keys?" If he answers this question by saying, "At home," he may be near to suffering a terminal divorce if not actual terminal injuries. "In the jeans that I wore to the park this afternoon," on the other hand, would be a less risky answer.

The context in which the question is asked determined what type of relationship the person asking the question was interested in. We ask and answer these types of questions as a matter of routine -- without giving them a thought.

The same is true of value. Many times, the word itself does not identify exactly which desires are relevant in making the evaluation. Instead, this is inferred from the context. "Are there any good movies showing in town?" If my friend asks me this, I know right away that she is not asking me for a list of movies that are good relative to my own desires. If I were to start listing the movies that I like, she would have me skewered and served up with a good orange sauce. She wants my opinion of how different movies stand up in relation to her own desires, to the degree that I know what those desires are.

If we happen to share the same taste in movies, then my answer to her question would also happen to be the same answer I would give to the question, "Are there any movies you are interested in seeing?" asked by her. But that is a coincidence. I am still answering the question, "What movies are good relative to what you know of my desires in terms of movies?"


Location Objectivism vs. Location Relativism

By analogy, the location objectivist seeks an absolute location. Because no such location exists, the location objectivist ultimately picks something that sounds good to him (e.g., the center of the earth) and decrees, "this is the absolute center of the universe." Anybody who should disagree -- anybody who should talk of anything having a position relative to something else (e.g., the sun) is ridiculed (at best) or burned at the stake for blasphemy (at worst). Nobody shall be allowed to question the idea of location objectivism.

The location relativist comes along and realizes that location objectivism is a myth. Those who picked the center of the earth as an absolute location pretty much picked it at random, and could have picked any other place in existence as the absolute location. Yet, the location relativist goes from one absurdity to another. In abandoning location objectivism, the location relativist makes the assertion that all location claims must give location only relative to the speaker. In describing where my car keys are it would be legitimate to say, 'Bearing 046 mark 339; range 10 meters'. However, to say that they are 'on the kitchen table' would be -- for some reason -- out of bounds. The only thing we ever learn when anybody talks about the location of anything -- according to the location relativist -- is where things stand in relation to the speaker.

To prove the viability of location objectivism, the objectivist raises a protest. If things only have a location relative to something else, then all you have to do is to change your frame of reference, and the location of things can mystically change. For example, if we use Seattle Washington as our frame of reference, Portland Oregon is to the south. Yet, if we change our frame of reference to San Francisco, suddenly Portland Oregon is to the north. It's north! No, it's south! NORTH! SOUTH! It is just nuts to think that you can change the location of a whole city that easily, with it first being north and, with a thought, suddenly it is to the south. Cities cannot move that easily. Obviously, location relativists are morons. We need an absolute location to fix the position of things.

Actually, location relativists are morons when they insist that we can only speak about the location of things relative to ourselves. What an absurd limitation to place on the way we speak? There is no law of God or nature that dictates that we can only speak of location relative to ourselves. All that is needed for clear communication is that the speaker and the listener know the reference that is being used. This key piece of information -- the starting point of the relation -- can either be picked up within the context of the discussion, or it can be stated explicitly. However, it can be anything. Location claims do not have to assume that locations can only be given relative to the speaker.

Location is both an objective fact, and a relative property, at the same time. There is no need to make a choice between these two options.

Values work the same way -- they are also both objective fact and relative property. In addition, value claims draw relationships between states of affairs and mental states -- namely, desires. But value claims are no more limited to being claims purely about the desires of the speaker, than location claims are limited to claims about location relative to the speaker. We know that other people exist, with other desires, and we can just as easily talk about value relative to desires not our own as we can talk about location relative to things other than the speaker.


The Final Task

The main task, then, whenever any person makes a value claim, is to ask -- given the context in which the claim is made -- which desires does the speaker have in mind? It's the same where location where the main task, whenever a person makes a location claim -- is to ask which frame of reference is relevant to that claim. If I am interested in avoiding an untimely and bloody death at my wife's hands, when she asks where the keys are, I know the frame of reference she is interested in, and can give a meaningful answer. If I am interested in avoiding an untimely and bloody death at my friend's hand, when she asks me whether there are any good movies in town, I know the frame of reference she is interested in as well.

What frame of reference is a person interested in when he talks about moral value -- about the legitimacy of capital punishment, the right and wrong of abortion, the right of freedom of speech, or the separation of church and state?

I find the theory that the person making a moral claim is interested only in value relative to his or her own desire to be extremely inadequate. Why debate such a claim? Why even make such a claim? A person who walks up to you and says, "capital punishment is wrong" is saying a lot more than, "I don't like capital punishment." He is saying that "This is something we ought not to be doing." It's not wrong in the same way that putting chocolate syrup on steak is wrong. It is a 'different type of wrong'. It is different, in that the speaker is making reference to a different set of desires.

What makes moral value so much more important than any other type of value is that moral value involves more desires than any other type of value. Moral value looks beyond the desires of the speaker, or the listener, or the agent, to look at all desires, including those of the victim, the victim's friends and family, everybody. There may be some rational room for dispute over exactly how broad this set of desires is, but it is certainly involves a whole heck of a lot more desires than merely those of the speaker.

Whatever set of desires it refers to, once we know the relevant set of desires, there is an objective right answer to the question "What is the right thing to do?" The answer is just as objective for this question as it is for another type of objective-relativism question, "Where are my keys?"