Some Varieties of Metaethical Relativism

Abstract

AbstractThis opinionated survey article discusses a relativist view in metaethics that we can call Appraiser‐standard Relativism. According to this view, the truth value of moral judgments varies depending on the moral standard (the norms or values, etc.) of the appraiser – that is, someone who makes or assesses the judgments. On this view, when two persons judge that, say, lying is always morally wrong; one of the judgments might be true and the other false. The paper presents various forms of this view, contrasts it against other forms of moral relativism, and shortly describes the main arguments for it. It considers the two most pressing objections – from disagreement and from counterintuitivity – and discusses how different forms of Appraiser‐standard Relativism are affected by, or can be seen as responses to, these objections. Lastly, it discusses whether Appraiser‐standard Relativism rules out moral realism, the view that there are objective moral truths.