When the conversation changes the subject
In a conversation about animals, it's common for someone, after a while, to say: "In ethics there's no right or wrong, it's all relative."
The author notices something interesting: this line almost never comes up at the start of the discussion. It shows up after the person has already tried to defend their position and couldn't find good arguments. But if they thought there was no right or wrong, why were they trying to show they were right?
Ethics and metaethics
To understand the text, you need to separate two kinds of questions.
The author shows that people often use a metaethics line ("it's all relative") to try to defend an ethics position ("so I can keep exploiting animals"). And that doesn't work.
Why it doesn't work
For any practice, there are three possibilities:
- we should do it (it's required);
- we shouldn't do it (it's forbidden);
- it doesn't matter (it's allowed).
Someone who says "I can keep eating animals, because it's all relative" is putting that practice in the third category: allowed. But that's also a claim about what's right! And it's said as if it applied to everyone, as if people who disagree were wrong.
If it really were "all relative," you couldn't even say that exploiting animals is allowed. The line doesn't help either side.
The double standard
The text also points out that almost nobody uses "it's all relative" when the victims are human. Nobody says "it's all relative" about mistreating children. Using this line only when the victims are animals is one more case of a double standard.
In short
- "In ethics, it's all relative" usually shows up when people run out of arguments.
- Claims about the nature of morality don't decide what we should do.
- Saying something is allowed is also a moral claim.