Moral Pluralism

QUESTION: What is moral pluralism?

ANSWER:

Moral pluralism is the assumption there are moral truths, but that they do not form a body of coherent and consistent truths as those found in the sciences or mathematic approach.

There are plural, in other words many truths, not just one, and they may conflict with one another.

Within the moral domain, there are conflicting theories even with regard to goodness and rightness, and each theory contains important truths about moral life. And yet, none of them contain the whole truth per se. We all inhabit a common world, with judgments and interpretations playing a part in the process.

The challenge as a society is finding the common ground, and acknowledging the legitimacy of the conflicting insights, and establishing a minimal area of agreement so we can live together with our differences.

For some, if the action gives a positive result, they consider the action a morally good thing to do. In other words, because it produced good consequences, it was the right thing to do.

Others look at how the consequence affects us, and they believe each person is the best judge of his or her own self-interest and thus leans toward selfishness, but morality encourages compassion, love, and a sense of others.

And then there's a group who thinks we should do what produces the greatest good for everyone, not just for me.

They believe moral disputes can be resolved by objectively computing the outcome, or the consequences of actions.

For the Christian, what makes an act right is that it is commanded by God and what makes it wrong is that it is forbidden by God. These truths are drawn from the text of the Bible and considered sacred.

And thus, we have moral pluralism with similar distinctions and different outcomes depending on if the action is based on how God would want us to approach the situation, and always based on love.