Sometimes the notions of universalism, absolutism and they like obstruct the primary issues. Whether there is a moral necessity is a different question compared to the content of what morally necessitates. By this one means that defending the content of morality as aboslute truth or absolute false, is a misunderstanding of truth itself especially when the question of what morally necessitate is asked. Moral absolutism which claims the completeness of truth simultaneously denies the being of truth. It is not that we cannot know the truth, the truth we know may be incomplete because truth unfolds. It reveals itself in the being that becomes. There seems to be a difference between the contigent character of truth and relativism about truth. The same could be said about morality. That which moraliy necessitate could be hanged upon the maxim: do good and avoid evil. The content of good and evil will always be contested, if there is no universally accepted good and evil, then we may not have any ground to condemn slavery, acts of terror, inequality etc, or support global solidarity and human fraternity. Hence, there must be something about the nature of being human that morally necessitates.

Nevetheless, using such moral necessity to stereotype and prejudiced is also a different issue. One may say that it has to do with issues bothering on hegemonial structures, and representation of  otherness.

Therefore, if the question is the instrumentalisation of the content of moral necessity to misrepresent others in other to sustain existing unequal structures of global relationship, then moral absolutism could easily be used to stereotype and prejudice other cultures. But if the question points to the rejection of moral necessity, then it cannot be the case. Obviously, within the contemporary political climate, continuously shaped by inevitable impacts of global process, there is need for intercultural understanding of the content of what morally necessitates. The result would be on the one hand a neutralisation of the prevailing hegemonial structures that works with respresentation of otherness and on the other hand, build a more supportive moral coherency for a fraternal humanity.

Always an intriguing question.  I can only respond with the argument that, 'moral relativism is also relative to itself'.  Hence, if moral relativism is illogical, then moral truths must exist.  Therefore, although I do not know, nor any culture, human, or society knows, the absolute moral truths of the world, I do believe absolute moral truths exist.  However, I also believe that cultures have a tendency to favor their own 'truths' as 'self evident'.  Though, some truths all cultures do agree upon as 'social necessities'.  Such as, prohibitions on murder and thievery.  Without these, humans could not organize into social orders.  However, this might also mean that human morality is relative to humans themselves!  Who knows what extraterrestrials might favor as morally true!

Mainz, Germany

Dear Tucci,

As usual with your questions, I tend toward a different conceptual approach to discussing them; and you may find my answers or suggestions less than fully satisfying. However, let me give it a try.

In general terms, I think there is a tension and trade off between two elements closely associated with moral thought and practice. One the one hand, we see effective means of socialization and reproduction of moral norms and practices as highly desirable, since this tends to secure the transmission of the values of a given society from one generation to another. A society which fails to transmit values to subsequent generations is soon no society at all. This is closely related to the Platonic theme of piety and respect for tradition. Moral convictions and practices exist in various traditions, however; and the various traditions can easily come into conflict with each other.

On the other hand, then, we see openness as a moral and intellectual virtue. If the means of socialization are very strong and effective, then there is some considerable danger that they will become immune to change and fail to adapt to changing circumstance--including the encounter with alternative traditions. In this way, particularly rigid traditions may become an impediment to integration of diversity and tend to foment conflict between distinct groups and traditions.

Is there a simple and general solution to this problem? I doubt it. What in fact happens is that each distinctive tradition adapts its prior resources, as best it can, to developing and changing environmental conditions. That is a pluralistic perspective on the related nest of problems. To allow for the possibility of change and development both in one's own tradition and in those others one may be aware of more generally, is itself an aspect of openness. But, at the same time, the related problems are problems of evaluation.

What seems less problematic to me is to maintain that there are "better and worse" possible solutions to such problems of evaluation which prospectively maintain as much of a given tradition as may be viable while also extending or expanding to meet new challenges.  The solutions are found, if they are, in the details of the problem and not in any general formula which we might dream up to solve all of humanity's moral and intellectual problems and conflicts.  The possible solutions need to be examined and evaluated in comparison to each other, from within the various traditions. Because of that, the needed discourse tends to be drowned out by excesses of dogmatism or excess of anti- dogmatism--which pair of terms might count as improvements on discourse conducted in terms of moral absolutism and moral relativism.

H.G. Callaway

Dear Callaway,

If I may, I wish to recall some considerations, made in a book of some years ago, which - I presume - might be ‘collateral’ (and rather odd) to the core of your contribution. I  was dealing with social norms and their relation to one of their functions in cultural evolution, particularly considering the system of an interaction that is to be established between altruism, selection between groups of a society, aptitude for cooperation and forms of control represented by social norms.

Technically, inspired by the literature on  ‘evolutionary group selection', the control function, by operating through the mechanism of imitation of the conformist transmission of the  ‘adaptive variation’1 will increase the frequency of altruistic behavior, raising the variation ‘between’ groups compared to that existing ‘within' a group and giving a characteristic of stability to the evolutionary process because individual behavior is subject to 'control'. It follows that social norms - which have among their main purposes to mitigate or curb the impulse to self-interest - are really inspiring the altruistic actions that lead to ‘initial’ material losses, but only to live up eventually to those principles of equality, reciprocity and cooperation to which they are inspired.

Those belonging to a community affected by this process of interaction, expressing a sort of moral commitment to the goal of cooperation, will be likely to accept any intervention that promotes this end, adapting to changing situations.

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1 Imitation of the most successful solutions reached by individuals even members of groups other than the one to which they belong or the behavior most frequently found.

Mainz, Germany

Dear Tucci,

I take it that there are times when it must be recognized, in good conscience, that "imitation of the most successful solutions reached by individuals" is simply destructive of the common good. The common means of "success," are, at such times, better resisted. One must steer against negative and destructive developments, though in the shorter term there is little personal advantage or recognition in doing so. It is a matter of conscience and intellectual-moral insight and integrity. Acting for the common good is the natural effect. That, I take it, is the moral lesson of philosophy through the ages.

H.G. Callaway

Mainz, Germany

Dear Cooper,

Thanks for your comment and reply. No doubt, there can be difficulties about what to count as "common" in the common good. However, this seems a somewhat technical objection. If one doubts that something or other is, or would be, a contribution to the common good, instead of wondering about individuation, one would, I think, most naturally criticize the claim directly.

Global or universalist conceptions of the common good are all fine and well, as proposals, I suppose; however, they present prima facie difficulties to policy and implementation --which is to say that they tend to the overly idealistic. One problem is that the international environment is somewhat chaotic as regards its formal political organization, and this is related to the diversity of cultures, languages, religions and value systems--national forms of organization, custom, history, etc. This in turn makes the implementation and formulation of agreed policy much more difficult. People in wider domains don't have the appropriate means at hand. 

Where we can talk of the common good regarding policy and implementation, then, I expect that the point above will stand that "imitation of the most successful solutions reached by individuals" is (sometimes) destructive of the common good. In general terms, this is why we have binding law and political authority to enforce it within well constituted political societies. Since practices evolve, the law sometimes needs to catch up. Consider, for example, the institution of new forms of banking regulation following the 2008 financial crisis. The objective there is to keep people from imitating prior practices implicated in bubble and bust.

H.G. Callaway

Dear Callaway, thank you for your intervention that - as usual – is intellectually stimulating. What I’ll be saying is quite long.

Now, an individual behavior - intentional and emotional all together - originates from the intersection between biology and cultural environment, intersection governed by those epigenetic rules of empirical nature that allow individuals to find quick solutions to the problems posed by the process of decision and choice. However, to avoid the risk - or at least to reduce it - that these heuristic rules could lead to serious and systematic errors, it is proposed the use of ‘norms’ that society has derived from common experience of its members and which aim to regulate the functions of preservation and increment of the collective advantage.

These kind of rules of an ‘informal ‘nature are constituded - according to Douglass North - by "moral codes, norms of behavior and beliefs", i.e. by that form of 'codification' of the lessons learned from that common experience that, becoming  ‘institutional norms' are part of a legacy that is called 'culture '. It exercises a kind of 'social control' by which individuals are bound to carrying out actions that are most advantageous to the social system (groups) to which they belong than selfish actions that they would be led to make in the absence of such conditioning.

The core of the culture is transmitted from one person to another through 'memes'. One of the mechanisms of communication is, (I think I mentioned earlier), the 'conformist transmission'. Anthropological and sociological studies on the mechanisms of cultural evolution are investigating whether and to what extent the use of forms of social learning as the imitation of the successful experience of others in similar situations referring to the solution of the problems posed by the human interrelation approach, at an average level, the optimal behavior than the solutions that individuals may devise on their own.

So, in conclusion, that 'cultural conformism’ whereby if a 'meme' in favor of an altruistic behavior can spread in a population, the pressure of conformism will make it difficult for potential 'free riders' to deviate from the norm.

Dear Callaway, the discourse may go on with technical details, but I’ll stop hoping not to have annoyed you and also responded even indirectly to your comments.

Mainz, Germany

Dear Tucci,

It seems clear that no one doubts the existence of social norms, in any society, though they differ in some degree from one to another. The ways in which they change also differ from one society to the next in some degree. I think that this all should, more or less, go without saying. Its seems obvious, too, that social norms of a given society may, on occasion be destructive of the common good. Indeed that is the basic reason why they sometimes need to be changed or modified. The decline of nationalism in Europe is perhaps a clear example --and it has declined in spite of its violation of many prior social norms.

Social norms will need to be changed, I suppose, in many cases where the purported social good, which is appealed to in the enforcement of a norm, is effectively captured by particular social and political interests and functions to hide abuses of power and privilege. Norms of competitiveness are perhaps a good illustration. My own view is that there need to be significant moral constraints upon competitive means in a well functioning society. So, if we begin to hear, at a particular time, that "anything goes," "whatever it takes," and "the end justifies the means," or that moral constraint in competition is simply an arbitrary construct of particular groups, etc, then that would seem to signal that the pursuit of competitive advantage has outrun moral and perhaps legal constraint and needs to be brought under some sort of control. It is not that the example is simply imaginary, of course, and there is wide awareness of growing inequalities in my own country, the U.S., and around the world.

As you see, if we talk about changes in social norms, then this is very much a matter of posing one norm against another, or one norm against a possible alternative, and in my experience, to get very far is such a discussion, one needs to consider particular problems and particular cases in reference to particular societies. If, as I suppose is true, morality exists in living traditions of particular cultures and societies, then engaging with the particularities seems the obvious consequence.

But let us briefly consider one more general case, for such there are, effecting people around the world; and if we must take up a "meme," then we might consider the popular theme of globalization. This is of interest, here, in part because globalization is widely represented has aiming for high human and altruistic goals. Increasing the economic and human interdependence of people around the world, if may be said, is all to the good. Millions will be drawn out of poverty, etc. But, a problem is that the desirability of wider trading relations develops powerful political support. Some people make a great deal of money out of the increases in world trade. Such powerful political support may also easily support the political perception of the desirability of their own goals, and of their contributions to the common good, while effectively marginalizing any doubts, questions or critics: also sometimes known as "the losers." 

However, while increasing world trade and interdependence has many benefits, it also has its drawbacks. It is much easier to bring people around the world into economic interdependence than it is to effectively develop and support mutual understanding and sympathy among diverse peoples and cultures. Moreover, people, just about everywhere, are significantly uprooted by the economic changes. The loss of millions of manufacturing jobs in the Western world is a case in point. Politically, what develops is a dominance of financial and commercial interests in particular "job exporting" countries (Italy included, of course) over the interests of domestic manufacturing. This also tends to change the character of the politics and related institutions. The politics of "big finance" is simply different in character from the politics of local domestic manufacturing.

So, without proposing any general solution here, I merely want to ask, in relation to your recent posting, how we are to properly count the two sides here. No doubt, expressing doubts about generally approved policies and politics may count as somewhat "non-conformist," in character. Is it also thereby opposed to the common good as well? I take it that intellectuals have some responsibilities in these matters, and though everyone might like to get on the winning team and have the support of dominant political forces in society, it is not clear to me that this is always a very reasonable or moral thing to do. What arises, as it seems to me, in similar cases, are many people who suppress their own doubts, and "go along in order to get along," waiting until the last possible moment to switch sides. Is it then "altruistic" to do so? I think that this is the kind of social phenomenon likely to produce catastrophe--in the sense, that if one planned a catastrophe, it would be hard to come up with a more suitable method. 

Perhaps you could clarify your prior themes by reference to some of these questions and problems.

H.G. Callaway