A small argument in the unending debate between moral relativism and moral absolutism.
Some are tempted to say that there is no meta-ethics – that is, that one can judge whether something is right or wrong according to a specific, culturally-determined set of moral values, but one cannot say whether one culture's set of moral values is morally better than another culture's set of moral values. But this is false. What this implies is that within a given culture, those who determine the moral values of that culture cannot be wrong – that they are infallible. But of course they can be wrong. They can make mistakes, like everyone else. It makes no more sense to say that moral authorities are incapable of making mistakes than to say that scientists or judges or parents or anyone else who makes decisions cannot make mistakes. Consider the case of victim-blaming. It is wrong for a culture to blame a victim for the harm done to that victim by an aggressor. Blaming the victim is a mistake . It is wrong. Yet, of course, many cultures blame victims for all kinds o...