Topics Ethics

Question Society A believes that morally right to sacrifice children to their god. Society B believes that this belief is morally wrong. On what basis can I say that Society B is morally superior to society A?

Accepted:
April 22, 2010

Comments

On what basis? On any reasonably held ethical basis at all! Your question seems to be based on the idea that we cannot be justified in judging another society, but I see no reason why that would be true. The consequences of sacrificing children looks pretty bad (oops, there goes the society's future!), so on a consequentialist ground, the practice can be condemned. No sensible person would make "sacrifice your children" aa universal maxim for all to follow, so it looks like there are good deontological grounds for condemning it, as well. And what kind of peerson sacrifices his or heer own children to some "god"? Looks pretty baad from a virtue-theoretic point of view, as well.

If this were baseball, I'd say, "Three strikes and you're out!"

Let me start by saying that on any plausible scenario, I agree with Prof. Smith. There are plenty of good grounds -- he offers three excellent ones -- for thinking that sacrificing your children to the gods is really just wrong, period. The fact that some people think otherwise doesn't by itself amount to a reason for doubting this. (In fact, this is one of the points that trips people up when they think about moral relativism. They forget that mere disagreement isn't a reason for taking both sides to have equally good reasons or equally plausible beliefs.)

But I'd like to probe a wee bit further, because there is a sticky little point here worth exploring. I may think someone is horribly wrong without thinking they are to be condemned morally. Suppose someone deeply and sincerely believes that casting a spell rather than a blood transfusion will save their child's life. I think they are wildly, tragically wrong, but I have a very different moral evaluation of them than of someone who, say, would delay calling the ambulance in hopes that their child would die and make their life less complicated. The second person is a moral monster; the first is trying to do the right thing, but on the basis of deeply flawed beliefs about the facts. Their ignorance might be culpable, and that matters. But the cases still seem morally different.

Now back to the child-sacrificers. I can at least imagine, albeit dimly, a society that has wildly different beliefs about the way the world works. Suppose they believe, for example, that the sacrifice of certain specially "chosen" children purifies the child's soul and leads to an eternity of blessedness for the child. The belief seems crazy. But if someone held that belief, it would make a difference to how we evaluated their actions. And if the whole society had long held the belief, we might temper the judgment that this is an evil society. Indeed, with a bit of imaginative effort, we can even picture a society in which parents are extraordinarily conscientious about their participation in this practice precisely because they care so deeply about their children.

The larger point, then, is this: when we make moral judgments, we make them against a background of beliefs about the relevant non-moral facts. Indeed, those background assumptions are often part of what we need in order to get the right "thick" description of the act. The case of belching after a meal is a trivial one (and I've used it before on this site), but it gets the logic of the matter. If I go to dinner at my friends' house today and belch loudly when I finish eating, I've been rude. But (so it's said) in some cultures, the same act thinly described (deliberate belching) is a different act thickly described (paying a compliment). If a guest from another country falsely believes that his hosts understand belching in this way, we'll have a different view of his belching than of someone who just doesn't give a darn.

From there to child sacrifice is a long trek, but the point may be clear nonetheless. And the reason I think it's worth noting is that sometimes when people argue for moral relativism, they overlook it. Two people who agree about the moral principles may and up acting very differently because they disagree about the background facts (including, sometimes, metaphysical facts.) When that happens, the examples don't really support moral relativism in the way they're sometimes taken to.

So once again: I'm not expecting to find a real-world case where I would offer this sort of moral excuse for a child-sacrificer. But there are less extreme cases where just this sort of consideration really is relevant to our moral evaluation of an individual or a group.

Question Society A believes that morally right to sacrifice children to their god. Society B believes that this belief is morally wrong. On what basis can I say that Society B is morally superior to society A? Accepted:April 22, 2010

Question Society A believes that morally right to sacrifice children to their god. Society B believes that this belief is morally wrong. On what basis can I say that Society B is morally superior to society A?

Accepted:
April 22, 2010