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I see no paradox here. Yes, the rubrics change over time, making morality relative, but the motivation (empathy) remains constant, meaning you can evaluate morality in absolute terms.

A simple analog can be found in chess, an old game that’s fairly well-defined and well-understood compared to ethics. Beginners in chess are sometimes confused when they hear masters evaluate moves using absolute terms — e.g. “this move is more accurate than that move.

Doesn’t that suggest a known optimum — i.e., the most accurate move? Of course it does, but we can’t actually know for sure what move is best until the game is near its end, because finding it is hard. Otherwise the “most accurate” move is never anything more than an educated guess made by the winningest minds/software of the day.

As a result, modern analysis is especially good at picking apart historic games, because it’s only after seeing the better move that we can understand the weaknesses of the one we once thought was best.

Ethical absolutism is similarly retrospective. Every paradigm ever proposed has flaws, but we absolutely can evaluate all of them comparatively by how well their outcomes express empathy. Let the kids cook.

Kids thinking anything goes while also being incredibly close-minded is not new.

Honestly, those two points don't seem incompatible to me. For example:

Teaching the history of fashion to undergrads in 1985 is bizarre because:

1. They insist that standards of dress are entirely relative. Being dressed decently is a cultural construct; some cultures wear hardly any clothing whatsoever and being nude is a completely normal, default way of presenting yourself.
2. And yet when I walk into class with my dick and balls hanging out, they all get extremely offended and the coeds threaten to call the police.

(And yes I changed the year because I'm sick of so many of these issues being brought up as though "the kids these days" are the problem, when so often these are issues that have been around LITERALLY FOREVER.)

I'm not trying to dunk on this Henry Shelvin guy -- I'm certain that he knows a lot more about philosophy than me, and has more interesting thoughts about morals than I do. And I'm also not going to judge someone based on a tweet...aside from the obvious judgement that they are using Twitter, lol. But as far as takes go, this one kinda sucks.

*edit: I'll add that I hope this professor is taking this opportunity to explain what the difference is between morals being relative vs being subjective, which is an issue that has come up in this very thread. Especially since I bet a lot of his students have only heard the term "moral relativism" being used by religious conservatives who accuse you of being a moral relativist because you don't live by the Bible. I know that was definitely the case for me.

I've had people, presumably young, argue with me on here about politics and morals. For example, I say the right to abortion is a political issue. Been screamed out that it's not a political issue because a woman's right to an abortion is a moral issue. Yeah, I agree, but the argument is still political. Some believe abortion is murder and that they're right. That's politics.

It's like they have no sense that other views exist, and opposing views do not constitute politics. "I'm on the right side of this thing so it's not politics!" As if I'm somehow lowering the debate to mere... something?

That was one of the first things I got confused by on lemmy. Am I making sense? Just crawled in from work and I'm wasted tired.

post-structuralism has done a lot to attack the basic idea that something like "right" and "wrong" even exist in the first place, outside of the mind of the observer.

I'm kinda pissed about that btw.

Hah! Cool to see Henry pop up on my feed. I knew this guy back when he was a grad student. And as somebody that also teaches ethics, he is dead on. Undergrads are not only believe all morality is relative and that this is necessary for tolerance and pluralism (it's not), but are also insanely judgmental if something contradicts their basic sense of morality.

Turns out, ordinary people's metaethics are highly irrational.

viewing disagreement as moral monstrosity

This should be the slogan of public social media.

This is why everyone hates moral philosophy professors.

Morality is subjective. Ethics are an attempt to quanitify/codify popular/common moral beliefs.

Even "murder is wrong" is not a moral absolute. I consider it highly immoral to deny murder to someone in pain begging for another person like a physician to murder them painlessly simply because of a dogmatic "murder is wrong" stance.