Why Our Children Don’t Think There Are Moral Facts

Tuesday, May 5, 2015

... philosophy professors with whom I have spoken suggest that the overwhelming majority of college freshmen in their classrooms view moral claims as mere opinions that are not true or are true only relative to a culture.

A misleading distinction between fact and opinion is embedded in the Common Core.
What I didn’t know was where this attitude came from. Given the presence of moral relativism in some academic circles, some people might naturally assume that philosophers themselves are to blame. But they aren’t. There are historical examples of philosophers who endorse a kind of moral relativism... But such creatures are rare. Besides, if students are already showing up to college with this view of morality, it’s very unlikely that it’s the result of what professional philosophers are teaching. So where is the view coming from?

A few weeks ago, I learned that students are exposed to this sort of thinking well before crossing the threshold of higher education.

Read the rest of the article here:
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com//2015/03/02/why-our-children-dont-think-there-are-moral-facts/

Comments by another philosophy professor...
This confirms my impression from decades ago when I first began teaching philosophy, as a graduate student at UNC. So many students come to college with their minds already made up about complex questions in the branch of ethics called “metaethics,” and they take it as common sense that, since people disagree about moral claims, they have no right to assert them as pertaining to others, or to other cultures. Read on here:
http://ncethicalsociety.org/comment-on-why-our-children-dont-think-there-are-moral-facts/

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I teach them all the good I can, and recommend them to others from whom I think they will get some moral benefit. And the treasures that the wise men of old have left us in their writings I open and explore with my friends. If we come on any good thing, we extract it, and we set much store on being useful to one another. - Socrates, Memorabilia
 
 
 
What we maintain is that in none of the problems of life can men afford to lose sight of the storehouse bequeathed to them by the ancients. In the complexus of everything which differentiates man from the brute creation, the voice of antiquity must be heard...

-H. Browne, quoted in "Classics and Citizenship" The Classical Quarterly, 1920