A master example for why I have fundamental issues with moral relativism (here: meta-ethical relativism). Prinz dazzles the listeners with an impressively wide array of seemingly disjoint moral belief systems. Then he claims that there cannot be an underlying model with intrinsic parameters that could describe this wealth of moral systems. I agree that we do not currently have a verified (!) model that explains this dazzling range of moral belief systems, however, there is exists a rich body of discussion on this topic (see, e.g. Wright's "Nonzero" and Harris's "The Moral Landscape"). I find Prinz's exclusion of opposing models sloppy at best. Thinking about it, I actually find it disingenuous, since he is aware of evolutionary and anthropological research into human invariants (of which the trolley example, which he uses to suggest the opposite with, actually is one example!), but he simply chooses to ignore them. Talking about framing ...
Grade: C-
