Students and Relativism

I'm assisting with an introductory ethics course right now, and I've run, once again, into the bald relativism held by many undergraduate students. This isn't philosophically sophisticated, Gilbert Harman relativism (though that's still wrong), its "I'm OK, you're OK", all viewpoints are equal, whatever you say is fine relativism. It's apathy or confusion as relativism, in many case, those sometime it is also a commitment to tolerance that they mistakenly think is best founded on relativism.

So I'm in a bit of a quandry, because I believe in and am committed to the idea that I ought not indocrinate my students with my viewpoint, but I find this kind of relativism morally corrosive and wholly objectionable. In addition, I'm not running the class, so I can't set the agenda for my discussions. But I've had several professors who have themselves spent a significant amount of time in class debunking this kind of relativism for students, because they see it as utterly destructive to moral discourse, and a fount of counterintuitive and/or contradictory consequences.

The interesting question is what levels we have to go to to avoid indoctrination and allow the students to work things through for themselves. Philosophy in particular has a commitment to this kind of reasoning process and an aim to create these skills in their students. But its not obvious how exposing students to the problems of moral relativism would undermine this process. And even in a course where this topic is not on the official agenda, it seems to me an important topic to address. Not only for the sake of the students and the culture that they're going to be unleashed on with such views, but also for the course itself and the its pedagogical goals. This type of relativism silences discourse, it makes the discussion of applied ethical issues (which is what this course is all about) pointless, because there's no possibility of moral improvement, or real growth in ethical knowledge. If I'm a student who holds this kind of view, what's the point in listening to the professor (other than the need to reproduce things on the exam)? This, it seems to me, undermines the whole point of having a course in ethical theory and applied ethics. And for these reasons it seems to me appropriate to expose students to the implications of bald moral relativism whenever it rears its ugly head.