Multiculturalism is dead

[al Roumi]

Well, obviously there is no mutually agreed arbiter. And "absolute scale" draws to mind the image of a giant ruler. But this is all beside the point. I thought we had got over the idea that people disagreeing make it so that there is no truth about the matter.

It isn't beside the point, this IS my point. You are consistently trying to talk about something else.

If hitler's reasoning is:

1) the jews made germany lose WWI and are responsible for the current economic situation, etc.
2) such people deserve extermination
3) therefore they should be exterminated

It is obvious that if (1) is false than he is wrong, regardless of whether he is convinced of his logic and reasoning. You are supporting a much broader conclusion than you claimed to earlier. Your argument fits better to claiming that we can't know whether (2) is true or false, which has been much more debated in philosophy than whether (1) can be true or false. You agree that Hitler can be absolutely wrong about the Jews having caused Germany to lose WWI, etc.

1 is wrong if you can provide him with evidence to counter his reasoning that jews were "the problem", but it would not obviate his underlying anti-semitism. You would not counter his anti-semitism, I think that animosity runs deaper than macro-economic explanations.

But you have not made a case for the claim that we can't know moral facts. You have only said that we disagree and then talked about how it is better for society if we tolerate ideas we disagree with. That is separate from whether there are moral facts or not.

Would you say for example that we can't know whether it is wrong to murder innocent children for fun? That it's just our opinion etc?

I have the very frustrating suspicion that your going to say something like "oh yes well of course there are moral facts like that old chap, but obviously it's chauvinist to expect all cultures to have the same moral ideas about food" and then a week later you'll be talking about how you don't know whether the holocaust was wrong again.

My point is that while we may have the moral fact that the holocaust was "wrong", others didn't -and don't. Why? Simply because they have a different moral scale or valuation -that could be to do with acceptance of the methods of genocide for use against a perceived enemy, or anti-semitism. This is what makes it impossible to assume that morality is uniform accross cultures. While you've picked an extreme example, I'm sure cultures could and have existed where murdering children for fun is acceptable.

I'm also not saying that everything is ok to me as long as its cultural! Rather, while I or you might disagree with something, it could well be ok to someone else because their culture tolerates or values it. Furthermore, because that agreement/disagreement is based on culturaly determined values, it is not a matter where there is an absolute measure of truth to either position -so neither party is legitimised in simply saying that the other is "wrong".

In the case of the holocaust, don't you think the victor has set the moral argument, and that had the victor been different, our views on the holocaust and Adolf might be rather different than despisal?