An FmH reader says I’m wrong about what I called “moral relativism” in my post yesterday about torture:

I don’t think this constitues moral relativism. Relativism is a doctrine

that rejects the possibility of mediation between competing moral

frameworks, a doctrine that often leaves its proponent with an ‘to each,

his own’ blandness. To the relativist, there is no such thing as the Right

for any given situation. However, the above-referenced discussion about

torture proceeds from a distinct moral framework, a crude

pragmatism, which holds that morality (Rightness) is not a feature

of acts but a feature of the consequences of those acts. A

consequentialist says that it’s Right, absolutely, to kill one to save

many, a relativist says that there is no such thing as absolute Right and

Wrong. The philosophical term for the system you wish for, one in which

there are acts that are absolutely right or wrong, regardless of their

consequences, is called deontologism or imperativism. If you’ve got a

four-man lifeboat with five people, the consequentialist says it’s right

to kill one to save four, the deontologist says it’s wrong to kill,

period, and the relativist says that there is no trustworthy way to judge

Right and Wrong.

In related news, Alan Dershowitz says that consideration of unthinkables such as “truth serum and turture warrants” ought to be on the table at this juncture.