Rationalism, Universalism, and Relativism

People seem to regard some norms (e.g., about the wrongness of armed robbery) as universally true, and other norms (e.g., about which side of the road to drive on) as true relativized to some context or group. This chapter considers whether such meta-evaluative beliefs are rational. There are reasons to doubt that the belief in universalism about norms is evidentially rational. Nonetheless, universalism seems to be a default setting in normative cognition. That is, when we acquire norms, we tend to presuppose that they hold universally. This chapter argues that even though the default assumption of universalism might not be evidentially rational, it is ecologically rational to have a bias in favor of universalism. However, people are not completely locked into universalism. Under conditions of low consensus regarding some norm, people do move away from universalism and adopt some form of relativism, at least at a reflective level. And this is plausibly an evidentially rational response to low consensus.