ABSTRACT
In the case of mainstream economics, the adoption of an extreme moral relativism, which puts moral knowledge on the same ground as personal tastes and treats moral opinions as completely arbitrary, is quite explicit. In a framework of moral relativism, the problem of moral choice is then reduced to the question of how, given different people with different social preferences, a social choice can be derived. The assessment of economic mechanisms according to the social outcomes they produce requires that some outcomes can be considered, beyond personal opinions, as right, socially desirable or good, others as wrong, socially undesirable or bad. Logical Positivism has been criticised on several grounds. It may be argued that some economists recognise the impossibility of moral formulas enabling us to assess social value and, therefore, do not follow the rationalistic path of searching out how to design the correct morality. It is clear that both, the libertarian and the rationalist, adopt a moral relativist approach.
