Cultural Relativism

 Consider first, some examples:

1. Premarital sex: Some cultures do not think that there is anything wrong with premarital
sex; indeed, it is condoned as an important part of normal courtship and encouraged by
parents
2. Homosexuality: In Ancient Greece, homosexuality was a part of growing up and a part of
the “good life” more generally; in other cultures it is condemned as an abomination in
the eyes of God.
3. Polyamorism: In some cultures, the notion of monogamy is foreign; having multiple
people you love and live with is considered a blessing.
4. Honor killings: Members of some groups think that if an unwed woman becomes
pregnant, it is the obligation of her family to kill her to restore family honor.
5. Parricide: Anthropologists report that many cultures practice parricide once the parents
become aged. It is a practice that members take to be morally permissible and perhaps
even morally required.
6. Treatment of animals: Some cultures are indifferent to the suffering of animals, and
even condone games that involve inflicting intense pain.

Where there any especially surprising examples from the reading?

 What about the inversion of the Christian ethic of helping one another in the Melanesian
islanders who are preoccupied with being poisoned?
 Or the Kwakitl whose pride is so hurt by being caused to mourn, that they go out and
randomly kill someone whenever they lose a loved one of their own in order to maintain
their social status?

 Prior to their ground breaking work of the first scientific-anthropologists

in the late 19th century, it was easy to believe that certain forms of
culture were more or less inevitable, given enough time.
 Very few people were aware of anything but western-European culture and
some of the larger cultures with which it was in regular contact.
 Thus many people regarded our own culture simply as a natural outgrowth of
human nature; something fixed and determined by our genetics.
 What they discovered is that, largely as a result of historical accidents, there is a
huge amount of cultural variation in everything from how the individuals of a
culture express emotion to the gods they worshipped.
 The discovery of the amazing extent to which cultures varied, specifically, with
respect to their systems of moral, led many to embrace the thesis of cultural
relativism.
 The famous anthropologist, William Graham Sumner thought:
The [morally] “right” way is the way which the ancestors used and which has been
handed down. The tradition is its own warrant…. The notion of right is in the folkways.
 It is not outside of them, of independent origin, and brought to test them…. When we
come to the folkways we are at the end of our analysis.
 And Ruth Benedict expressed a similar sentiment:
These illustrations…force upon us the fact that normality is culturally defined. And adult
shaped to the drives and standards of either of these cultures, if he were transported
into our civilization, would fall into our categories of abnormality. …In his own culture,
however, he is the pillar of society, the end result of socially inculcated ores, and the
problem of personal instability in his case simply does not arise. …Most of those
organization of personality that seem to us most uncontrovertibly abnormal have been
used by different civilizations in the very foundations of their institutional life. …We do
not any longer make the mistake of deriving the morality of our locality and decade
directly from the inevitable constitution of human nature. We do not elevate it to the
dignity of a first principle. We recognize that morality differs in every society, and is a
convenient term for socially approved habits. Mankind has always preferred to say,
“it is morally good,” rather than “it is habitual,”…but historically the two phrases are
synonymous. (449-50)
 The idea is that what makes something right or wrong for an individual is
simply determined by the moral code of their culture.
 If two cultures differ with respect to their moral codes, then certain actions that are
right for members of one culture, may be wrong for members of the other culture and
vice versa.
 A moral code is more or less just a system of rules or norms much like any other.
 Like the norms of proper food etiquette in France, or the typical way people express
anger in Asia, or like the rules that tell us how to play a game such as football.
 If there is anything special about moral norms it is that they pick out those rules that the
people of culture agrees it is wrong to violate at any time, and not just in the context of
a game or while eating.
 Moreover, they are rules that people tend think it is appropriate to praise people for
following and to blame or condemn people for violating them.
 In contrast, we don’t normally take other cultural norms quite as seriously.
 One thing to note is that accepting a norm is a complex psychological
phenomenon, whether it involves a moral norm or not.
 It involves internalizing a rule so that one is predisposed to act in accordance with that
rule, almost as if it were a law of nature like gravity.
 When we’ve truly internalized it, we do end up following it habitually, without even
thinking about it being a rule.
 Think about the norm regarding conversational distance.
 Moreover, it structures not just what we do but how we feel.
 You may feel uncomfortable when you find yourself violating a rule of etiquette.
 But you tend to feel guilty or ashamed when you knowingly violate a moral norm you
accept.
  On the flip side, you tend to feel a mild form of disapproval or disgust when someone
violates a rule of etiquette, for example, if they talk while chewing, or fail to cover their
mouth while coughing.
 But when someone else violates a moral norm, you can find yourself getting downright
angry or incensed.
 That said, the same psychological mechanism underlies the acceptance of all
norms, moral or otherwise.
 That’s why if you take your football a bit too seriously, you can find yourself yelling at
the tv—“That bastard was holding on that play!”—as if he had committed murder or
something.
 It just strikes you as plain wrong and well-neigh unforgivable.
 So this psychological mechanism may lead us to think morality is an objective law of
nature.
 But in reality, it may just be the “illusion” created by soaking up the moral norms in
one’s culture.

What Cultural Relativism (CR) is not

 CR goes beyond individual
 Both theories agree that moral judgments are not objective (like empirical judgments), a
moral or cultural relativist would deny that you as an individual are the only standard of
right or wrong.
 It’s not what you feel which makes things right or wrong; rather it is what your culture
feels.
 CR is directly opposed to the Universality Thesis.
 According to this thesis, there are at least some moral norms which are objective or
universally valid for everyone.
 That is, there are things that are right or wrong regardless of what the moral code of
your particular culture says.
 So any objectivist moral theory must defend UT.
 For example, if Divine Command Theory (DCT) is true and God commands that murder is
wrong, then it is wrong for everyone everywhere regardless of what individuals feel or of
what cultures practice.
 So, if DCT is true, then MR would be false because DCT supports the UT.
 CR should be distinguished from the Context Sensitivity Thesis, which notes
that, sometimes, the rightness or wrongness of an action sometimes depends
on the context or situation even though norm in question is universally valid.
 It’s important to note that sometimes the culture you belong to can change the context,
without implying morality itself is relative.
 So, although CR is incompatible with UT, it is compatible with CST.
 It is compatible because, as I said, how we apply norms can be sensitive to context and
still be universally valid for all cultures.
What if I gave you the following universally valid principle: You must help those in need when
you are in a position to do so at no serious risk to yourself.
 If someone is drowning in a pond, then it may be right for you to jump in and attempt a
rescue, but wrong for me to do so if I can’t swim.
 Or, it may be wrong for everyone everywhere to insult someone; yet, what counts as an
insult may vary from culture to culture or person to person.
 Or consider the practice of infanticide and parricide by the Inuit: killing of babies and
sending the extremely old out into the cold to die will actually save lives when
conditions are so harsh and food so scarce.

The Cultural Differences Argument, take 1

P1. Different cultures have diverse and conflicting moral codes, i.e., the moral
diversity thesis (MD) is true.
 This thesis is supported by anthropological discoveries like those mentioned above.
C. So, there is no objective (or culturally independent) fact in morality, i.e., CR is
true.
 Basically, this argument claims that if MD is true, then there are no universally valid
moral norms, i.e., UT is false.
 And, of course, if UT is false, then what is right for the members of a culture only
depends on the moral norms of their particular culture.

Exercise to be done as a group:

1. Why is this argument invalid? Provide a counter-example. For help, see Rachels’ sect. 3
 This argument simply asserts that differences in moral beliefs entails that there
is no single truth of the matter.
 Suppose different cultures had different scientific beliefs, say, about the age of the
earth.
 It wouldn’t follow that there was no fact of the matter.
 And the opposite isn’t true either.
 Every culture could agree on a single moral code, but it wouldn’t follow that there some
universally valid moral standard: it could just be an accident.
2. How does Rachels attack the truth of the MD premise? See sect. 5.
 And it’s not even obvious that MD is true.
 It could be the case that what appears to be fundamental moral disagreement—or
disagreement about basic moral principles—is really just disagreement about certain
non-moral factual matters.
 For example, two people could agree on the principle that a society ought to employ the
most beneficial forms of punishments.
 Yet they could disagree about whether capital punishment has beneficial consequences.
 Or, different cultures could agree that you ought to treat your elders with respect, no
matter their age.
  This would be a non-fundamental moral disagreement, and disagreements like this may
explain away most of MD.
 To be a fundamental moral disagreement, one person may hold a different principle
altogether, for example, that a punishment should fit the crime regardless of whether it
has beneficial consequences.
 In that case you would argue that capital punishment is morally permissible even if it
doesn’t deter people from committing murder, whereas someone else would argue that
state-sanctioned killing is only permissible if it prevents more killings.

The Anthropological Argument, take 2

 We shouldn’t be too quick to dismiss the argument for moral relativism
because there is another, more charitable, way of interpreting it.
P1. Different cultures have fundamentally diverse and conflicting moral codes.
 Just set aside our previous concerns for the time being.
P2. We would expect, if norms of right and wrong were universally valid, not to
have so much diversity.
 Disagreements about matters of scientific fact, for example, are generally resolvable
though universally accepted scientific practices.
 Thus, we get a very large overlapping consensus between what Russian scientists
believe, say, about genetics, and what American scientists believe.
 Moral disagreements between cultures, however, often seem rationally irresolvable.
 They persist in ways that scientific disagreements do not.
C. Therefore, MR is the best explanation of the diversity.
 Thus, MR has some plausibility in that it would explain why there is so much moral
diversity from one culture to another and from one era to another.
 If there is no independent fact of the matter about moral issues, the diversity we find is
just what we’d expect.
 Moral codes behave more like dress codes: they go in and out of fashion, differing from
place to place and time to time.
 They do not, the claim goes, behave like scientific codes, in which disagreements tend to
lesson over time.

Problems with MR
Try to pin down the culture you are from as well as the various subcultures. Are there any
examples you can think of where the moral codes of these subcultures conflict?
1. MR and the practical aim
 On the one hand, it is very difficult to know what the moral code of a culture is, because
it is difficult to formulate just what should count as a culture.
 Do Westerners share one culture, Americans, Muslims, Texans?
 Without a principled account of what counts as one’s culture, MR cannot guide us in our
moral decisions.
  On the other hand, if one belongs to more than one culture, then we might have
conflicting moral evaluations.
 If, for example, you are a Democrat and a Catholic, it would seem that, for you, abortion
is morally permissible and impermissible.
Does moral relativism allow us to say slave-owners in the early part of the 19th were doing
anything morally wrong?
Does moral relativism allow us to allow us to explain why Gandhi’s fast was such a morally
righteous action?
2. MR and the theoretical aim
 Our culture is continually evolving.
 At one time, it was morally permissible for Americans to own slaves.
 Most of us tend to think the abolition of slavery represents moral progress; yet,
according to MR, this doesn’t make any sense.
 In fact, since people like MLK and Gandhi were going against the norms of their culture,
they were acting wrongly.
 Similarly, most of us tend to think democracy is a superior form of government to fascist
dictatorship; yet, without culturally independent standards, this is only true for
members of democratic societies.

The appeal of MR
 Benedict claims we should accept MR because it will make our society more tolerant:
We shall arrive then at a more realistic social faith, accepting as grounds of hope and as
new bases for tolerance for the coexisting and equally valid patterns of life which
mankind has created for itself from the raw materials of existence.
 Rachels notes however that we needn’t accept all of MR in order to become more
tolerant:
We can understand the appeal of Cultural Relativism, then, even though the theory has
serious shortcomings. It is an attractive theory because it is based on a genuine
insight—that many of the practices and attitudes we think are natural are really only
cultural products. Moreover, in keeping this insight firm is important if we want to avoid
arrogance and have open minds.
 MR points to the danger of assuming that all of our normative practices are
based on universally valid principles.
 Since the unconscious mechanisms which allows us to internalize moral norms are the
same as those which allow us to internalize all other cultural norms, we would do well
to consider which are supported by reasons and which are simply arbitrary traditions we
have unwittingly taken on.
 Both, after all, are going to seem objective since they are supported by the same kinds
of motivations and emotion responses which are common to any norm we internalize.
 MR simply goes too far when it concludes that all of the norms we internalize are
arbitrary.