BILLYNDA GRACIA PENSADER ETHICS

REFLECTION

Questions:
1. What is Morality?
2. The Challenge of Cultural Relativism

Answers:

1. What is Morality?
Morality is, first and foremost, a topic of reason consulting. In any case, the
morally correct thing to do is to do whatever the right reasons are. Rachels believes
that explanations are called things. But what is the explanation? Is it something we
can discover which exists independently of us? As distinct from other kinds of
motives, are there moral reasons? The claims we have considered are intended to offer
reasons for doing one thing instead of another. How do we decide which explanations
are best, or which claims actually give us the best reasons?

The needs of each person are equally important; there are no favored
individuals from a moral point of view. Therefore, each of us must understand that the
health of other people is just as important as our own.

What is' the moral point of view' exactly? If I place my family's interests
above those of total strangers, would I fail to see things from a moral point of view?
The impartiality argument made by Rachels is controversial: it is not apparent that it
is valid, nor is it clear how to interpret it.

To form a sketch of what he calls "a conscientious moral agent," Rachels puts
these two tenets together: The conscientious moral agent is someone who is
impartially concerned with the rights of all affected by what he or she does; who
scrutinizes facts carefully and investigates their consequences; who accepts rules of
behavior only after scrutinizing them to ensure that they are sound; Who is willing to
"listen to reason" even though it suggests that it might be appropriate to reconsider
 previous convictions; and who is willing, eventually, to act on the results of this
deliberation.
What does Rachels mean by claiming that good arguments must justify moral
judgments? Moral judgements are not like taste problems. That is, a required
requirement for a good moral judgment is that, in support of it, some good reasons
can be given. Moral decisions must be unbiased.
The Minimal Morality Conception. At the very least, morality is the attempt to
direct one's actions by reason, that is, to do what the best reasons are, while giving
equal weight to the interests of each person affected by one's decision.

2. The Challenge of Cultural Relativism

There is no such thing as an independent standard; every standard is culture

bound. There are various moral codes in different societies, which seem to be the
secret to understanding morality.

A myth, they claim, is the concept of objective reality in ethics. The customs
of various cultures are all that exists. It is not possible to conclude that these traditions
are "correct" or "incorrect," since that means we have an independent definition of
right and wrong on which they can be measured.

James Rachels discusses the influential principle of cultural relativism in' The
Challenge of Cultural Relativism' and challenges its validity. The situation with
Rachels seems to be that in their search for answers to moral issues, people take the
wrong approach.

James Rachel describes cultural relativism in The Elements of Moral

Philosophy as different cultures possessing different moral codes. The moral reality,
therefore, is relative and differs from culture to culture.

Our belief in the objectivity and universality of moral reality is questioned by

cultural relativism. There is no objective standard that can be used to judge the code
of one culture as better than that of another. There are no moral truths that always
hold true for all people.
 In his modern classic titled The Elements of Moral Philosophy, philosopher
James Rachels has done a thorough study and evaluation of cultural relativism. One of
the key points of Professor Rachels is that cultural relativism is based on a defective
logic that he calls the argument of cultural differences.

The philosopher James Rachels published a detailed analysis and examination

of cultural relativism in his modern masterpiece titled The Elements of Moral
Philosophy. One of Professor Rachels' key points is that cultural relativism is based
on a flawed logic that he calls the cultural gap statement.
In contrast to systems of morals, law, politics, etc., using the viewpoint of
cultural relativism contributes to the perception that no one culture is superior to
another culture. It is a notion that from a particular social context, cultural norms and
values derive their meaning.

The standards you are used to are neither correct nor incorrect, but different.
When visiting another country, imagine walking into a nearly empty movie theater,
and not sitting next to the other person in the theater. Another person comes up and
tells you to be rude.

Nevertheless, cultural relativism still has boundaries. Examples of such

limitations are civil rights, liberty, and justice. People are taught to respect other
cultures and customs, but when cultural practices or traditions violate human rights or
justice, they also need to be prepared to criticize them.

Five claims of Cultural Relativism 1) Different Cultures have different moral

codes 2) These codes determine what is right within a given society (if the code says
its right when the action is just within that society) 3) There is no object standard that
can be used to judge one society's code as better than another's.

To sum it all, cultural relativism's strength is that it encourages greater

diversity and recognition of ethical differences and decreases the risk of imperialist
ideals being enforced. The drawback of cultural relativism is its inclination to
quietism, which can undermine human rights security measures.
 Because of this, ethicists claim that the principle of cultural relativism
challenges ethical discipline because if values are subjective to a particular culture,
then this would mean that there are no universal moral absolutes by which people's
actions can be measured.

With this, we think that moral progress is impossible: There is no such thing
as moral progress according to relativism. In order for Improvement to take place,
there must be a BETTER shift. But there must be some rule that is more closely
adhered to over time in order for anything to become "better".