Republic of the Philippines

MARINDUQUE STATE COLLEGE

SCHOOL OF BUSINESS AND MANAGEMENT
Tanza, Boac, Marinduque

THE MORAL AGENT:

CULTURE IN HUMAN BEHAVIOUR
Lesson 2

Culture in Moral Behaviour

⮚ Culture: Some Definitions
● It is commonly said that culture is all around us. Practically, culture appears to be
an actual part of our social life as well as personality. For some, culture is a
quality that some people have more than others: how ‘cultured’ somebody is
depending on some factors like status, class, education, taste in music or film,
and speech habits. By attending symphonies, plays, operas, and poetry
readings, some show that they ‘appreciate culture’ more than others. Sometimes,
people visit places like museums or art galleries to increase their so-called
‘culture awareness.’ Probably, you have heard somebody in the ‘culture elite’
bemoan the deplorable ‘popular culture’ of TV, graphically violent computer
games, mass marketed movies, pierced navels, tattoos, and rock or rap music.
● The term ‘culture’ is so complex that it is not easy to define. In one sense,
culture is used to denote that which is related to the arts and humanities. But in a
broader sense, culture denotes the practices, beliefs, and perceptions of a given
society. It is in this sense that culture is often opposed with ‘savagery,’ that is,
being ‘culture’ is seen as a product of a certain evolvement from a natural taste.
● Different sociologists have differently defined the term culture:
(1) Taylor: “Culture is the complex whole which includes knowledge,
belief, arts, morals, law, customs and habits and any capabilities acquired by
man as a member of society.
(2) Linton: “Culture is social hereditary, which is transmitted from one
generation to another with the accumulation of individual experiences”.
(3) John Beatte: “Culture is the way of life which is transmitted from
generation to generation”.
Defined broadly therefore, culture includes all the things individual learn
while growing up among particular group: attitudes, standards of morality, rules of
etiquette, perception of reality, language, notion about the proper way to live,
beliefs about how females and males should interact, ideas about how the world
works and so forth. We call this cultural knowledge.
 Republic of the Philippines
MARINDUQUE STATE COLLEGE
SCHOOL OF BUSINESS AND MANAGEMENT
Tanza, Boac, Marinduque

⮚ Characteristics of Culture
(1) Learned
(2) Shared
(3) Transmitted
(4) Changing
Learned because it is acquired through education, training and most
especially experience. On the other hand, all traits, altitudes, knowledge and any
material objects, like TV’s and cellphones is actually shared by members of
society. Now, if culture is shared it is also being transmitted. One learned new
fashion and how to move in society and how to behave in a particular social
situation. Lastly, Changing, one cannot define that culture never remain static
but changing. As one philosopher says, “The only thing in the world that is
constant is change” -Heraclitus. It is changing in every society but with different
speed and causes.

⮚ Moral Behavior
Moral behavior is a term used to refer to behaviors that are include moral
domain. It is concerned with the principles of right and wrong behavior and
goodness or badness of human character and to act according to one’s moral values
and standards.

⮚ Culture’s Role in Moral Behaviour

Based on the definitions of culture above, it is not hard to pinpoint the role of
the culture in one’s moral behaviour. A culture is a ‘way of life’ of a group of people,
and this so-called ‘way of life’ actual includes moral values and behaviours, along
with knowledge, beliefs, symbols that they accept, “generally without thinking about
them, and that are passed along by communication and imitation from one
generation to next.
Culture is learned as children as children grow up in society and discover how
their parents and others around them interpret the world. In our society, we learn to
distinguish objects such as cars, windows, houses, children, and food; recognize
attributes like sharp, hot, beautiful, and humid; classify and perform different kind of
acts; and even “evaluate what is {morally} good and bad and to judge when an
unusual action is appropriate”.
 Republic of the Philippines
MARINDUQUE STATE COLLEGE
SCHOOL OF BUSINESS AND MANAGEMENT
Tanza, Boac, Marinduque

Many aspects of morality are taught. People learn moral and aspects of right
or wrong from transmitter of culture: respective parents, teachers, novels, films, and
Page 4 of 23 television. Observing or watching them, people develop a set idea of
what is right and wrong, and what is acceptable and what is not.
Even experientially, it is improbable, if not impossible, to live in a society
without being affected by its culture. It follows too that it is hard to grow up in a
particular culture without being impacted by how it views morality or what is ethically
right or wrong. Anthropologically speaking, culture—including moral values, beliefs,
and behaviour—is learned from other people while growing up in a particular society
or group; is widely shared by the members of that society or group that individuals
are a product of their culture” and “learning a culture is an essential part of human
development”.
Social learning is the process by which individuals acquire knowledge from
others in the groups to which they belong, as a normal part of childhood. The
process by which infants and children socially learn the culture, including morality, of
those around them is called enculturation or socialization.
To sum up, the role of culture in one’s behavior are; it shapes our moral
behavior. It is influenced our perception of what is right and wrong. It gives unity to
the people and society.

● Culture shapes our moral behavior- Culture plays a role in determining how an
individual behaves in any given environment. For example, some places, baring
the breasts is seen as normal, while in some places it is forbidden. Some places
allow males and females to mingle freely in public places: others do not.

● Culture influences our perception of what is right and wrong. For instance,
some schools of thoughts believe that everyone has their own ethics. This means
what is considered right and wrong depends on the time, place, and even the
particular preferences or practices of a group of people or individual person.

● Culture gives unity to the people in the society. For instance, India is a land
of unity in diversity where people of different sects, caste and religion live
together. India is also called the land of unity in diversity as different groups of
people co- operate with each other to live in a single society. Unity in diversity
has also become strength of India.
 Republic of the Philippines
MARINDUQUE STATE COLLEGE
SCHOOL OF BUSINESS AND MANAGEMENT
Tanza, Boac, Marinduque

⮚ Moral Standards as Social Convention and the Social Conditioning Theory

Among the popular notion which attempt to give account for basic concepts in
Ethics, such as the existence of moral rules, the sense of moral obligation, and the
moral accountability, are the so-called ‘social convention’ and social conditioning’
theories. These views are upshot of the fact that we can learn morality culturally or
through socialization.

● Theories Explained - the thing we regards as moral laws (moral standards or

rules), some purport, are nothing but are just social conventions. By convention,
they mean those things agreed upon by people, like through their authorities.
Convention also refers to the usual or customary ways through which things are
done within a group.
Since it is observed that morality is something that is handed down to us
primarily by education or socialization, either through parents and elders or
through teacher, some believe that moral standards are merely a human
invention, like those are conventions we learn from school or home. Essentially,
to theorize that moral law is a social convention is to say that it is something
which human beings had just made up for themselves and might have been
different had they liked.
Relatedly, some submit that morality is nothing but an effect of social
conditioning. As regards moral consciousness or feeling that we are obliged to
act morally, some atheists, like Richard Robinson (1902-1996), maintain that it is
nothing but an outcome of social conditioning. In Atheist’s Values he wrote, “The
original conscience of an individual in any given society is a historical accident,
the Discussion above are result of the influences to which he has been subject.
It is a set of taboos and compulsions, acquired from his associates in the same
unreflecting way as all his other taboos and compulsion” (Robinson, 1964,
p.110).
This theory further claims that the demands of conscience are also due to
society. As society expresses disapproval of certain actions, people, especially
children, are said to be become aware of the weight of the reproof or contempt.
Little by little, people allegedly begin to exercise their disapproval of those acts.
This feeling of dissatisfaction, proponents say, develops into a habit that
functions as the conscience when one considers carrying out
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MARINDUQUE STATE COLLEGE
SCHOOL OF BUSINESS AND MANAGEMENT
Tanza, Boac, Marinduque

● Theories Analyzed - However, just because something is learned at homes or

school does not necessarily mean that it is a social convention. Mathematical
operations, geographical facts, and scientific law are also taught in those
institutions, yet they are never considered as mere human fabrication. Meaning,
whether or not people know and like them, they are as they are.
There is denying that some of the things we learn from our teachers,
parents, or older siblings are mere convention, which might have been different.
In the Philippines, people are taught to keep to the right of the road, thought it
might have been the norm to keep to the left just as well, such as the case in
some other countries. Men nowadays pair their formal shoes with the black
socks, not with white ones, simply because it has become the convention in
wearing formal attire. However, many of the things taught in school and homes,
like mathematics, are real truths and not mere convention. So the question now
is, to which class does moral law belong?

⮚ The philosopher C. S. Lewis offers two reasons for saying that morality
belongs to the same class as mathematics (Lewis, 1943, p. 28-31):
● Although there are differences between the moral ideas of one time or country
and those of another the differences are not really very great. Nations or cultures
only have slightly different moralities but not quite different ones. Essentially, we
can recognize the same moral law running through them all (more of this under
the section 'Universal Values'). It is thus conclude that morality law is not among
the class of mere convention---for convention, like the rule of the road or the kind
of clothes people wear, are observed to be differing almost completely.

● We affirm that the morality of one people is better or worse than that of another,
which means that there is a moral standard or rule by which we measure both
moralities and that standard is real. For instance, New Testament's morality can
be said to be far better than Nazi morality. In fact, one aspect of the National
Socialist (Nazi) reign was the systematic cold-blooded murder of between 5.6
million and 5.9 million European How's ("National Socialism, ‘2008)
Moreover, changes in people's morality have been deemed as
improvements; because if not, then there could never be any so-called moral
progress. Progress means positive development or development toward
 Republic of the Philippines
MARINDUQUE STATE COLLEGE
SCHOOL OF BUSINESS AND MANAGEMENT
Tanza, Boac, Marinduque

achieving a goal or reaching a higher standard ("Progress, "2009). Moral

progress, therefore, means not just changing, but for the better. Now, if no set of
moral ideas were truer or better than any other, there would be no sense in
preferring civilized morality to savage morality. In fact, we call the people who
tried to change the moral ideas of their own age for the better as 'reformers' or
'pioneers'. We consider them as people who understood morality better than
other did.
And when we affirm that one set of moral ideas is better than another, are
we not, in fact, measuring them both by a standard, saying that one of them
conforms to that standard more nearly than the other? But the standard that
measures two things is something different from either. Therefore, we are in fact
comparing them both with some 'real morality, 'admitting that there is really such
a thing as right, independent of what people think, and that some people's ideas
are nearer to that real right than others.
Indeed, if our moral can be truer, and those of the Nazis less true, there
must be something--some real morality--for then to be true about. Analogically,
the reason our idea of Boracay can be truer or less true than someone else’s, is
that Boracay is a real place I am imagining in my own head" when each of us say
"Boracay," then how could one of us have truer ideas than the other? If our idea
of "Boracay" is unreal and merely conventional, then there would be no question
of truth or falsehood about it at all.
In the same way, if moral law or rule of decent behavior means simply,
“whatever each nation happens to approve, " that is, a mere social convention,
then there would be no sense in saying that one nation had ever been more
correct in its approval than any other. There will be no sense in saying that the
world could ever grow better or worse. Thus, moral law is not synonymous to
mere social convention-- it's not something which each culture or society just
happens to approve.
Concerning 'social conditioning theory, ‘it can be observed that when one
says that a particular action 'ought' or 'ought MIT's to be done, he/she is not
simply echoing social approval or disapproval. In fact, there are plenty of
situations where a person, although conditioned and influenced by his culture to
adopt a particular course, feels the moral obligation to take an entirely different
action. And in a culture where moral views have become corrupted, say the Nazi
 Republic of the Philippines
MARINDUQUE STATE COLLEGE
SCHOOL OF BUSINESS AND MANAGEMENT
Tanza, Boac, Marinduque

society, those who opted to go against the societal norms are even considered
as social reformer and moral model.
In a micro level, one's peer may condition a person to engage in, say, pre-
marital sex, as everyone else in the group may be doing it anyway. But deep
within a person, there is usually the feeling that that the action is morally wrong,
and he/she is thus morally obliged to disobey his/her peer's insinuation. The
so-called sense of moral obligation therefore, cannot be squarely explained by
social conditioning
We do not submit, nonetheless, that social conditioning does not in any
way affect our ethical knowledge. As a matter of fact, we indeed learn plenty or
moral things from our society through our parents, teachers, religious leaders,
and the like. But it is basically our 'intellect' which is nurtured by the teachings of
moral authorities. The intellect remembers that actions are moral and what are
not, at least as prescribed by the society. Therefore, it is this intellect which can
be molded or socially conditioned, not the sense of moral obligation nor the
so-called conscience per se.
The role played by our intellect in our moral decisions explains how social
conditioning somehow affects one's concept of morality. Ultimately nonetheless,
ethical decisions are supposed to be made in relation to something not itself due
to social conditioning but due to some sort of moral law that presses down on
every person.

⮚ Culture Relativism in Ethics

Cultural relativism is perhaps the most famous form of moral relativism, a

theory in ethics which holds that ethical judgements have their origins either in
individual or cultural standards. Moral relativism fundamentally believes that no act is
good or bad objectively, and there is no single objective universal standard through
which we can evaluate the truth of moral judgment.

Moral relativism submits that different moral principles apply to different

persons or group of individuals. Claiming that various cultured have distinct Page 9
of 23 standards of right and wrong, it maintains too, that moral standards change
over time even in the same culture. Moral relativism views all moral norms as
equally true, and morals, as mere preferences.
 Republic of the Philippines
MARINDUQUE STATE COLLEGE
SCHOOL OF BUSINESS AND MANAGEMENT
Tanza, Boac, Marinduque

When the recognized standard is a particular agent, the relativism theory is

very much compatible with moral subjectivism. If the considered basis is a given
society, the relativist ideology is typically referred to

Cultural relativism, the most dominant form of moral relativism, defines

'moral' as what is 'socially approved' by the majority in a particular culture. It
maintains that act is ethical in a culture that approves of it, but immoral in one that
disapproves of it. Most cultural relativists place the notion of right in the folkways and
consider the tradition as morality's warrant.

Cultural relativists base their moral theory on the observation that societies
fundamentally disagree about ethical issues. What is deemed moral within one
group may be totally despicable to the members of another group, and vice versa. It
is this concluded that morality differs in every society as a concepts of right and
wrong vary from culture to culture.

Advocates moreover believe that we cannot resolve the ethical differences

among culture using some independent standard of evaluation. According to the
theory, there is no 'universal truth ‘in ethics; that is, there are no moral truths that
hold for all peoples at all time. Various cultural codes or customs all the exist, and
nothing more. Allegedly, there is no unconventional yardstick in ethics because
every standard is culture-bond.

Defining morality as a product of culture, the theory submits that there are no
objective values and ethics is merely a matter of societal convention. Advocates see
themselves as open-minded as they consider other cultures, not as 'wrong’, but
simply as 'different.' For them, the moral code of our own society has no special
status; it is merely one among many.

For instance, concerning fixed marriage, male circumcision and excision,

cultural relativism would say that it is mere arrogance for us to try to judge the
conduct of the people practicing them. Relativistic thus suggest that we should adopt
instead an attitude of tolerance toward any of the practices of other culture.