ETHICS  HB are neither by nature selfish nor

rational.
(THE MORAL AGENT)  Man is not a social animal.
 For Hobbes, humans are naturally
MORAL AGENTS bad.
 those who have the freedom and JOHN LOCKE
rational capacity to be responsible for Nature of Man
choices.  God makes man naturally free to
 Only human beings pursue life.
 Must have discernment (rational  Humanity ought not to harm other in
capacity to know right and wrong) their life.
 Freedom + Discernment= MA  Human being is by nature a social
 The one who’s making decisions. animal.
*Infants and mentally infirm adults are NOT  For Locke, human beings are
moral agents. naturally good.

ONLY HUMAN BEINGS CAN BE Nurture of Man

ETHICAL (BASIC TENET IN ETHICS)  To be good or bad is something you
acquire.
1. Only Human beings are rational, self-
conscious, and autonomous CULTURE IN MORAL BEHAVIOUR
2. Only Human beings can act morally or
immorally CULTURE
3. Only Human beings are part of moral  cumulative deposit of
community knowledge,experience, beliefs, values,
attitudes, meanings, hierarchies,
THOMAS HOBBES religions, notion of time, roles, spatial
Nature of Man relations, concepts of the universe,
 Human judgement is distorted by self- and material objects and
interest and can be easily swayed. possessions…
 Human beings are programmed to  acquired by a group of people during
pursue self-interest ends. generations through individual and
group striving.
  products of action
 sum total of the learned behaviour of
a group of people… transmitted from
generation to generation.
 symbolic communication
 TOTALITY OF PEOPLE’S WAY OF
LIFE
 Can be learned and it’s dynamic (can
be change)
SOCIALIZATION
 Process of learning culture.
Moral Standards as Social
Conventions and the Social
Conditioning Theory
Social Convention Theory
 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.
 Moral standards are merely human
inventions.
 As a theory, moral law is a social
convention which human beings
had just made up for themselves
and might have been different had
they liked.
 Moral conscience or the feeling
that we are obliged to at morally is
nothing but an outcome of social
conditioning.
 (This is closely tied to what people believe
 ACTS→ society disapproves
→ aware of the weight of
reproof →dissatisfaction→
develop into a habit → function
as a CONSCIENCE.
 C.S Lewis explains why
morality is not just a social
convention.
 It is the intellect (REASON)
which can be molded or
socially conditioned, not the
sense of moral nor the so-called
conscience per se
Cultural Relativism
 The idea of universal truth in ethics is
a myth.
 The customs of different societies are
all that exist.
 To say that a custom is ‘correct’ or
‘incorrect’ would imply that we can
judge that custom by some
independent standard of right and
wrong, but no such standard exists.
THE CHALLENGES OF CULTURAL
RELATIVISM
Cultural relativists claim the following:
1. Different societies have different moral
codes.
(True, but some values are shared by all
cultures)
2. The moral code of a society determines
what is right or wrong within that society.
to beright; however, the code and the people
can be in error.)
3. There are no moral truths that hold for all
people at all times.
(In order to criticize other cultures, however,
we can appeal to broad principles.)
4. The moral code of our own society has
no special status; it is but one among many.
(True, but one moral code might be better or
worse than others)
5. It is arrogant for us to judge other
cultures. We should always be tolerant of
them.
(We shouldn’t tolerate everything. Human
societies have done terrible things, and we
can acknowledge moral progress)
6. There is no objective standard that can be
used to judge one society’s code better than
other is.
(-moral universalism, real morality,
customary law)
Consistent claims?
What if the norms of a society favor
intolerance?
 Given that cultural relativists take
pride in their tolerance, it would be
ironic if their theory actually
supported the intolerance of warlike
societies.
What We Can Learn from Cultural
Relativism
§ Cultural relativism rightly warns us about
the danger of assuming that all our
preferences are based on some absolute
rational standard.
§ Cultural relativism has us keep an open
mind regarding the practices of both our
culture and the cultures of other societies.
- These are important points, but we
can accept them without accepting
the whole theory.
John Allen Chau’s Tragedy in the North
Sentinel Island
• John Allen Chau, an American Christian
missionary, was killed by the Sentinelese
tribe on his attempt to Christianize them.
• The Sentinelese tribe are one of the last, if
not the last pre-Neolithic tribes on Earth.
– They will kill anyone who sets foot
on their island.
My answer:
No, it should not. Retrieving his body
would put other people in harm’s way. It
would also put the islanders at risk of being
exposed to pathogens they have no
immunity to. It would be foolhardy to try.
The Sentinelese have made it
abundantly clear that they do not want
outsiders anywhere near them. There is no
way they are going to allow anyone on their
island long enough to dig up a buried body.
Plus, both Indian and international law have
made going there a crime. John Chau’s
family is going to have to live with the fact
that they will never have his remains.
“We have to remember cultural
relativism. No culture is superior to the
other. We shouldn’t be thinking that the
Sentinelese way of life is inferior in any way
just because it is different than ours.”