Lesson:Culture in Moral

Behavior
1. 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 our
personality.
*For some, culture is a quality
that some people have more than
others: how ‘cultured’ somebody
is depends on some factors like
status, class, education, taste in
music or film, and speech habits.
The term ‘culture’ is so complex
that it is not easy to define.
*Inone 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.
*Culture consists of patterns,


explicit and implicit, of and for

behavior acquired and
transmitted by symbols, constituting
the distinctive achievement of human
groups, including their embodiments in
artifacts.
The essential core of culture
consists of traditional ideas and
especially their attached values.
Culture systems may, on one hand,
be considered as products of action,
on the other hand, as conditioning
influences upon further action.
*Culture is the sum total of the
learned behavior of a group of
people that are generally considered
to be the tradition of that people and
are transmitted from generation to
generation.
*Defined broadly therefore, culture
includes all the things individuals learn
while growing up among particular
group.
Attitudes, standards of morality,
rules of etiquette, perceptions of
reality, language, notions about the
proper way to live, beliefs about how
females and males should interact,
ideas about how the world works and
so forth are all the learnings we get
from we call ‘cultural knowledge’.
2.Culture’s Role in Moral
Behavior
Based on the definitions of culture,
it is not hard to pinpoint the role of
culture in one’s moral behavior.
A culture is a ‘way of life’ of a
group of people and this so-called
‘way of life’ actually includes
moral values and behaviors, along
with knowledge, beliefs, symbols
that they accept.
Many aspects of morality are
taught. People learn moral and
aspects of right or wrong from
transmitters of culture.
Observing or watching, say,
parents, teachers, novels, films,
and television, from them, people
develop a set of 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.
*Moreover, “individuals are a
product of their culture”.
*“Learning a culture is an essential
part of human development”.
Therefore, we can now understand
that, 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.
3.Cultural Relativism in
Ethics
Cultural relativism is perhaps the most
famous form of moral relativism, a
theory in ethics which holds that
ethical judgments 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 judgments.
Moral relativism submits that
different moral principles apply to
different persons or group of
individuals. Claiming that various
cultures have distinct standards of
right and wrong, it maintains too,
that moral standards change over
time even in the same culture.
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 an act is ethical
in a culture that approves of it,
but immoral in one that
disapproves of it.
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 thus
concluded that morality differs in every
society as concepts of right and wrong vary
from culture to culture.
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 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 peoples practicing them.
Relativists thus suggest that we should
adopt instead an attitude of tolerance
toward any of the practices of other
cultures.
END