Cultural Relativism Notes

Cultural relativism is the ethical theory that judgments about right and wrong are dictated by one's culture.
Different cultures have different moral standards, so there is no universal truth about right and wrong.

James Rachels was a philosopher who focused on ethics and bioethics.
"Active and Passive Euthanasia" (1975): Argued no moral difference exists between a patient refusing treatment and receiving a lethal injection.
Died in 02/2003 of cancer.
Taught at University of Alabama Birmingham, University of Richmond, Duke, and NYU.

Herodotus's account: The Calatians customarily ate their dead, shocking the Greeks who practiced cremation.
Indigenous Pacific Northwest: Volatile marriage practices, exposure of infants and the elderly.
Exposing infants was an accepted practice in ancient Greece which would be a big cultural difference between ancient Greece and modern societies.

Different cultures have different moral codes.
A society's moral code determines what is right within that society.
No objective standard exists to judge one society's code as better than another's; there are no moral truths that hold for all people at all times.
The moral code of our own society has no special status.
It is arrogant to judge the conduct of other peoples; we should be tolerant towards the practices of other cultures.

Claim 2: A society determines right and wrong.
Claim 5: Adopt an attitude of tolerance toward other cultures.
Issue: What if a culture adopts an intolerant stance? Should we tolerate intolerance, and on what grounds can a cultural relativist criticize an intolerant culture?

Premise: Different cultures have different moral codes.
Conclusion: Therefore, there is no objective truth in morality; right and wrong are only matters of opinion that vary from culture to culture.

The premise doesn't logically support the conclusion; the premise can be true while the conclusion is false.
Example: Flat Earth belief. Despite disagreement, science tells us the earth is round. Disagreement does not negate objective truth.

We could no longer say that the customs of other societies are morally inferior to our own.
- Seems commendable for tolerance and inclusion.
- We would have no basis for condemning human rights violations and other harmful practices.
We could decide whether our actions are right or wrong just by consulting the standards of our own society.
- Suggests our society is perfect in its morality. There are no grounds to criticize our own culture.
Leads to doubt about the concept of moral progress.
- Historically, Western society had inequalities (e.g., women not owning property or voting).
- If change is viewed as moral progress, then previous ways must be considered worse or wrong.
- Makes it difficult to make sense of reform movements. The only way to criticize a culture is to claim that people are not living up to the culture's ideals, failing which, there can be no criticism.

At some level, all cultures seem to value things like honesty or have prohibitions against murder because without these values, polite society would be really difficult to pull off.

Be careful about making judgments about other cultures; be tolerant.
Be wary of expressing contempt for a society just because its cultural practices differ from our own.
Condemning a particular practice does not mean the whole culture is contemptible or inferior.
Cultural relativism warns us about assuming that all of our preferences are based on some rational standard.
Many of our actions are just the result of living in our society and aren't any more right than any other society's ways of doing things.
Cultural relativism encourages us to keep an open mind when it comes to unfamiliar cultural practices.
Encourages us to take a step back and realize that our thought processes aren't always accurate.