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What impact does culture have on personality
Moral relativism defended
Influence of culture on beliefs, values, and behaviors
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In Ruth Benedict’s argument In Defense of Moral Relativism he argues that morals are relative to culture. Morals are a person’s standards of behavior or beliefs concerning what is and is not acceptable for them to do. Every person has morals, and what they deem to be morally right or wrong can vary. Benedict argues that morals change based on the culture that the person is in. Culture is the behavior, beliefs, and other characteristics that belong to a certain group or society. According to Benedict, each culture has their own set of morals, and each person in the group gains morals based on the morals of the group as a whole. The group creates a general “norm” for what is considered right or wrong. A subject that is deemed wrong in one culture …show more content…
may be seen as morally right in another. One example that Benedict uses is homosexuality, and he states that it fits into the defense of moral relativism very simply.
Having this trait in our society leaves the person open to judgement and criticism from others. It was until recently that our society has begun accepting this. Benedict states that in places that have given homosexuality an honorable place in society, those that are congenial to the trait have filled the honorable roles given to them by society. Another form of moral relativism is that of the study of the island of northwest Melanesia. The people of the tribe are not to trust each other, and do not accept food from others. This is seen as strange by people of our society, but is seen as normal by the people of the tribe. Researchers also found that the people the tribe mourn a loss by killing another person. If a chief’s son dies, he goes to whatever destination he pleases and he tells his host “My prince has died today and you go with him.” then he will kill his host. A chief’s sister and her daughter drink some bad whiskey and die, so the chief called for his warriors. He sent them out, they found seven men and two children sleeping, and they killed them all. According to the tribe, the chief has acted nobly for not getting downed. They believe that death can only confound man’s pride and can only be handled with insults. This behavior is seen as truly abnormal by our society, but it is seen as a custom in their …show more content…
tribe. Benedict states that morals have been more often related to ethics than psychiatry.
People have preferred to say “It is morally good,” rather than “It is habitual,” but historically these phrases are synonyms of each other. He states that the concept of normal is just a variant of the concept of good. This means that the normal is seen as good by society, and anything that is abnormal for the society is seen as bad. A normal action is one which falls well within the expected limits for a particular society. The idea of normality is a function created by each society and can never be ridden of from consideration of types of behavior. The traits a person has, in proportion to the chosen behavior of that culture, is the cultural normal. The people with traits that the culture holds as a prestige, are not seen with disapproval by others. If these same people were to be in a culture that viewed these traits as lesser or are not congenial. Each culture has their own set of morals, and view morals of other cultures
differently. Benedict’s argument of moral relativism raised many good points, and gave good examples. I feel that based on the argument given, morals being relative could be a truly strong possibility, and that it cannot be ruled out. The subjects that our society deems as morally wrong are seen as acceptable in other societies. For example, having more than one wife is frowned upon in Christianity, and in other cultures it is acceptable. Benedict touches on the fact that a tribe kills another person to mourn the loss of a loved one. I feel that this example strongly persuades his argument because in our society we mourn the dead with grief, but their society takes another life to correct the first death. Another example that is given is homosexuality, which Benedict says fits moral relativism easily. Homosexuality is a trait that opens the person to criticism and disapproval in our society. Homosexuals would not be under any scrutiny in a society that did not deem this trait as morally wrong. I feel that slavery is a great example of moral relativism. Slavery was outlawed in the northern part of the US, and was seen as offensive and racist. To the southern part of the US however, slavery was seen as necessary, and was not offensive. The country was divided into two different cultures, and each culture had their own morals and views on slavery. The views of each side were passed down to those who grew up in that society, and some of those views can still be seen today.
In Ruth Benedict’s “Ethics are Relative”, she argues that because morals and values change with time and across culture, there can be no solid judgment for any action to be consistently deemed “right” or “wrong”, since the same action will be viewed differently when considered from different points of view. Benedict’s primary assertion is that the ethics seen as good or bad by modern cultures are not better to those found in primitive cultures, but are the values we have developed over time. “Most of the simpler cultures did not gain the wide currency of the one which, out of our experience, we identify with human nature, but this was for various historical reasons, and certainly not for any that gives us as its carriers a monopoly of social
"Who's to judge who's right or wrong?" In the case against moral relativism Pojman provides an analysis of Relativism. His analysis includes an interpretation of Relativism that states the following ideas: Actions vary from society to society, individuals behavior depends on the society they belong to, and there are no standards of living that apply to all human kind. An example that demonstrates these ideas is people around the world eat beef (cows) and in India, cows are not to be eaten. From Pojman second analysis an example can be how the Japanese take of their shoes all the time before entering the house. In Mexico it is rare that people take off their shoes. They might find it wired or not normal. In his third analysis he gives that sense moral relativism and cultural relativism are tied together, that their can be no
To his credit, Vaughn acknowledges that “diversity of moral judgements among cultures is a reality” (15). He also rightly states that just because such diversity exists does not mean that there is no objective moral truth. I can also find no issue with Vaughn’s assertion that such disagreements “may simply indicate that there is an objective fact of the matter that someone (or everyone) is wrong about” (15). However, neither does it logically follow that there is an objective moral truth – I will return to this issue in a moment. Vaughn then goes on make a similar argument against cultural relativism as he did subjective relativism, “if a culture genuinely approves of an action, then there can be no question about the action’s moral rightness” (16). As with his assertion that a murder’s moral acceptance of his crime implies its moral rightness, this claim confuses cultural relativism’s larger point, which is that morality is an agreed upon cultural convention, not an objective law like those governing like gravity or evolution. Outside cultures would not be wrong to question another culture’s moral rightness. They would simply be doing so according to their own moral standard instead of some objective one. Vaughn then goes onto say “cultural relativism implies there cannot be any such thing as moral progress” (16). The question arises, why are we assuming that there must be moral progress? His following argument is that social reformers cannot exist in cultural relativism. This claim arises from an overly narrow definition of a culture. For example, Martin Luther King Jr. may have been wrong according to the conservative white culture of his time, he was right according to the African American culture of his time. Cultural relativism does not deny that cultural trends can shift over time, so the modern prevalence of his morality does not undermine the theory. Cultural relativism
In its entirety, moral relativism is comprised of the belief that, as members of various and countless cultures, we cannot judge each other’s morality. If this theory stands true, then “we have no basis for judging other cultures or values,” according to Professor McCombs’ Ethics 2. Our moral theories cannot extend throughout cultures, as we do not all share similar values. For instance, the Catholic tradition believes in the sacrament of Reconciliation. This sacrament holds that confessing one’s sins to a priest and
Cultural Relativism is a moral theory which states that due to the vastly differing cultural norms held by people across the globe, morality cannot be judged objectively, and must instead be judged subjectively through the lense of an individuals own cultural norms. Because it is obvious that there are many different beliefs that are held by people around the world, cultural relativism can easily be seen as answer to the question of how to accurately and fairly judge the cultural morality of others, by not doing so at all. However Cultural Relativism is a lazy way to avoid the difficult task of evaluating one’s own values and weighing them against the values of other cultures. Many Cultural Relativist might abstain from making moral judgments about other cultures based on an assumed lack of understanding of other cultures, but I would argue that they do no favors to the cultures of others by assuming them to be so firmly ‘other’ that they would be unable to comprehend their moral decisions. Cultural Relativism as a moral theory fails to allow for critical thoughts on the nature of morality and encourages the stagnation
Moral relativism maintains that objective moral truth does not exist, and there need not be any contradiction in saying a single action is both moral and immoral depending on the relative vantage point of the judge. Moral relativism, by denying the existence of any absolute moral truths, both allows for differing moral opinions to exist and withholds assent to any moral position even if universally or nearly universally shared. Strictly speaking, moral relativism and only evaluates an action’s moral worth in the context of a particular group or perspective. The basic logical formulation for the moral relativist position states that different societies have empirically different moral codes that govern each respective society, and because there does not exist an objective moral standard of judgment, no society’s moral code possesses any special status or maintains any moral superiority over any other society’s moral code. The moral relativist concludes that cultures cannot evaluate or criticize other cultural perspectives in the absence of any objective standard of morality, essentially leveling all moral systems and limiting their scope to within a given society.
Cultural relativism is a theory, which entails what a culture, believes is what is correct for that particular culture, each culture has different views on moral issues. For example, abortion is permissible by American culture and is tolerated by the majority of the culture. While, Catholic culture is against abortion, and is not tolerated by those who belong to the culture. Cultural relativism is a theory a lot of individuals obey when it comes to making moral decisions. What their culture believes is instilled over generations, and frequently has an enormous influence since their families with those cultural beliefs have raised them. With these beliefs, certain cultures have different answers for different moral dilemmas and at times, it is difficult to decide on a specific moral issue because the individual may belong to multiple
Moral relativism is the concept that people’s moral judgement can only goes as far a one person’s standpoint in a matter. Also, one person’s view on a particular subject carries no extra weight than another person. What I hope to prove in my thesis statement are inner judgements, moral disagreements, and science are what defend and define moral relativism.
Gilbert Harman lays out his moral relativism theory with “inner judgments”, the statements concerned with “ought”, in Moral Relativism Defended. However, he assumes an important premise of his theory to be true, which is the reason that I will prove the missing premise – that moral relativism is true – in this paper. Moreover, his form of moral relativism with his “four-place predicate ‘Ought(A,D,C,M),’ which relates an agent A, a type of action D, considerations C, and motivating attitudes M,” has brought about both meta-ethical and practical concerns. He argues that these inner judgments are only possible if agent A acknowledges considerations of the circumstance C, invokes motivating attitudes M, and supports the action D with C and M. In
James Rachels' article, "Morality is Not Relative," is incorrect, he provides arguments that cannot logically be applied or have no bearing on the statement of contention. His argument, seems to favor some of the ideas set forth in cultural relativism, but he has issues with other parts that make cultural relativism what it is.
Moral relativism, as Harman describes, denies “that there are universal basic moral demands, and says different people are subject to different basic moral demands depending on the social customs, practices, conventions, and principles that they accept” (Harman, p. 85). Many suppose that moral feelings derive from sympathy and concern for others, but Harman rather believes that morality derives from agreement among people of varying powers and resources provides a more plausible explanation (Harman, p. 12).The survival of these values and morals is based on Darwin’s natural selection survival of the fittest theory. Many philosophers have argued for and against what moral relativism would do for the world. In this essay, we will discuss exactly what moral relativism entails, the consequences of taking it seriously, and finally the benefits if the theory were implemented.
In explaining Cultural Relativism, it is useful to compare and contrast it with Ethical Relativism. Cultural Relativism is a theory about morality focused on the concept that matters of custom and ethics are not universal in nature but rather are culture specific. Each culture evolves its own unique moral code, separate and apart from any other. Ethical Relativism is also a theory of morality with a view of ethics similarly engaged in understanding how morality comes to be culturally defined. However, the formulation is quite different in that from a wide range of human habits, individual opinions drive the culture toward distinguishing normal “good” habits from abnormal “bad” habits.
Culture Relativism; what is it? Culture Relativism states that we cannot absolute say what is right and what is wrong because it all depends in the society we live in. James Rachels however, does not believe that we cannot absolute know that there is no right and wrong for the mere reason that cultures are different. Rachels as well believes that “certain basic values are common to all cultures.” I agree with Rachels in that culture relativism cannot assure us that there is no knowledge of what is right or wrong. I believe that different cultures must know what is right and what is wrong to do. Cultures are said to be different but if we look at them closely we can actually find that they are not so much different from one’s own culture. Religion for example is a right given to us and that many cultures around the world practices. Of course there are different types of religion but they all are worshipped and practice among the different culture.
160). This simply means not all societies believe the same thing is “right” or “wrong” because each society has the ability to have a different moral code. However, with this being said, cultures do have some common values and for society to exist with as much peace as possible, there are some moral rules that societies must have in common. Without some common moral codes, the world would be out of control and as a result, there would be many problems between people. With societies having a mix of shared and unshared cultural moral codes, it is safe to assume that most societies have mixes of good moral practices and bad moral
The practices of many cultures are varied from one another, considering we live in a diverse environment. For example, some cultures may be viewed as similar in comparison while others may have significant differences. The concept of Cultural Relativism can be best viewed as our ideas, morals, and decisions being dependent on the individual itself and how we have been culturally influenced. This leads to many conflict in where it prompts us to believe there is no objectivity when it comes to morality. Some questions pertaining to Cultural Relativism may consists of, “Are there universal truths of morality?” “Can we judge