Metaphysics: Cultural Relativism

Question 1

Metaethics

Answer 1

The investigation of what ethical thought and talk is really about.

Question 2

Central questions of metaethics

Answer 2

Can ethical claims be objectively correct or incorrect, independent of what people happen to think of them.

Question 3

Ethical relativism

Answer 3

Tempted towards the view that there are no objective ethical truths.

Question 4

What belief says that different cultures have different ethical views, and none of the views can be more correct or accurate than others?

Answer 4

Ethical relativism.

Question 5

What is the argument from disagreement?

Answer 5

Different cultures have different views about what’s right and wrong. Therefore, there is no culture-independent fact of the matter about what’s right and wrong.

Question 6

What is an example that disproves the argument from disagreement?

Answer 6

Argument from geographical disagreement.

Question 7

How do we resolve the argument from disagreement?

Answer 7

Use empirical evidence.

Question 8

Give an example of a case where there might be no way of showing that one side’s ethical views are uniquely correct.

Answer 8

Greeks cremating the dead while Callations engaged in funerary cannibalism.

Question 9

Do different moral codes translate into different moral values? Answer this question in the context of what societies do with the dead.

Answer 9

No, the important moral value is respecting the dead.

Question 10

What does it mean when someone uses “unnatural” as an argument?

Answer 10

• Not done around here.

- Not done for most of history.

Question 11

Is saying something is “unnatural” a reasonable argument?

Answer 11

No, as there is no clear definition of natural, and there is no moral import.

Question 12

Give an example of something unnatural readily used by many societies.

Answer 12

Penicillin.

Question 13

Which is the fundamental ethical claim? It is wrong to eat the dead, or it is wrong to disrespect the dead?

Answer 13

Is it wrong to disrespect the dead.

Question 14

What is the argument from tolerance?

Answer 14

It is intolerant and arrogant to hold that societies are wrong.

Question 15

What are the 3 problems with the argument from tolerance?

Answer 15

1. Being tolerant presupposes objective ethical truths.
2. Thinking a society is wrong about something doesn’t mean you think your society is right about everything.
3. Thinking views are incorrect doesn’t mean you have to be intolerant of the people who hold them.

Question 16

Give an example of how it is problematic that being tolerant presupposes objective ethical truths.

Answer 16

Intolerance in the form of persecution, genocide is wrong, even if your culture approves of it.

Question 17

People and societies hold both…

Answer 17

Correct and incorrect ethical views.

Question 18

___ and tolerance are not the same thing.

Answer 18

Acceptance.

Question 19

Ethical relativism would force us to say that intercultural practices that look very very wrong are…

Answer 19

Actually ok.

Question 20

According to ethical relativism, wrongness is equated with…

Answer 20

Condemned by the culture’s moral code.

Question 21

There is more wrongness in genocide than the fact that…

Answer 21

Our culture doesn’t approve of it.

Question 22

Ethical relativism means that moral progress…

Answer 22

Is not possible.