Cultural Relativism

or Ethical or Moral Relativism

Cultural relativism: History

• View opposed to moral realism• Plato: Protagoras – ‘Man is the measure of all

things’• 19th Century: Nietzsche.• 20th Century: Anthropologists such as Franz

Boas• 1950s on: Quine • Late 60s on: Post-Structuralists, post-Colonial

theorists

Descriptive v.s. Normative relativism

• Descriptive: there are different moral codes in different cultures– It is a matter of fact that this is the case– Descriptive relativism = key conceptual tool of

anthropology

• Normative: there can only be different moral codes– It is a matter of principle that this is the case.– ‘It is a norm that there are only different norms…’

Cultural relativism: Meaning

• The belief that there is no moral truth that applies to all peoples at all times

• since there are no absolute moral standards for moral judgement.

• ‘when in Rome, do as the Romans do’.• Consequence: between cultures (and the

same cultures at different times), there could be wide moral variance.– e.g. Greece BC 220 slavery is OK; Greece

AD 2011 slavery is not OK– Papua New Guinea: Cannibalism is okay in

some tribes; Great Britain, less so; – Aztec human sacrifice vs European

‘civilisation’

• Not egoism or subjectivism (‘man’ = people or cultural group, not individual)

• It is not each person, but each person's culture that is the standard by which actions are to be measured.– Why do as Romans, when in Rome? – Societies have structure, including ethical standards. This is

what makes them work.– There are common ethical practices within a society, which

guide our actions.  – Laws and rules provide stability and order in life. But they are

relative to a given culture.– Laws and rules have historical origins, so are not absolute.

• Consequence: no ethical system is better than any other. They are just different.

CR: tightening the definition

Protagorean Relativism (= Relationalism?)

‘Man is the measure of all things’

‘I know of many things, — meats, drinks, medicines, and ten thousand other things, which are inexpedient for man, and some which are expedient ; and some which are neither expedient nor inexpedient...take, for example, manure, which is a good thing when laid about the roots of a tree, but utterly destructive if thrown upon the shoots and young branches ; or I may instance olive oil, which is mischievous to all plants, and generally most injurious to the hair of every animal with the exception of man, but beneficial to human hair and to the human body generally.’

Quine

• Ontological relativist• Remember conceptual

schema, particularly linguistic ones?

• What follows about Truth, given the (logical) indeterminacy of translation?

Williard Van Orman QuineOften was heard to whine:"From a logical point of view,No translation will do."

According to W. V. QuineAny ontology's fineAnd that's why IThink he's a heckgavagai.—Brian Leftow

Quine“As an empiricist I continue to think of the conceptual scheme of science as a tool…Physical objects are conceptually imported into the situation as convenient intermediaries not by definition in terms of experience, but simply as irreducible posits comparable, epistemologically, to the gods of Homer …in point of epistemological footing, the physical objects and the gods differ only in degree and not in kind. Both sorts of entities enter our conceptions only as cultural posits.”

Quine’s ‘Confirmation Holism’• The point that Quine is making is that

the existence of both physical objects and the Homeric Gods is ‘underdetermined’ – the evidence, strictly speaking, doesn’t quite stack up that either of these objects exist.

• Their existence is supported holistically by elements of cultural practice, that’s all – beliefs cohere into belief-systems or cultural posits.

• Hence, one cannot test a scientific hypothesis in isolation, because an empirical test of the hypothesis requires auxiliary assumptions or auxiliary hypotheses.

• And these assumptions cannot all be explicitly tested.

Perceptual Holism

Which square is darker, A or B?

This is Edward Adelson’s 1995 ‘Checkerboard Illusion’. Adelson is Professor of Vision Science at MIT.

No. They are the same colour.

CR: Advantages

• promotes tolerance, not ‘ethnocentrism’.– recognises differences but does not judge them by some

measure outside the culture in question.– reminds us that our way and what is familiar cannot be assumed

to be the right and only way.– ‘Live and Let Live’ attitude.

• avoids pointless complexity of normative moral debate • could make morals a matter of persuasion rather than

absolutes…• explains why similar cultures have similar moral systems

(common roots in culture) 

• There is very wide variance in moral systems and practices between societies in different places and at different times.

• Examples: – boiling lobsters in France– drinking animal blood in the Masai Mara– abortion in the UK but not in Ireland– capital punishment in the US but not in the UK– Infanticide in Ancient Greece but not now

• Yet: if our moral feelings do not originate from knowledge of an absolute moral measure, can we judge abhorrent practices?

Evidence for CR: Judging others

 CR: Some problems

• Yet surely we do judge abhorrent practices? We do so rationally too… – Yet the appeal to rationality might be an

intracultural standard.

• What is a ‘culture’? – Culture vs. subcultures…– Culture clashes and ‘Culture Wars’

• Do ethical norms really vary that widely?• CR = ‘doing what you like’?

– remember: culture isn’t the individual, though…

 CR: Coherence issue • Is C.R self contradictory, incoherent?

Consider: – There is no absolute truth– Intolerance is wrong

• In practice these tend to: Tolerant intolerance! Absolute relativism!– Example: A culture has an intolerant world view!– But CR:‘We must be tolerant’– Hence‘intolerance is wrong!’– Self-contradiction: affirms two mutually exclusive

things at the same time!

• If CR is true, what basis do we have for calling for the end of racism, torture, genocide, child labour?

• Such an appeal would be intolerant, arrogant.

• If moral truth is culturally relative– we cannot appeal to universal human rights! – Since there are no moral absolutes…

– …so surely a relativist cannot argue on moral grounds that slavery should be abolished?

– Also: we cannot call our present lack of slavery ‘progress’

CR: Can we speak of ‘Progress’?

CR: Is its flexibility a strength?

• Yet we no longer have slavery in the West– So change did occur

• because there was intracultural moral argument against it.

• Other drivers (e.g. Marxian economic ones) might explain moral change.

– So cultures aren’t ‘monolithic’ –

• there can be debate • and this flexibility could be

presented as a strength

CR: How does ‘progress’ occur?

• But moral relativism might not imply scientific relativism– So morals could be culturally

relative. – But facts might not be.

• So as our grasp of facts changed…– …our underlying moral

reasoning might alter.– e.g. facts about animal minds

might change our view of our treatment of animals.

Quiz

• Who?: "Man is the measure of all things: of things which are, that they are, and of things which are not, that they are not.“

• Explain: normative relativism, abhorrence, subjectivism, ethnocentrism, cultural imperialism, tolerance, descriptive relativism.

Exam Question

0 7 Cultures make different judgements about what is right and what is wrong and so there can be no moral truth. Discuss. (50 marks)