Ethics: Cultural Relativity

Primary Source: Mary Midgley's, "Trying Out One's New Sword," in James White's, "Contemporary Moral Problems."

Cultural relativity is not so much a philosophical claim as it is an anthropologistic claim. As anyone who has ventured beyond the range of their own town is well aware of, different cultures have different sets of norms, standards, and, most importantly, morals. As I think I discussed earlier, morality is merely how humans interact with other living or sentient organisms (God help us when the Earth itself becomes sentient because we will all get wasted, and not in the good way.) I personally don't believe an absolute moral exists, but as society evolves certain morals come about to preserve those in societies. Of course, different regions of the world will have different morals come about. The claim of cultural relativism is that no person from any culture may criticize or judge any other culture.

Sam grew up in the "Bible Belt" of America, whereas Ben grew up in a cannibalistic tribe in New Guinea. Sam may never criticize Ben for eating people since Sam did not grow up in the same society, making Sam completely incapable of understanding that culture and vice versa. No matter how long either of them spends in the other culture, they will never TRULY understand it or adopt it without their old culture interfering with their understanding the new one.

There are some major fallacies here that can be summed up in a single question; how many people do you know that have lived in the same country as you but have completely different viewpoints on certain morals? Well, you must have grown up in different parts of the same town, so people from each different part can't understand/ criticize each other. Even in the same family, though, we see different morals being adopted. So maybe you just can't criticize anyone since no one grew up the way you did, and vice versa... So cultural relativism is completely self-defeating.

10 Second Version: Don't be a cultural relativist, but if you are, I can't criticize you since you aren't me. If I became a cultural relativist, though, I could criticize myself.... maybe.

Steve