1. Cultural Relativism

• She was brought up to believe in objective morality, akin to objective facts.
• Through anthropology classes and as an exchange student in Mexico, she realized that morality varies with time and place.
• Morality is a cultural construct, similar to how societies create different styles of food and clothing.
• Her belief that infanticide is wrong is just her society’s view, while ancient Romans had a different perspective.
• There’s no objective truth about right or wrong; it’s all culturally relative.
• When she says “Infanticide is wrong,” it means her society disapproves of it, not that it’s an objective fact.
• Terms like “wrong” are relative and need a cultural reference to complete their sense.
• Moral terms like “bad” and “right” can be defined similarly.
• When she says “Hitler acted wrongly,” it means “according to the standards of my society.”
• The myth of objectivity assumes that things can be good or bad absolutely.
• People who claim absolute morality are imposing their society’s norms as objective truths.
• Studying anthropology or living in another culture can challenge this belief.
• She realized that other cultures aren’t wrong, just different.
• Criticizing other cultures imposes one’s own societal standards.
• Cultural relativists are more tolerant.
• CR also promotes acceptance of one’s own society’s norms, providing a democratic basis for common morality.
• It fosters solidarity within a culture, even if other groups have different values.
• CR forces conformity to society’s norms, equating “good” with “socially approved.”
• Disagreeing with society’s values would be inconsistent if CR were true.
• Civil rights leaders, by this logic, would have contradicted themselves by opposing segregation.
• Accepting CR means accepting the majority view on all moral issues, even if the majority is ignorant.
• If most people approve of intolerance and ridicule toward other cultures, CR would deem it good.
• This contradicts Ima’s new insights about tolerance.
• CR requires either accepting intolerance as good or rejecting cultural relativism
• Lika Rebel, a figure skater from a Nazi country, dissents against her society’s racist policies.
• If CR applied, Ima would have to tell Lika that she must accept racism as good because her society approves it.
• CR forces acceptance of racism and oppression as good if the majority supports it.
• A satisfying view should allow for the condemnation of racist actions.
• CR fails because it deems racist actions good if they’re socially approved.
• Lika, following CR, would have to agree with a racist majority, despite their ignorance.
• Children would be taught to conform to societal norms, whatever they are.
• They’d learn to reason like this:
• “My society approves of A, so A is good.”
• “My peer-group society approves of getting drunk and driving home, so this is good.”
• “My Nazi society approves of racism, so racism is good.”
• CR discourages critical thinking and uncritical acceptance of societal norms, even if they stem from ignorance.
• In reality, the world is a confusing mixture of overlapping societies and groups, and individuals don’t necessarily follow the majority view.
• CR ignores the subgroup problem. People belong to overlapping groups, such as nations, states, cities, neighborhoods, families, professional, religious, and peer groups, which often have conflicting values.
• When someone says “Racism is wrong” under CR, it means “My society disapproves of racism.” But it’s unclear which society this refers to, as different groups may have different views.
• CR would only provide clear guidance if people belonged to just one society, but the world is more complicated, and everyone is multicultural to some extent.
• CR doesn’t try to establish common norms between societies. As technology shrinks the planet, moral disputes between societies become more important.
• For example, nation A might approve of equal rights for women, while nation B disapproves. A multinational corporation working in both societies would struggle with these conflicting values.
• CR is inadequate for addressing value conflicts that can lead to war between societies. It gives a poor basis for life in the twenty-first century.
• Ima rejects the dogmatic “we’re right and they’re wrong” attitude and stresses the need to understand other viewpoints. These are positive ideas.
• However, Ima claims that neither side can be wrong, which limits the ability to learn from mistakes.
• If a society can’t be wrong, it can’t learn from its errors. Understanding another culture’s norms wouldn’t help correct errors in one’s own norms.
• There’s a truth to be found in moral matters, but no culture has a monopoly on this truth.
• Different cultures need to learn from each other to see errors and blind spots in their own values.
• Learning about other cultures helps correct cultural biases and move closer to the truth about how to live.
• Objective values (moral realism) claim that some things are objectively right or wrong, independent of what anyone may think or feel.
• Dr. Martin Luther King claimed that racist actions were objectively wrong, not based on societal norms but on a higher truth about right and wrong.
• Ima rejects the belief in objective values, calling it “the myth of objectivity,” and believes things are only good or bad relative to a culture.
• Ima’s three arguments against objective values:
• Morality is a product of culture.
• Cultures disagree widely about morality.
• There’s no clear way to resolve moral differences.
• A product of culture can still express objective truths.
• Just as books, which are cultural products, can convey objective truths, so can moral codes.
• Disagreement doesn’t negate the existence of truth; cultures also disagree on anthropology, religion, and physics, yet there can still be truth in these areas.
• Most cultures have similar norms against killing, stealing, and lying.
• Moral differences often reflect different applications of basic values.
• The golden rule is nearly universally accepted.
• Diverse cultures have agreed on basic human rights through the United Nations.
• There might be ways to resolve moral differences that appeal to intelligent and open-minded people globally, similar to the scientific method.
• The absence of a solid way to know moral truths doesn’t mean there are no such truths.
• Some truths may be unknowable, yet they still exist.
• Ima’s attack on objective values fails, but the debate on objective values continues.
• The objective view allows for relativity in many areas but maintains that some things are objectively right or wrong.
• Examples of local standards: “Right turns on a red light are forbidden,” “Use the fork only in your left hand.”
• Respecting local rules is important to avoid harm, but moral rules are seen as more authoritative and objective.
• Moral rules must be followed for a society to survive and prosper.
• Cultural relativists argue that local standards determine even basic moral principles.
• Respecting cultural differences doesn’t make one a cultural relativist.
• Cultural relativism claims that anything socially approved must thereby be good
• Cultural relativism (CR) holds that “good” means what is “socially approved” by the majority in a given culture.
• Infanticide is considered good in a society that approves of it and bad in one that disapproves of it, according to CR.
• Cultural relativists see morality as a product of culture.
• CR asserts that societies disagree widely about morality and that we have no clear way to resolve these differences.
• CR concludes that there are no objective values.
• Cultural relativists view themselves as tolerant, seeing other cultures not as “wrong,” but as “different.”
• CR has several problems despite its initial plausibility:
• CR makes it impossible to disagree with the values of our society without self-contradiction.
• CR implies that intolerance and racism would be good if society approved of them.
• CR leads to an uncritical acceptance of societal norms.
• CR attacks the idea of objective values, but these attacks fall apart under scrutiny.
• Many social scientists oppose CR.
• Psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg claimed that people of all cultures go through the same stages of moral thinking.
• CR represents a relatively low stage of moral thinking, where we simply conform to society.
• At more advanced stages of moral thinking, we reject CR, become critical of accepted norms, and think for ourselves about moral issues.
• The book aims to explore how to think critically about moral issues beyond the confines of cultural relativism.