Cultural Relativism
The thesis of meta-ethical cultural relativism is the philosophical viewpoint that there are no absolute moral truths, only truths relative to the cultural context in which they exist. From this it is therefore presumed that what one society considers to be morally right, another society may consider to be morally wrong, therefore, moral right's and wrongs are only relative to a particular society. Thus cultural relativism implies that what is 'good' is what is 'socially approved' in a given culture. Two arguments in favour of cultural relativism are the 'Cultural Differences argument' and the 'Argument from the virtue of tolerance', the following essay will look at and evaluate both of these arguments.The cultural differences argument goes like this; 'Different cultures have different moral codes, thus there is no one correct set of moral claims, only those that conform to the major set of beliefs within the given culture'. Firstly I am going to look at James Rachel's (in 'The Elements of Moral Philosophy', Ch.2) analysis of this argument, and secondly I would lie to give my assessment of the argument. Rachel's argues that this argument is not logical, as the conclusion does not follow from the factual premise. The premi
Rachel's claim that physical facts are independent of beliefs about those facts is not justified. We never have access to the physical world apart from, or independent of, some scientific or conceptual framework. There is no "view from nowhere" which we can use to determine whether our judgements about the world are true or not. Moral facts are similar. In both cases the truth or falsity of a claim can only be evaluated against the background of some conceptual framework or another. It is in this respect I believe that Rachel's argument can be criticised. Cultural relativism is a concept for much debate, my essay has looked at two arguments on the affirmative, namely the argument from the virtue of tolerance and the cultural differences argument. Although the arguments are insufficient to prove cultural relativism as a fundamental philosophical truth, they do provide reasons for many people to consider themselves 'cultural relativists', and thus give the concept a great deal of merit in meta-ethical philosophical studies. The argument from the virtue of tolerance is the next argument in favour of cultural relativism that I am going to look at. The argument states that: 'meta-ethical cultural relativism promotes tolerance of different cultural moral beliefs, thus we should accept this viewpoint, as it is the only meta-ethical position that promotes tolerance of cultural differences in moral beliefs.' This argument lies on the assumpti
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Approximate Word count = 974
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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