1. Cultural Relativism: Is Ethics Relative?

2. Is Ethics Relative or Absolute?
Ethical Subjectivism: Each person determines what is morally right.
Cultural Relativism: Each culture determines what is morally right.
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Ethical Absolutism: Some moral values are universal and apply to all individuals and cultures.
Divine Command Theory: Morality comes from God.

3. Is Ethics Relative?
Cultural relativism holds that different cultures have different moralities and that what one culture believes is wrong, another culture may believe is right.
What people believe about morality depends on the culture in which they live.

4. Ethnocentricism
Evaluation of other cultures according to preconceptions originating in the standards and customs of one's own culture.
It may or may not imply superiority of one’s culture over others (depending on the definition).
Because each individual is born into a certain cultural environment, he or she develops a specific idea of what “normal” is.

5. Cultural Differences
How should food be obtained and how should it be prepared? Who is responsible for obtaining food? Who should prepare it? How should it be served? How eaten?
How should men and women dress? To what degree should their body be exposed in public? How is nudity treated? How are those who violate these codes treated?

6. Cultural Differences
What religions are taught or allowable within the society? Who is allowed to participate in the religious rituals or to interpret divine or spiritual teachings to the group?
How are grievances settled in the society? Who decides who is right and who wrong? How are violators treated?

8. Cultural Relativism Different societies have different moral codes.
There is no objective standard that can be used to judge one societal code better than another.
The moral code of our own society has no special status; it is merely one among many.

9. Cultural Relativism
There is no “universal truth” in ethics—that is, there are no moral truths that hold for all people at all times.
The moral code of a society determines what is right within that society.
It is mere arrogance for us to try to judge the conduct of other people. We should adopt an attitude of tolerance toward the practices of other cultures.

10. Lessons of Cultural Relativism
Many of our cultural practices are merely peculiar to our society. (E.g., Callatians).
Some of our ethical sentiments may be a result of our cultural conditioning.

11. Lessons of Cultural Relativism
We should show respect and tolerance for different moral views and that our own moral views as well as those of our society may be mistaken.

12. Critique #1
It is difficult to determine what the beliefs of a society are (i.e., how large a majority must hold a belief before it counts as a belief of that society?).

13. Critique #2
If ethical relativism were true, then
it would make no sense to say that
the moral standards of one’s society
are mistaken since by definition
they would define morality (e.g.,
slavery in the United States).

14. Critique #3
The fact that beliefs about morality differ from one society to another does not imply that all such beliefs are equally valid (e.g., human sacrifice).

15. Incan Human Sacrifice
Seated with her legs bent and her arms resting on her stomach, the Maiden's remains are still adorned with a gray shawl and bone and metal ornaments. Scientists say her face was daubed with red pigment and around her mouth they found flecks of coca leaf, which is chewed by highland Indians to blunt the effects of altitude.

16. Incan Human Sacrifice
Scientists believe the so-called Children of Llullaillaco were sacrificed more than 500 years ago in a ceremony marking the annual corn harvest. Dressed in fine clothes and given corn alcohol to put them to sleep, the victims were then left to die at an elevation of 22,080 feet.

17. Incan Human Sacrifice

18. Moral progress within a society wouldn’t make sense. It
Critique #4
Moral progress within a society
wouldn’t make sense. It
implies a yardstick to measure
the progress (e.g., Martin
Luther King, Jr.).

19. Critique #5 Deeper examinations sometimes
reveal that societies share the
same underlying moral values even
though their different circumstances
lead them to express these values
in moral standards that differ on
the surface.