Day 2 - Cultural Relativism or... The only judgement possible is that you can't judge others

Well today was a surprise.  I assumed that the book would be all about and gung-ho about cultural relativism, but I was wrong.

Sort of.

Straight from the book, here are five claims that have been made by cultural relativists.

1. Different societies have different moral codes.
2. The moral code of a society determines what is right within that society.
3. There is no objective standard that can be used to judge one society's code as better than another's.  There are no moral truths that hold for all people at all times.
4. The moral code of our own society has no special status; it is but one among many.
5. It is arrogant for us to judge other cultures.  We should always be tolerant of them.

Now the book says that there are some things that are attractive about cultural relativism.  One is that it's hard to escape your cultural conditioning (can you really know for sure what it would be like to be a cannibal?).  Two is that there can be a blurred distinction between tastes versus morality (some dress doesn't matter [what hat to wear] and some dress does [like not wearing clothes at all]).  Finally, the way we're raised can limit our expectations (Henry Harlow did social experiments on baby monkeys.  Read about it here and now image some guy in Romania doing it to orphans.  True story).

Well the problems with cultural relativism are legion.  #3 is self-contradictory.  It says that there are no moral truths that hold for all people at all times.  But is that statement true?  If so then it contradicts itself and therefore cannot be true!  Also, is #5 itself an arrogant and judgmental statement?  Does it sound very tolerant to you?  Furthermore, didn't these 'rules of cultural relativism' come from within some culture?  And if so why should we believe any of these rules since they are subject to the culture that came up with them?

So here are the reasons against cultural relativism as espoused by the book and the instructor.

1. If cultural relativism were true, there would be no moral growth in a society/culture.

I asked the teacher about moral growth, "Isn't moral growth implying an outside standard to which you are growing towards?  In other words, moral growth implies there is some moral standard out there and we ought to grow towards it, rather than away.  My teacher replied, "You're right.  If there was no such thing as moral growth, there would only be moral change.  We need to take into account our moral intuitions."

I had been waiting for him to bring up intuitions again so I asked, "But if we rely on our intuitions, don't we have to then intuit that our intuitions are correct?"

He replied, "It would be nice to start with a blank slate and just the first principles.  But you would have to persuade me that my intuitions (the class previously had a discussion on slavery) are wrong."

I would agree that his intuitions about slavery are correct, but what I would have liked to know is how or where does he ground those intuitions? But there were a lot of other hands raised so we couldn't keep going back and forth.  However, I would have asked him other questions like, "Well, perhaps I have an intuition to steal.  Why should I follow some intuitions as opposed to other ones?"  Intuition is a very important moral concept, but it can only be understood for what it is as a Christian (God's law written on the heart).  The non-believer has no ground for why to pick one intuition over another.

2. If cultural relativism were true then civil disobedience would be morally wrong.
What this means is that a cannibal who is reluctant to eat other people would be morally wrong to do so because he is in the culture that says eating other people is right.

3. It is just not the case anymore that people are in just one single culture.
I'd have to agree with this one too.

So the book doesn't like cultural relativism, but isn't exactly against it either.  Here is how the book summarizes the chapter:

"We can understand the appeal of Cultural Relativism, then, despite its shortcomings.  It is an attractive theory because it is based on a genuine insight: that many of the practices and attitudes we find natural are really only cultural products.  Moreover, keeping this thought firmly in view is important if we want to avoid arrogance and keep an open mind.  These are important points, not to be taken lightly.  But we can accept them without accepting the whole theory."*

So it is true that different cultures do different things.  Yet some of those things that cultures have done are wrong.  Not just wrong for them, but things that would be wrong for all people at all times.  No one lives in a purely culturally relativistic way.  And it's not just because we prefer our own culture over others, the heart of the matter lies in the existence of objective moral values and duties that people are obligated to obey.  A cultural relativist couldn't handle that, and for that matter neither could a moral relativist.

Avoiding arrogance and keeping an open mind?  Says who?  Being not-arrogant is a fine virtue, but can only be properly understood if God exists.  Otherwise, why not be arrogant?  Why does some other person get to decide for me what things to be arrogant over and not?  And again, keeping an open mind is just not possible.  Everyone will always have some base/core presuppositions by which he/she will judge all matters.

Remember how my teacher was talking about how it would be nice to have a blank slate and just the first principles?  Having just a blank slate wouldn't get anybody anywhere so we do need some place to start.  That place to start is what he called the 'first principles' which are usually the first three laws of logic.  Funny thing about those first three laws of logic.  Can there be any universal and immaterial laws of logic if God does not exist?  If all is only matter and space flowing through time (i.e. naturalism) how could some immaterial law of logic even exist?  Also, if there is no God sustaining and upholding all of creation, how could we even begin to think that laws of logic could be universal in nature when all we experience are only particulars?

More on logic some other time.


* The Elements of Moral Philosophy, sixth edition, by James Rachels, McGraw Hill Higher Education, New York, 2010, page 31