Finals Part 1

• Cultural relativism


  Cultural practices vary over time and clime
• Cultural practices


  • Infanticide in ancient Greece
  • Eskimos allowing their elderly to die by starvation
  • Spartans and Dobu believing stealing is morally right
  • Sparta's ritual rite of passage for young boys
  • Ancient Rome's patria familia rule
  • Infanticide in various cultures
  • Cannibalism in certain African tribes
  • Polygamy in Muslim societies
  • Cooperation and kindness viewed as vices in a Melanesian tribe
  • Ik in northern Uganda having no sense of duty toward their children or parents
  • Some societies making it a duty for children to kill their aging parents
• King Darius of Persia performed an experiment to illustrate the widespread radical diversity of moral customs
• Moral customs


  • Callatians eating their deceased parents
  • Greeks cremating their parents
• Herodotus concluded that "Custom is the king o'er all"
• Cultural practices


  • Girls in Iraq being killed by their brothers after being raped
  • Genital mutilation in northern Africa and southern Arabia
  • Suttee in precolonial India
• Cultural practices in the United States

  • Slavery once deemed morally permissible
  • Racial discrimination once widely approved
  • Abortion once considered a grave sin and illegal, now a woman's right
  • Premarital sex once considered immoral, now acceptable
  • Adultery once punished, now tolerated
• Cultural relativism


  Morality is a cultural construct, different societies have different moral codes, there are no objective moral truths
• Cultural relativism claims that "good" means "socially approved"
• Claims of moral relativists

  • Different societies have different moral codes
  • No objective standard to judge one societal code better than another
  • Moral code of our own society has no special status
  • No "universal truth" in ethics
  • Moral code of a society determines what is right within that society
  • It is arrogance to judge the conduct of other peoples, we should adopt an attitude of tolerance
• Cultural differences argument/diversity thesis

  Different cultures have different moral codes, therefore there is no objective "truth" in morality, right and wrong are only matters of opinion
• The claim that "there is no objective morality" is self-contradictory if it is meant to be objectively true
• Moral relativism/subjectivism


  Morality is deeply emotional and personal, "good" means "I like this"
• Cultural relativism denies moral freedom, forces acceptance of society's values
• Moral subjectivism


  Value judgments are about how the individual feels, not how society feels
• Moral subjectivism


  • Choosing to drink moderately despite family prohibition and peer pressure for heavy drinking
• Cultural relativism (CR)


  Morality depends not on the society but rather on the individual. "Morality is in the eye of the beholder"
• CR says that we can't objectively evaluate the norms of another culture—since, if we try, then we just evaluate their norms using ours
• Subjectivism (SB)


  What is true for you may not be true for me. "My body, my choice"
• SB holds that moral truths are relative to the individual. If I like X but you don't, then "X is good" is true for me but false for you
• SB says that values exist only in the preferences of individual people. You have your preferences and I have mine; no preference is objectively correct or incorrect
• SB says the objectivity of values is a myth and needs to be rejected. In practice, everyone follows their feelings in moral matters
• Key point of SB

  Pick your moral principles by following your feelings
• Consequence of SB: Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, King Leopold II, Pol Pot are not wrong in their actions
• "No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent."— John Donne
• Who is wrong if everybody is right?
• Bad actions are not bad in the end
• Utilitarianism


  The proper aim of morality is to promote happiness and diminish misery
• Utilitarianism says that we ought always to do whatever brings about the greatest balance of pleasure over pain for everyone affected by our action
• Applying utilitarianism directly


  1. Figure out options

  2. Estimate pleasure and pain consequences of each option

  3. Decide which option brings about the greatest balance of pleasure over pain
• Utilitarianism says to do the option that brings about the greatest balance of pleasure over pain
• It isn't useful to do direct utilitarian calculations on every action, it's more useful to apply utilitarianism indirectly, by applying a "rule of thumb" about what kinds of action tend to have good or bad results
• When should we apply utilitarianism directly? When we face big decisions, or when moral rules conflict
• Utilitarianism is also useful to arrive at moral rules, by examining particular cases and finding that certain actions usually have bad consequences
• When moral rules conflict, it's useful to apply utilitarianism directly to judge which action has the best consequences
• Examining particular cases of stealing shows that stealing usually has bad consequences, so "Don't steal" is a useful rule of thumb
• Exceptionless moral rules can lead to contradictions and inhumane results in unusual cases
• Duty depends on the situation, not just on what culture tells us
• Consequentialism (teleology)


  We ought to do whatever maximizes good consequences, regardless of the type of action
• Classical/Act Utilitarianism


  We ought always to do whatever brings about the greatest balance of pleasure over pain for everyone affected