ETHICAL and
CULRTURAL
RELATIVISM
ETHICS
Presented by: John Lorence Samson
CULTURE AND
MORAL BEHAVIOR
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
2. IDENTIFY AND
1. DISCUSS THE
EXPLAIN THE
THEORY OF ETHICAL
ARGUMENTS FOR
RELATIVISM
AND AGAINST IT
3. RECOGNIZE THE
ROLE OF CULTURE
PLAYS IN MORAL
BEHAVIOUR AND
DEVELOPMENT
CULTURE AND MORAL
BEHAVIOUR
• Culture plays a very influential and crucial
role in the development and formation of
one’s moral character.
• Various studies in the field of Social
sciences such as Sociology and
Anthropology, provide enormous scientific
data to support the major and significant
impact that culture contributes to moral
behaviour.
CULTURE AND MORAL
BEHAVIOUR
• In fact, a lot of thinkers, they
even go to the extent of
saying that one can never
truly separate morality from
culture.
CULTURE AND MORAL
BEHAVIOUR
• Discussion of ethics must include culture
as a major theme and to disregard it as
just a minor and negligible component is
to risk getting lost in vague and even
groundless metaphysical generalities. It
means, any discussion of morality that is
not rooted with the living concreteness of
human cultural life is simply unrealistic
and absurd.
CULTURE AND MORAL
BEHAVIOUR
• Morality is but a result
of cultural factors. In
other words, morality is
simply defined by one’s
culture.
CULTURE AND MORAL
BEHAVIOUR
• Now, but is this absolutely and
irrefutably true?
• Is culture all that there is to consider
when we talk about moral
development?
• Or there is something in one’s moral
behaviour that cannot be totally
reduced to cultural factors?
ETHICAL
RELATIVISM
ETHICAL RELATIVISM DEFINED
• Ethical relativism refers to a view or
doctrine that ethical values and beliefs
( as to what is right and wrong) are
relative to the time, place, persons,
situations and societies that hold them.
ETHICAL RELATIVISM DEFINED
ETHICAL RELATIVISM DEFINED
• In short, Ethical relativism is a theory that holds
that there are no universally valid moral principles;
that all moral values are valid relative to culture or
individual choice.
• For an ethical relativist, "whether an action is right
or wrong depends on the moral norms or moral
commitments of the individual, and no absolute
standard exist by which differing rules or
commitments can be jusdged".
ETHICAL RELATIVISM DEFINED
• Hence, there are no values that
cut across cultural boundaries
and peoples are universal to the
specific place or context in which
they are held. Morality depends
on specific social or cultural
circumstances. What is then,
morally right or wrong may vary
fundamentally from person to
ETHICAL RELATIVISM DEFINED
• However, ethical relativism poses a great challenge to
morality itself. Aside from being a controversial view, it
is also one of the most difficult and complex problems
or issues in Ethics.
• Still, ethical relativism does not however, try to tell us
which acts and practices are wrong and right.
• It only says that no matter how we answer that
question, we must acknowledge that an act or conduct
may be both right and wrong in another. Simply,
differing moral views about the same action may be
ARGUMENTS
FOR ETHICAL
RELATIVISM
ARGUMENTS FOR
ETHICAL RELATIVISM
• The Cultural Differences
Argument
• The Argument from Respect
• The Psychological Argument
• The Conformity Argument
• The Provability Argument
CULTURAL
DIFFERENCES
ARGUMENT
T h e C u l t u r a l D i ff e re n c e s A rg u m e n t
• The existence of moral diversity among cultures is one of
the pivotal support of Ethical Relativism.
• For centuries, people have pointed out those different
societies or cultures at least appear to have vastly
different moral codes.
• Indeed, it is uncontroversially true that people in different
socities have different customs and different ideas about
right/good and wrong/bad. There is no universal or
transtructural consensus on which actions are right and
THE
ARGUMENT
FROM RESPECT
THE ARGUMENT FROM RESPECT
• Ethical relativism is also related to the view of
tolerance.
• Accordingly, if moral codes differ from cultures and
there is no objective or culturally dependent basis
by which to judge the moral code of any culture,
then the moral code of one's particular culture has
no special status compared with the rest.
• NO CULTURE has the right to impose its own ethical
THE
PSYCHOLOGICAL
ARGUMENT
T H E P S YC H O LO G I C A L A R G U M E N T
• This argument undermines the confidence in the
objectivity of ethics by making us aware of the non-
rational way in which moral ideas and beliefs are formed
and developed.
• Our values is simply the result of our having been
conditioned to behave in a certain way.
• All human beings acquire moral beliefs by a process of
moral conditioning. Thus if we have conditioned
differently, we would have different moral beliefs.
• Hence, our moral beliefs are neither true nor false, right
THE CONFORMITY
ARGUMENT
THE CONFORMITY ARGUMENT
• Some people accept Ethical Relativism because they
sowmhow think that people should conform with and
embrace the ethical code of their perspective societies
and cultures.
• Through cultural relativism, it is thought that people
would come to be more accepting of their own social
norms. Their belief gives a good basis for a common
morality within a culture in fact, a kind of a democratic
basis where diverse ideas and principles are pooled in.
• Thus, insuring that the norm/rules that a certain society
THE PROVABILITY
ARGUMENT
T H E P R OVA B I L I T Y A R G U M E N T
• It is undeniable fact that moral dispute occures
between and among groups as well as
indiviudals.
• The difficulty in knowing what is the morally
"right thing" to do in a particular situation has led
to a general attitude of skepticism on the
possibility of determining, much worse in
establishing a universal and definite moral
standard.
THANK YOU FOR
LISTENING!
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