Moral Relativism and Normative Ethics

Loretta Kopelman’s dissertation, Female Genital Circumcision and Conventionalists Ethical Relativism, takes a new approach in a global plight. Kopelman begins her thesis by elaborating on a particular tribe in southern Kenya. She describes how young girls are being mutilated for marriageability. Their fathers, eager for large dowries, perform the ritual on girls as young as nine. While some victims are able to escape and seek sanctuary, this obviously isn’t always possible and thus these girls must live with an inflicted deformity their whole life that doesn’t only cause serious health complications but sometimes even death.

Moral Absolutism is concerned with right and wrong behavior. The absolute is what controls whether the action or behavior is right or wrong. Therefore, from the position of moral absolute, some things are always right and some things are always wrong no matter how one try to rationalize them. Moral absolutism materializes from a theistic worldview. Ethical Absolutists can condemn practices such as the Nazi harassment of the Jews because Absolutist views give definite guidelines as to what is right and wrong.

What “ought” you do? Such a simple question can and most likely would have several answers depending on who you asked. This simple question can be answered using philosophical ethics but more specifically meta and normative-ethics. Meta-ethics is understanding the nature of our moral thought and/or language whereas normative-ethics is evaluating the competing theories about what grounds morality. Here we will use the following normative and meta-ethics to discover how moral realism, moral anti-realism, and cultural relativism can all change what a person or a society believes they “ought” to do to be morally right.

Let's start off with moral relativism, This is the belief that that there is no right or wrong answer to anything. This being said, you can still have your own views on different subjects and or beliefs, but you will not force those views/opinions upon anyone. This is because it would go against moral relativism in that you are not going to force your views upon another individual. Moral relativism opens up a whole new world of perspective, this is good because if we had no moral relativism the whole world would go into chaos because we would see the world as if we were one of the men in the cave in the story of “Plato’s Allegory “ The men in This story only saw the shadows from a fire, only showing them a false reality about the world they

Furthermore, as human beings we possess obligations of good will and these obligations are called “duties”. For example, all people should help somebody

Moral relativism, as Harman describes, denies “that there are universal basic moral demands, and says different people are subject to different basic moral demands depending on the social customs, practices, conventions, and principles that they accept” (Harman, p. 85). Many suppose that moral feelings derive from sympathy and concern for others, but Harman rather believes that morality derives from agreement among people of varying powers and resources provides a more plausible explanation (Harman, p. 12).The survival of these values and morals is based on Darwin’s natural selection survival of the fittest theory. Many philosophers have argued for and against what moral relativism would do for the world. In this essay, we will discuss

Adding, a maxim can be embraced as a guide to duty only because it corresponds to the idea of a universally valid moral

Deontology says that we have moral duties to do things that are right and moral duties to

Looking over the views of moral relativists and cultural relativists, I realized that there was an interesting similarity between their views. Although both moral relativist and cultural relativist views of subjective moral facts are based on their communities’ views, other external factors such as culture, social standpoint, social pressure and etc. dramatically affect a community’s view, thus,separating moral relativist and cultural relativist. As a result, these factor carries a substantial amount of bias in altering judgment of moral subjects. For example, actions of eating beef can be seen as right and wrong depending on the community you are in. If you are in a community that beef was staple food, eating beef would be seen as normal.

In this essay I will argue that unrestricted moral relativism is incorrect because of the objection that our moral judgments is not just based on our culture or history. I believe that our moral judgments are based on who we choose to be. If this theory was true. This means that you are stuck with cultural morals for the rest of our lives. Yet a lot of people move to different places with different cultures. They start to adopt to new morals, and new way of thinking of what is right or wrong.

As I was reading through chapters 2 and 3, I found that Ethical Relativism was more convincing than Moral Objectivism was. Ethical Relativism is the moral rightness/wrongness that varies from society to society. Moral Objectivism is the view that there are universal and objective moral principles valid for all people. I feel as Ethical Relativism is more convincing because one thing that is frowned upon in one society could be acceptable in another society. There was many examples in the book about the different things that are accepted in one culture, but not in another. One the stood out the most to me was the example about Callatians and the Greeks. The Callatians disposed of their deceased parents by eating them. To the Callatians, it was

There are two different branches of moral realism. One, moral absolutism which means that in any situation a person is in, no matter the circumstances their morals stay the same every single time. Two, moral pluralism and this can be described as a person having all of their moral values. In addition to, abiding by their moral values, they also have to abide by their moral guidelines. This can be hard because at times they can conflict, but if any situation where you have to provide yourself with self defense, it is allowed. Moral realism can be described as being very judgmental. Applying moral judgments that is noticed in a person such as saying, “Paul is morally good.” There is always a way to morally judge a person by laying down the principles for acceptable and/or unacceptable behavior. The use of moral realism is simply using the codes of logic to make a moral judgement, in a statement. Not all the time will there be a true or immoral way to make a judgement. There will also be factual beliefs, such as making a false belief. Moral realism will also be needed when two beliefs are conflicted, then you have to apply your full focus to the belief that is truly moral, to decide what is the best choice. Some examples of Philosophers who fall under the moral realism category are Richard Boyd, as he believes that moral statements are either true or false. In addition,the great philosopher known as Plato also leaned towards the moral realism side rather then moral relativism.

Moral relativism: Moral relativism is defined as the viewpoint of an individual on moral values, ethical standards or cultural values that individual believes in. It is subject to individual choice of a person that he believes for himself. Whether it is right or wrong is decided by himself. It is the notion which defines that there is no absolute value for right or wrong instead it is the personal opinion of an individual based on the circumstances or on the cultural orientation. It can be taken positively where it promotes tolerance or can be taken negatively by breaking law or doing something wrong. Pursuing IT as Christian vocation means God has selected you for a particular job and it is your duty to complete it and execute it in right

Ravi Zacharias discuss “all truth is relative.” He explains, that if you are uncertain about something, then measure yourself by stability. Dr. Craig provides the example of the student who writes a paper on moral relativism and receives an F. Then, he argued it was not fair, learning a valuable lesson. I believe both videos are helpful for understanding moral relativism.

Immanuel Kant offers an alternative account of duties and rights that depends on the idea that we are rational beings, worthy of dignity and respect. According to Kant, the moral worth of an action consists in the intention from which the act is done. What matters is doing the right thing for the right reason, not the consequences it produces. If we act out of self-interest, our action lacks moral worth. Only actions done out of the motive of duty have moral worth.