Toward Ending Cultural And Cognitive Relativism Analysis

In “The Challenge of Cultural Relativism”, James Rachels presents six claims that have been made by cultural relativists. One of the six claims that Rachels presents in section 2.2 of the article is that different societies have different moral codes. I believe that Rachels thinks this claim is true. Section 2.1 of the article does a good job at explaining this idea. In this section, Rachels gives several examples of the differences that can be found in moral codes of different people groups throughout time. One of the specific examples he mentions is the different burial rituals of the Greeks and the Callatians. The Greeks perform a ritual that includes burning the dead. The Callatian ritual consists of eating the dead. The Greeks and Callatians, while encountering each other, both stated that the other’s ritual was inhumane. This disagreement, according to Cultural Relativism, is okay and to be expected because the two moral codes come from two drastically different societies. A modern example of this claim is that up until recently in China, small feet were praised and larger feet were frowned upon for women. Radical efforts to prevent women’s feet from growing included foot-binding. This method of prevention caused women to constantly be in pain. Women’s foot size in the United States isn’t emphasized like the way it used to be in China. Therefore, citizens of the United States believe that Chinese foot-binding was a barbaric method, while people in China would think

They further go on to say that “special education was born out of, and owes a debt to the civil rights movement”, alluding to the fact that both the inspiration for and the strategies used by those whose work resulted in the initial national special education

Some people may think that special education has been established since the beginning of public education. Others may consider a time when special education did not exist and students with disabilities were not able to attend school. The truth is, there was a time when this happened; these students were not allowed to be educated in the general education classroom alongside their peers. People with disabilities were treated differently, and some were forced into institutions because teachers and staff found them to be disturbances to their peers. Luckily, special education has come a long way since public education began. People, especially parents, advocated for their children, and today many laws are in place to ensure that all children

Would-be culture-neutral standard Rachels suggests: "whether the parctice promotes or hinders the welfare of the people whose lives are affected by it." (p. 28)

The purpose of schooling is to help our special education students to be functional and independent in the real world. I want them to learn how to deal with real life situations and to be able to understand and adapt to the changes it may bring. For example, being an autism teacher of high school students, my philosophy is different than of an autism teacher of elementary students. The most important thing of concern for the older students is to make sure they are as independent as possible and teach them some type of job skill to help them acquire a pay check to help with their care. I also help them have an

Cultural relativism is the theory where there is no objective truth in morality, and moral truths are determined by different cultures. The primary argument used to justify cultural relativism is the cultural differences argument, which claims different cultures have different moral practices and beliefs, therefore, there is no objective truth in morality (Newton). After reading James Rachels The Challenge of Cultural Relativism, I find his criticisms to be persuasive because the argument made for Cultural Relativism is not sound from a logical point of view. You cannot draw a conclusion about what is factual based on what people believe is factual. Rachels also points out that even though cultures do in fact disagree about moral values,

Cultural relativism can be defined as the principle of analyzing a culture from the viewpoint of the culture itself; your own culture can’t interfere in the process of analysis. In this paper, I will analyze how one’s partiality can affect his judgment of a culture, more specifically, a fictional one. Reading a fantasy book makes, in some aspects, one to do an anthropological study. You need to understand the social mechanisms of the new world you are exploring, how people think, which species exist in the world and all possible information that the book gives you, therefore, being biased in your analysis means to probably have the wrong conclusions about the social phenomena of the book. Moreover, a lot of science fiction and fantasy books have criticism and parodies about our society; some authors are more direct than others when showing the problems of our society - as we observe in Brave New

Cultural relativism is the way society separates right from wrong within a culture. What we describe as “good” and “bad” is based off of our cultural beliefs. Cultural relativism argues that no culture is better than any other and all their beliefs are equally valid. The way that modern society is has made it possible for almost everything to be justified.

“Cultural relativism is the idea that the beliefs and practices of a culture should be understood within the context of that particular culture’s background, history, and current events surrounding it. We should not ethnocentrically impose our own beliefs and opinions, which are products of our own enculturation.” (Crapo, 2013). My parents taught my siblings and I never to judge anyone, and that what comes around goes around. There are two parts to this paper with two different topics, courtship and marriage and the Muslim women’s dilemma to wear or not to wear the veil. In this paper I will be discussing marriage and courtship in the United States from an outsider’s perspective, along with the misconceptions of the Veil and of the women of the Islamic culture from an insiders perpective.

An individual’s compliance to examine their own possible biases is very important in being able to understand the roots of stereotypes and prejudice in our society. Starting early in a person’s life, the human mind has the ability to automatically categorize people. This is a crucial feature. These categories give an order to our everyday lives. Every day, people are grouped into categories based on social and biological characteristics, this is called race. Cultural biases exist whether we want them to or not. We all have cultural biases if we would just acknowledge them we can recognize it.

Rachel does not believe it is a good argument because in his example in chapter 2 he states “This point should not be misunderstood. We are not saying that the conclusion of the argument is false; for all we have said, Cultural Relativism could still be true. The point is that the conclusion does not follow from the premise. This means that the Cultural Differences Argument is invalid. Thus, the argument is fails.” (19). Rachel has a very valid point because the cultural differences argument is invalid due to the fact that there is no valid true or false answer.

Ethnocentrism and cultural relativism are two contrasting terms that are displayed by different people all over the world. Simply put, ethnocentrism is defined as “judging other groups from the perspective of one’s own cultural point of view.” Cultural relativism, on the other hand, is defined as “the view that all beliefs are equally valid and that truth itself is relative, depending on the situation, environment, and individual.” Each of these ideas has found its way into the minds of people worldwide. The difficult part is attempting to understand why an individual portrays one or the other. It is a question that anthropologists have been asking themselves for years.

Post modernists believe that it’s important for teachers to teach students their own British values. This is because values are important for an individual’s culture and are important at school to demonstrate to the Ofsted how well they are doing at stimulating the children’s physical and intellectual development of pupils at school. The values that the teachers at school must teach the children include teaching about the rule of law and teaching them respect and tolerance for other students who have different faiths and beliefs. These British values are cultural values which are beneficial to the students at school and also outside of school too because it gives the other person an understanding that we

Cultural relativism is one of the core concepts of anthropology. Are there any limits to this concept? If so, what are they? Is there a place in anthropology for the idea of universal human rights?

If we look at the world today, there are millions of cultures centered everywhere. With this much cultures in the world, everyone is bound to believe that they’re all different. Even though they are different in some aspects, all of them are similar to each other in some way. So if this is the case, do we as human beings have the right to judge these cultures as ethically wrong or just a cultural difference? Cultural Relativism is the belief that we cannot judge the cultural practices of other societies and that we should let them do as they please. But if we cannot judge them, does it make it right when they threaten the lives of others? Through the book Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, we begin to have a deeper insight this idea of