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>[Bernard Walker, instructor]
Now in the last PowerPoint,

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I asked you to answer 
two questions on your own.

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And I'm really concerned 
about the first question:

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What makes an action 
be right or wrong?

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I'm not really interested 
in the second question,

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but when students answer 
the first question,

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they often give an answer 
that is adequate or appropriate

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for the second question,

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which is: Where do you 
get your beliefs from?

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The focus of this PowerPoint

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will look at mainly 
the first question,

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but look at the second question as well

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and point out or to reiterate

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that ethics is basically based 
on what you do to someone

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or how you affect someone,

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and it's not based on a 
mere belief that you may have.

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And the position or the view 
that holds that latter claim

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is called cultural relativism.

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I will discuss it in this PowerPoint,

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but critique it in the third 
PowerPoint after this one.

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Let's take a look at four examples

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that will illustrate 
the distinction between

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what makes something 
be right or wrong

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and the mere belief where 
you get your beliefs from.

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To make the point again,

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let's look at the two questions 
from the previous PowerPoint:

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What makes a belief true, 
or what makes an action be true?

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And where do you get beliefs from?

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You see these two questions 
on the far left.

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Let's consider four examples.

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The first one: “Oatmeal reduces 
your overall cholesterol level.”

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We can ask: Where did you get 
the belief that that's true?

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There are many answers you can give.
(You could perhaps say your doctor.)

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But what makes the belief true

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is that oatmeal actually does 
reduce cholesterol in your body.

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The truth of that belief, 
what makes it be true,

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is what oatmeal does in the world,

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not your belief but what 
oatmeal does to your body.

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The second example, suppose it's true:

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"Sometimes Hmong patients 
refuse surgery and blood draws."

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If we were to ask the question: 
Where did you get this belief from?

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supposing it is true, 
you can give many answers,

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and one would be that you have 
a Hmong friend who told you this.

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What makes the belief true

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is simply that this is what 
Hmong people sometimes do.

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The belief is made true by what 
Hmong people do or do not do

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in a hospital or medical clinic.

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The third example says: "The best way 
to lose weight is diet, not exercise."

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Let's suppose that statement is true.

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We can ask: Where did you 
get this particular belief from?

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Why do you believe it?

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Basically, that's the question.

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Again, many answers could be given.

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You could say you came to this belief 
from what you read in the magazine

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or from what a dietitian 
told you about certain diets.

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But what makes the belief true

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is what a diet does to you 
in terms of you losing weight.

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So the truth of the belief 
is not based on you

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or based on your dietitian or a magazine.

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What makes the belief true is simply
the effect the diet has on your body,

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something that is happening in the world.

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In this case, 
it's not something you're doing;

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it's something that the food that 
you're digesting does to your body.

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So these first three examples 
are definitely evidence-based,

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meaning that they are true 
and you discover they are true

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by evidence of things 
that they do in the world.

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Now the fourth example 
is quite different.

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It says that it's true that you 
cannot run with a basketball

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when you play basketball.

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If the question were posed:
Where did you get this belief from?

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Again, any number of 
answers could be given.

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You can say your high school or middle 
school gym teacher told you this

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or your neighborhood friends 
at the park or your parents.

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All kinds of answers could be given 
as to where you got this belief from.

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But to the question, "What makes it
be true?" would be a simple answer.

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The inventor of basketball, 
who is Dr. James Naismith.

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So the reason why it's true 
that you cannot run with a basketball,

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what makes that belief true,

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unlike the other three 
examples on this slide here,

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are not events in the world, 
but internal to Dr. Naismith,

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his beliefs about how the game 
of basketball should be played.

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So this last example actually 
is not evidence-based

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because it's stating something
true about a person's belief,

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namely what this man, 
Dr. James Naismith believes

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about how his game that he 
invented should be played.

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However, oatmeal is not in a person's
mind and neither is cholesterol.

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The interaction between those two 
things are outside of your mind;

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and whether or not oatmeal reduces 
cholesterol has everything to do

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with the interaction between 
oatmeal and cholesterol.

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The same thing would be true
about Hmong patients.

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What makes it true 
that they refuse surgery

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is, in fact, that they refuse surgery.

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What makes a diet-- what causes 
a diet to make you lose weight

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is simply the effect 
a diet has on your body.

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But with basketball, what makes 
it wrong to run with a basketball

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is not something about the world,

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because before Dr. James Naismith 
was born or invented the game,

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there was nothing called basketball.

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What makes it wrong to run 
with the ball is simply he said so

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because the truth of that statement

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is based in his mind, 
Dr. James Naismith.

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The truth of what oatmeal 
does to cholesterol

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is not in a person's mind 
but in its effect on your body.

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Again, the same thing with 
blood draws with Hmong patients

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and diets and losing weight.

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The point overall 
that I want to make here

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is that with ethics, it is evidence-based 
like the first three examples here,

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not like the last example 
with basketball.

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What makes murder be wrong 
or what makes rape be wrong

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is not your belief, not my belief, 
not the beliefs of a culture or a society.

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What makes murder or rape be wrong

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is what you do to someone 
that describes rape or murder.

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It's what you do to another person 
that makes those actions wrong.

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Rape is wrong because 
you are causing harm

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(physical, psychological, emotional, 
or spiritual) to another person.

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So you may say that rape is wrong,
and that would be true,

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but what makes it be wrong 
is not your belief about rape,

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but what rape actually 
does to another person.

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Again, ethics is about what you do,

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and you could discover the evidence 
for what people do to other persons

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by looking at events in the world.

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Like science, medicine, in general, 
ethics is evidence-based.

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So when we say ethics 
is evidence-based,

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we're looking for evidence of events,

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of things you do to
other persons or things.

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So back to Question 1 
in the previous PowerPoint,

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if you said society, culture, family, 
personal perspective, feelings, religion,

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these would not be good 
coherent answers to Question 1,

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and the rest of this PowerPoint will 
attempt to show you that that's the case.

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Let me give one example 
with family and religion.

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How did your family make 
an action be right or wrong?

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I'm not sure what answer could be given.

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Your family could tell you or inform 
you that an action is right or wrong,

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but it couldn't make 
an action be right or wrong.

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Or consider religion.

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A religion can inform you 
(say, through the Bible)

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that an action is wrong,

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say that it's wrong to murder someone.

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But surely the Bible does 
not make murder be wrong;

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it simply informs you that it is 
the case that murder is wrong.

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The most popular answer 
people give to Question 1

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is the top of this list here: 
culture or society,

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which I will use interchangeably.

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And it also is like religion.

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Cultures and society cannot 
make murder be right or wrong.

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Those are just not good answers 
to Question number 1.

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Among those answers 
that I just talked about,

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culture turns out to be 
the most popular answer

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that people give to Question 1.

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Let's focus our attention on culture

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as we try to figure out what makes 
ethics be what it is, what it's about.

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And I don't want to beat this 
into the ground with you,

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but it's important
that you really get this point.

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Going back to Questions 1 and 2,

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there is a big difference between, 
if we're talking culture,

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saying a culture makes 
an action right or wrong

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and saying that a culture informs you 
that an action is right or wrong.

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So let's look at another example 
of this distinction between 1 and 2

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as we focus on the issue of culture.

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On this slide here, Statement number I

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is answering Question number 2 
from the previous PowerPoint.

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That is, it’s answering the question:

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Where do you get 
your ethical beliefs from?

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How do you come to believe what you 
believe about murder, rape, so forth?

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And Statement number 2 below

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is answering Question 1 
from the PowerPoint:

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What makes an action right or wrong?

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Let's take a look here.

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Here, number 1, it says:

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"My cultural upbringing taught 
that murder and rape are wrong,

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and that people should
be treated fairly."

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This is a very good answer to the question
"Where do you get your beliefs from?"

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In this case, 
since we're talking about culture,

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you can say culture informed you 
that murder and rape are wrong.

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But now let's look at 
the second statement here.

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“My cultural upbringing makes
murder and rape be wrong.”

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It makes treating people fairly, right."

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Now, the second statement 
is rather incoherent.

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It's quite problematic.

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What would it mean 
to say that your culture

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makes murder be right or wrong?

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It's just not informative.

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The first statement here is that culture 
teaches you what's right or wrong,

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but it would not make any sense to say 
that your culture has a magic ability

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to make murder be right or wrong 
or [rape] be right or wrong.

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Another example about culture:

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When the Rosebud Sioux Tribe 
says it is ethically wrong

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to build the Keystone XL 
pipeline on its reservation,

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it is not saying Number 1 here,

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namely, “it is ethically wrong 
for the Keystone XL pipeline

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to be built on the Rosebud 
[Sioux] Tribe’s reservation

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because we believe it's ethically wrong.”

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That statement is simply saying it's wrong,
merely because that's what they believe.

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Again, that's sort of like 
the example of basketball.

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What makes it wrong to run with the ball

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is simply what Dr. James Naismith believed 
about how the game should be played.

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We don't want to say that about ethics.

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Rather, the second statement 
is more likely

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what a representative of 
the Sioux Tribe would say,

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namely that it's ethically wrong

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for the pipeline to be built 
on the reservation

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because doing so will cause 
harm to the people there,

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and they could even add 
“to cause problems with sacred ground.”

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Despite all of this, some of you 
might be getting a little irritated

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and say something like the following:

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Why is culture not a good answer 
for making actions be right or wrong?

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Who are we to say culture is wrong?

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That is, isn't it a bit arrogant to say
that another culture is wrong

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if they disagree with us?

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The short answer here is not about
disagreeing with you or anyone else

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as it is that no one makes 
any action right or wrong.

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It's again, what you do in the world.

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So even if your belief is correct 
about murder being wrong,

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your belief is not what 
makes murder wrong;

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it's what someone is 
doing to another person

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when an act like murder occurs.

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Let me try to finally 
summarize this point

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by simply making a distinction

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between what culture 
really addresses,

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and it's not going to be ethics.

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But what is the focus of culture?

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This requires us to make 
some definition distinctions.

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So if we were to focus 
only on culture now.

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and in doing so, you will see

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that it really would be 
unrelated to ethics,

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but let's first define culture.

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I'm looking here at the free dictionary.

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Here's the definition 
found in a dictionary.

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It says culture is the integrated system

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of socially acquired values, 
beliefs, and rules of conduct

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which delimit the range of accepted 
behaviors in any given society.

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So if you want to know 
what culture you belong to,

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there's a set of socially set values

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(values being things that are 
important to a group of people),

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a set of beliefs that those 
people identify with,

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and a certain way of behaving.

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If you value these things, 
believe these beliefs,

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00:17:03,153 --> 00:17:09,469
and act a certain way within a certain 
range that that group has decided,

239
00:17:09,469 --> 00:17:12,656
then you're part of that group.

240
00:17:12,656 --> 00:17:15,791
And that's basically what a culture is.

241
00:17:15,791 --> 00:17:22,802
It includes things like what food is 
identified with a particular culture,

242
00:17:22,802 --> 00:17:27,735
clothes, greetings, things of that sort.

243
00:17:27,735 --> 00:17:33,677
If you don't adopt these values,
these beliefs, and ways of behaving,

244
00:17:33,677 --> 00:17:36,014
that doesn't mean you're 
doing anything wrong.

245
00:17:36,014 --> 00:17:40,436
You're just not identified 
with that particular culture.

246
00:17:40,436 --> 00:17:42,421
This is the definition of culture.

247
00:17:42,421 --> 00:17:44,520
Let's take a look at 
some examples here.

248
00:17:44,520 --> 00:17:53,635
Let's consider customs 
within cultures like weddings.

249
00:17:53,635 --> 00:17:55,407
In the United States,

250
00:17:55,407 --> 00:18:01,338
a typical wedding time-wise
is about 45 minutes to an hour.

251
00:18:02,326 --> 00:18:06,276
In India, it lasts several days.

252
00:18:06,276 --> 00:18:11,982
Neither time the culture of India 
or the United States is right or wrong.

253
00:18:11,982 --> 00:18:16,147
This is because customs and 
cultures are not true or false.

254
00:18:16,147 --> 00:18:19,164
We just don't use words like true or false

255
00:18:19,164 --> 00:18:22,995
or even correct or incorrect
or wrong or right.

256
00:18:22,995 --> 00:18:28,873
It's not wrong to have a wedding 
45 minutes or several days.

257
00:18:28,873 --> 00:18:35,224
These are just different ways that different
cultures perform wedding ceremonies.

258
00:18:38,038 --> 00:18:42,288
But what they do is not based on 
anything out there in the world.

259
00:18:42,288 --> 00:18:43,891
They just simply made a decision

260
00:18:43,891 --> 00:18:47,518
that a wedding will be 
(in the case of the United States)

261
00:18:47,518 --> 00:18:49,800
45 minutes to an hour;

262
00:18:49,800 --> 00:18:52,740
and in India, over several days.

263
00:18:55,715 --> 00:19:01,482
Let's shift from weddings to clothing,
another custom within cultures.

264
00:19:01,482 --> 00:19:03,587
The clothes from the 1970s

265
00:19:03,587 --> 00:19:08,702
is definitely not what most people on 
planet Earth wear in the 21st century,

266
00:19:08,702 --> 00:19:09,885
but that's okay.

267
00:19:09,885 --> 00:19:12,473
There's nothing wrong 
about wearing leisure suits,

268
00:19:12,473 --> 00:19:15,966
which is what these models are wearing.

269
00:19:15,966 --> 00:19:19,726
The culture of the 1970s had 
a preference for leisure suits,

270
00:19:19,726 --> 00:19:25,879
but it was neither right nor wrong 
for them having this preference.

271
00:19:25,879 --> 00:19:30,208
Leisure suits were simply 
the taste at that time.

272
00:19:30,208 --> 00:19:32,072
Here's an important point.

273
00:19:32,072 --> 00:19:36,364
Tastes of any sort are 
not true, they're not false;

274
00:19:36,364 --> 00:19:38,267
they're not right, they're not wrong.

275
00:19:38,267 --> 00:19:41,501
They do change over time, however.

276
00:19:41,501 --> 00:19:43,955
We know this 
because more than likely,

277
00:19:43,955 --> 00:19:48,662
none of you have a taste or 
preference for a leisure suit.

278
00:19:50,147 --> 00:19:56,795
Here's another instance of clothing 
as a custom of a culture.

279
00:19:56,795 --> 00:19:59,517
This is, of course, the 1980s.

280
00:19:59,517 --> 00:20:04,186
The cheesy '80s clothes 
displayed above in these photos

281
00:20:04,186 --> 00:20:09,433
is not better, more correct 
than the clothes of the 1970s.

282
00:20:11,255 --> 00:20:19,799
The big hairdo and the pastel colors 
are the essence of the 1980s.

283
00:20:19,799 --> 00:20:23,139
If you're from that time, 
you would recognize that.

284
00:20:24,073 --> 00:20:27,702
With that said, they are simply 
different ways of wearing clothes,

285
00:20:27,702 --> 00:20:32,996
the clothes you that you see 
these people are wearing,

286
00:20:32,996 --> 00:20:36,305
these actors and actresses.

287
00:20:36,932 --> 00:20:41,982
And these clothes simply 
express the various tastes

288
00:20:41,982 --> 00:20:44,995
that people had at that time.

289
00:20:44,995 --> 00:20:48,141
These tastes are not true, 
they're not false.

290
00:20:48,141 --> 00:20:52,155
We could, if not use the word “taste,”
we could say "preference."

291
00:20:52,155 --> 00:20:56,196
But preferences and tastes 
are not true, they're not false.

292
00:20:56,196 --> 00:20:58,502
They're not right, they're not wrong.

293
00:20:58,502 --> 00:21:02,025
They're just what we had in the 1980s

294
00:21:02,025 --> 00:21:08,136
and we no longer have a taste or a
preference for these kinds of clothes.

295
00:21:08,136 --> 00:21:09,550
The clothes haven't changed.

296
00:21:09,550 --> 00:21:12,029
What has changed is our taste for them.

297
00:21:14,811 --> 00:21:19,253
Here's a final example of clothing
within various cultures.

298
00:21:19,253 --> 00:21:21,046
What you see on the left

299
00:21:21,046 --> 00:21:26,910
would be what's best 
described as hipster culture,

300
00:21:26,910 --> 00:21:31,260
and what's on the right would 
be best described as hip-hop.

301
00:21:31,260 --> 00:21:34,895
These are just different 
ways of wearing clothes,

302
00:21:34,895 --> 00:21:38,901
reflecting different tastes in clothes.

303
00:21:38,901 --> 00:21:45,360
Again, these clothes are neither 
right nor wrong, true or false.

304
00:21:45,360 --> 00:21:51,324
They are simply expressing 
the taste that people living today

305
00:21:51,324 --> 00:21:54,346
(as opposed in the 1980s and ‘70s)

306
00:21:54,346 --> 00:22:02,011
have about what looks good 
to wear in the streets.

307
00:22:02,991 --> 00:22:07,997
So it would be incorrect to say
that the clothes that the hipsters wear

308
00:22:07,997 --> 00:22:14,690
is more correct, better than what 
people wore in the ‘70s or ‘80s

309
00:22:14,690 --> 00:22:20,942
or what hip-hop wears in distinction
from what hipsters wear.

310
00:22:20,942 --> 00:22:26,134
These are just two different ways 
of how people prefer to wear clothes.

311
00:22:26,134 --> 00:22:29,847
There's nothing right or wrong 
about any of these examples.

312
00:22:29,847 --> 00:22:33,080
That's because they simply are 
expressing tastes and preferences

313
00:22:33,080 --> 00:22:35,911
that people have within a culture.

314
00:22:35,911 --> 00:22:37,227
On a side note here,

315
00:22:37,227 --> 00:22:43,537
if you do wear your pants 
as low as the hip hop culture does,

316
00:22:43,537 --> 00:22:50,216
over a period of time, 
your spinal— your skeletal system,

317
00:22:50,216 --> 00:22:57,221
I should say your backbone will be 
elongated as this illustration shows.

318
00:22:57,221 --> 00:22:59,338
(That's a little comedy there for you.)

319
00:23:00,832 --> 00:23:03,825
Our last example here is about greetings.

320
00:23:03,825 --> 00:23:08,660
In some parts of the world 
(in Asia, in particular), people bow.

321
00:23:08,660 --> 00:23:11,007
There's nothing right
or wrong about bowing,

322
00:23:11,007 --> 00:23:16,042
but that's just what people 
in Asia have decided to do

323
00:23:16,042 --> 00:23:19,071
when they express greeting someone.

324
00:23:19,071 --> 00:23:20,746
They have various levels of bowing

325
00:23:20,746 --> 00:23:23,757
based on the respect they 
have for the other person.

326
00:23:23,757 --> 00:23:26,459
Again, that's just what they do.

327
00:23:26,459 --> 00:23:28,923
There's no right way about greeting,

328
00:23:28,923 --> 00:23:33,964
but that's what they chose in their 
culture as a way of greeting people.

329
00:23:33,964 --> 00:23:36,435
In other cultures 
(like in the United States),

330
00:23:36,435 --> 00:23:38,757
people shake hands.

331
00:23:38,757 --> 00:23:41,922
That's the way of greeting people 
in this country in particular.

332
00:23:41,922 --> 00:23:45,920
There's nothing right or 
wrong about shaking hands.

333
00:23:46,753 --> 00:23:51,348
But it's interesting here, 
whether you bow or shake hands,

334
00:23:51,348 --> 00:23:56,913
you could do both and there's nothing 
ethically wrong or right about either one,

335
00:23:56,913 --> 00:24:02,994
just different preferences or different 
conduct behavior, I should say,

336
00:24:02,994 --> 00:24:08,202
that people adopted that identify 
them within a given culture.

337
00:24:08,202 --> 00:24:11,322
And ethics is not that way.

338
00:24:11,322 --> 00:24:17,894
It's not about what we believe we 
should do for some arbitrary reason

339
00:24:17,894 --> 00:24:19,563
that we just made that decision,

340
00:24:19,563 --> 00:24:23,394
like inventing a sport 
or a game like chess.

341
00:24:23,394 --> 00:24:26,194
It's about what we do in the world

342
00:24:26,194 --> 00:24:32,410
in terms of the consequences of our 
action and behavior toward others.

343
00:24:32,410 --> 00:24:37,297
That's what ethics is going to be about
in a large sense, in a broad sense.

344
00:24:37,297 --> 00:24:41,426
It won't be based on our 
mere beliefs about the world,

345
00:24:41,426 --> 00:24:44,131
but in fact, what we do 
out there in the world

346
00:24:44,131 --> 00:24:46,894
toward others and other living beings.

347
00:24:48,926 --> 00:24:54,179
Now I have tried in several ways 
to describe what culture is

348
00:24:54,179 --> 00:24:56,661
and indirectly make the claim

349
00:24:56,661 --> 00:25:02,142
that culture and ethics are not 
related in any significant way.

350
00:25:02,142 --> 00:25:09,159
But with that said, there 
are those people in society

351
00:25:09,159 --> 00:25:15,439
who believe that culture 
is the foundation of ethics,

352
00:25:15,439 --> 00:25:20,382
and this view is called 
cultural or ethical relativism.

353
00:25:20,382 --> 00:25:22,313
Okay, so I'm going to let you know now

354
00:25:22,313 --> 00:25:28,934
that this is a view that I will be 
critiquing as we move along.

355
00:25:28,934 --> 00:25:32,484
It really holds no place in ethics,

356
00:25:32,484 --> 00:25:36,070
but it's very common, 
as I've been trying to point out.

357
00:25:36,070 --> 00:25:41,869
Cultural relativism has two premises, 
I guess you could say.

358
00:25:41,869 --> 00:25:44,183
One is that not only is it true

359
00:25:44,183 --> 00:25:49,527
that ethical beliefs vary
from culture to culture,

360
00:25:49,527 --> 00:25:53,012
such that there's a set of 
ethical beliefs for each culture,

361
00:25:53,012 --> 00:25:57,430
but each culture’s set of beliefs 
is normative and true.

362
00:25:59,233 --> 00:26:00,988
Okay, so let's unpack that.

363
00:26:00,988 --> 00:26:04,923
The first claim is not controversial.

364
00:26:04,923 --> 00:26:10,728
That is, if you go to a given culture
in some country somewhere,

365
00:26:10,728 --> 00:26:18,207
that the ethical beliefs of that 
culture would be likely different

366
00:26:18,207 --> 00:26:21,950
from the ethical beliefs 
of another culture

367
00:26:21,950 --> 00:26:24,143
in another country somewhere.

368
00:26:24,143 --> 00:26:26,516
So this is not radical.

369
00:26:26,516 --> 00:26:30,227
This is not a mysterious 
or problematic claim.

370
00:26:30,227 --> 00:26:34,105
In fact, we have a name for Number I,

371
00:26:34,105 --> 00:26:37,791
and that's what we call 
descriptive relativism.

372
00:26:37,791 --> 00:26:41,893
Descriptive relativism basically says

373
00:26:41,893 --> 00:26:45,995
that if you go to a culture 
or investigate a culture

374
00:26:45,995 --> 00:26:50,162
as an anthropologist or as a sociologist,

375
00:26:50,162 --> 00:26:57,576
you would discover that various
cultures have different beliefs,

376
00:26:57,576 --> 00:27:03,739
whether they be ethical beliefs or 
beliefs about any number of issues, okay?

377
00:27:04,850 --> 00:27:11,112
So the person who proposes
descriptive relativism

378
00:27:11,112 --> 00:27:14,516
is simply, as the phrase is stated here,

379
00:27:14,516 --> 00:27:20,584
simply describing the relativism 
that exists among different cultures.

380
00:27:20,584 --> 00:27:21,576
Okay?

381
00:27:21,576 --> 00:27:26,757
So if an anthropologist or a sociologist
said something like this:

382
00:27:26,757 --> 00:27:30,382
“In culture X, they believe in honor killing,

383
00:27:30,382 --> 00:27:35,158
where the family could 
stone to death their daughter.

384
00:27:35,158 --> 00:27:38,652
That's just what they believe in culture X.

385
00:27:38,652 --> 00:27:42,246
But culture Y has a 
totally different view

386
00:27:42,246 --> 00:27:47,173
that says people should not be killed 
because they dishonor the family.”

387
00:27:48,010 --> 00:27:51,405
The person who reports this information

388
00:27:51,405 --> 00:27:55,156
is not taking a side or a position.

389
00:27:55,156 --> 00:27:58,840
They're simply describing 
two different viewpoints

390
00:27:58,840 --> 00:28:01,574
about, say, marriage,

391
00:28:01,574 --> 00:28:09,081
where one believes that the daughter 
should marry who the parents have selected;

392
00:28:09,081 --> 00:28:13,513
and in another culture, 
they don't hold that same view.

393
00:28:13,513 --> 00:28:19,030
So descriptive relativism does not 
favor a certain ethical position.

394
00:28:19,030 --> 00:28:22,057
It simply describes the variation

395
00:28:22,057 --> 00:28:26,487
that is out there in the world 
among different cultures.

396
00:28:26,487 --> 00:28:30,106
So that's the first premise 
of cultural relativism,

397
00:28:30,106 --> 00:28:34,204
which is that there are 
various beliefs in the world

398
00:28:34,204 --> 00:28:37,957
that are held by various cultures.

399
00:28:37,957 --> 00:28:41,050
Ethical beliefs vary
from culture to culture.

400
00:28:41,050 --> 00:28:43,844
That is, again, not problematic.

401
00:28:43,844 --> 00:28:47,540
Premise number 2 is 
where we have problems.

402
00:28:47,540 --> 00:28:54,251
Here, cultural relativism says
that each culture's ethical beliefs

403
00:28:54,251 --> 00:28:57,932
are normative and true,

404
00:28:57,932 --> 00:29:00,737
meaning [that] this is 
how things out to be done

405
00:29:00,737 --> 00:29:06,170
and these beliefs are true 
within the context of that culture.

406
00:29:06,170 --> 00:29:12,703
That's like saying that if Hitler believed 
that Aryans were the superior race,

407
00:29:12,703 --> 00:29:15,488
that would be true within his culture,

408
00:29:15,488 --> 00:29:17,891
meaning, not because they just believe it,

409
00:29:17,891 --> 00:29:26,576
but it's actually true that Aryans are 
the superior race within that culture.

410
00:29:26,576 --> 00:29:27,548
Okay?

411
00:29:27,548 --> 00:29:30,500
So Premise number 2 
is what's problematic.

412
00:29:30,500 --> 00:29:37,485
It is making a claim that not only 
do beliefs vary from culture to culture,

413
00:29:37,485 --> 00:29:42,264
but these beliefs are actually true 
and they have a normative status,

414
00:29:42,264 --> 00:29:48,825
meaning that you should honor and 
be bounded to them or obey them.

415
00:29:48,825 --> 00:29:50,260
Okay?

416
00:29:50,260 --> 00:29:53,074
Descriptive relativism, again,
does not make that claim.

417
00:29:53,074 --> 00:29:57,448
It just simply says that ethical 
beliefs vary from place to place.

418
00:29:58,710 --> 00:30:04,604
Cultural relativism says 
the mere belief of a claim

419
00:30:04,604 --> 00:30:07,010
is what makes it be true.

420
00:30:07,010 --> 00:30:09,649
It is not considered true;

421
00:30:09,649 --> 00:30:14,582
it actually is true within 
that particular culture.

422
00:30:14,582 --> 00:30:19,520
Cultural relativism is problematic. 
Descriptive relativism isn't.

423
00:30:21,329 --> 00:30:26,488
So in conclusion, what I've tried to do here

424
00:30:26,488 --> 00:30:33,616
is point out that cultures consist of 
normative beliefs, values, and actions

425
00:30:33,616 --> 00:30:35,287
that are neither true nor false,

426
00:30:35,287 --> 00:30:38,448
meaning there's a certain expectation

427
00:30:38,448 --> 00:30:42,327
of how you ought to 
believe within a culture,

428
00:30:42,327 --> 00:30:45,612
how you ought to see things.

429
00:30:45,612 --> 00:30:47,899
There's a certain way 
that you ought to value,

430
00:30:47,899 --> 00:30:50,365
there are certain values you ought to have,

431
00:30:50,365 --> 00:30:53,299
and there are certain things 
you ought to do within a culture

432
00:30:53,299 --> 00:30:58,273
that are neither true nor false, 
via things like customs, for example.

433
00:30:58,651 --> 00:31:00,482
Ethics, on the other hand,

434
00:31:00,482 --> 00:31:05,984
consists of beliefs, values, 
and actions that are objective

435
00:31:05,984 --> 00:31:10,149
and involve things about 
what we do to each other,

436
00:31:10,149 --> 00:31:12,355
things we do in the real world,

437
00:31:12,355 --> 00:31:14,436
and they are true,

438
00:31:14,436 --> 00:31:19,659
regardless of the culture 
that they are expressed in.

439
00:31:19,659 --> 00:31:22,667
The culture does not determine ethics.

440
00:31:22,667 --> 00:31:26,147
But there is a view 
that denies what I just said,

441
00:31:26,147 --> 00:31:28,387
and this is called cultural relativism,

442
00:31:28,387 --> 00:31:32,817
and we will destruct and 
critique cultural relativism

443
00:31:32,817 --> 00:31:34,941
in the next PowerPoint.