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

I asked you to answer 
two questions on your own.

And I'm really concerned 
about the first question:

What makes an action 
be right or wrong?

I'm not really interested 
in the second question,

but when students answer 
the first question,

they often give an answer 
that is adequate or appropriate

for the second question,

which is: Where do you 
get your beliefs from?

The focus of this PowerPoint

will look at mainly 
the first question,

but look at the second question as well

and point out or to reiterate

that ethics is basically based 
on what you do to someone

or how you affect someone,

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

And the position or the view 
that holds that latter claim

is called cultural relativism.

I will discuss it in this PowerPoint,

but critique it in the third 
PowerPoint after this one.

Let's take a look at four examples

that will illustrate 
the distinction between

what makes something 
be right or wrong

and the mere belief where 
you get your beliefs from.

To make the point again,

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

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

And where do you get beliefs from?

You see these two questions 
on the far left.

Let's consider four examples.

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

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

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

But what makes the belief true

is that oatmeal actually does 
reduce cholesterol in your body.

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

is what oatmeal does in the world,

not your belief but what 
oatmeal does to your body.

The second example, suppose it's true:

"Sometimes Hmong patients 
refuse surgery and blood draws."

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

supposing it is true, 
you can give many answers,

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

What makes the belief true

is simply that this is what 
Hmong people sometimes do.

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

in a hospital or medical clinic.

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

Let's suppose that statement is true.

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

Why do you believe it?

Basically, that's the question.

Again, many answers could be given.

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

or from what a dietitian 
told you about certain diets.

But what makes the belief true

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

So the truth of the belief 
is not based on you

or based on your dietitian or a magazine.

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

something that is happening in the world.

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

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

So these first three examples 
are definitely evidence-based,

meaning that they are true 
and you discover they are true

by evidence of things 
that they do in the world.

Now the fourth example 
is quite different.

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

when you play basketball.

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

Again, any number of 
answers could be given.

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

or your neighborhood friends 
at the park or your parents.

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

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

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

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

what makes that belief true,

unlike the other three 
examples on this slide here,

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

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

So this last example actually 
is not evidence-based

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

namely what this man, 
Dr. James Naismith believes

about how his game that he 
invented should be played.

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

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

and whether or not oatmeal reduces 
cholesterol has everything to do

with the interaction between 
oatmeal and cholesterol.

The same thing would be true
about Hmong patients.

What makes it true 
that they refuse surgery

is, in fact, that they refuse surgery.

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

is simply the effect 
a diet has on your body.

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

is not something about the world,

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

there was nothing called basketball.

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

because the truth of that statement

is based in his mind, 
Dr. James Naismith.

The truth of what oatmeal 
does to cholesterol

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

Again, the same thing with 
blood draws with Hmong patients

and diets and losing weight.

The point overall 
that I want to make here

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

not like the last example 
with basketball.

What makes murder be wrong 
or what makes rape be wrong

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

What makes murder or rape be wrong

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

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

Rape is wrong because 
you are causing harm

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

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

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

but what rape actually 
does to another person.

Again, ethics is about what you do,

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

by looking at events in the world.

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

So when we say ethics 
is evidence-based,

we're looking for evidence of events,

of things you do to
other persons or things.

So back to Question 1 
in the previous PowerPoint,

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

these would not be good 
coherent answers to Question 1,

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

Let me give one example 
with family and religion.

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

I'm not sure what answer could be given.

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

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

Or consider religion.

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

that an action is wrong,

say that it's wrong to murder someone.

But surely the Bible does 
not make murder be wrong;

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

The most popular answer 
people give to Question 1

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

which I will use interchangeably.

And it also is like religion.

Cultures and society cannot 
make murder be right or wrong.

Those are just not good answers 
to Question number 1.

Among those answers 
that I just talked about,

culture turns out to be 
the most popular answer

that people give to Question 1.

Let's focus our attention on culture

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

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

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

Going back to Questions 1 and 2,

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

saying a culture makes 
an action right or wrong

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

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

as we focus on the issue of culture.

On this slide here, Statement number I

is answering Question number 2 
from the previous PowerPoint.

That is, it’s answering the question:

Where do you get 
your ethical beliefs from?

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

And Statement number 2 below

is answering Question 1 
from the PowerPoint:

What makes an action right or wrong?

Let's take a look here.

Here, number 1, it says:

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

and that people should
be treated fairly."

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

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

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

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

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

It makes treating people fairly, right."

Now, the second statement 
is rather incoherent.

It's quite problematic.

What would it mean 
to say that your culture

makes murder be right or wrong?

It's just not informative.

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

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

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

Another example about culture:

When the Rosebud Sioux Tribe 
says it is ethically wrong

to build the Keystone XL 
pipeline on its reservation,

it is not saying Number 1 here,

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

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

because we believe it's ethically wrong.”

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

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

What makes it wrong to run with the ball

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

We don't want to say that about ethics.

Rather, the second statement 
is more likely

what a representative of 
the Sioux Tribe would say,

namely that it's ethically wrong

for the pipeline to be built 
on the reservation

because doing so will cause 
harm to the people there,

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

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

and say something like the following:

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

Who are we to say culture is wrong?

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

if they disagree with us?

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

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

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

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

your belief is not what 
makes murder wrong;

it's what someone is 
doing to another person

when an act like murder occurs.

Let me try to finally 
summarize this point

by simply making a distinction

between what culture 
really addresses,

and it's not going to be ethics.

But what is the focus of culture?

This requires us to make 
some definition distinctions.

So if we were to focus 
only on culture now.

and in doing so, you will see

that it really would be 
unrelated to ethics,

but let's first define culture.

I'm looking here at the free dictionary.

Here's the definition 
found in a dictionary.

It says culture is the integrated system

of socially acquired values, 
beliefs, and rules of conduct

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

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

there's a set of socially set values

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

a set of beliefs that those 
people identify with,

and a certain way of behaving.

If you value these things, 
believe these beliefs,

and act a certain way within a certain 
range that that group has decided,

then you're part of that group.

And that's basically what a culture is.

It includes things like what food is 
identified with a particular culture,

clothes, greetings, things of that sort.

If you don't adopt these values,
these beliefs, and ways of behaving,

that doesn't mean you're 
doing anything wrong.

You're just not identified 
with that particular culture.

This is the definition of culture.

Let's take a look at 
some examples here.

Let's consider customs 
within cultures like weddings.

In the United States,

a typical wedding time-wise
is about 45 minutes to an hour.

In India, it lasts several days.

Neither time the culture of India 
or the United States is right or wrong.

This is because customs and 
cultures are not true or false.

We just don't use words like true or false

or even correct or incorrect
or wrong or right.

It's not wrong to have a wedding 
45 minutes or several days.

These are just different ways that different
cultures perform wedding ceremonies.

But what they do is not based on 
anything out there in the world.

They just simply made a decision

that a wedding will be 
(in the case of the United States)

45 minutes to an hour;

and in India, over several days.

Let's shift from weddings to clothing,
another custom within cultures.

The clothes from the 1970s

is definitely not what most people on 
planet Earth wear in the 21st century,

but that's okay.

There's nothing wrong 
about wearing leisure suits,

which is what these models are wearing.

The culture of the 1970s had 
a preference for leisure suits,

but it was neither right nor wrong 
for them having this preference.

Leisure suits were simply 
the taste at that time.

Here's an important point.

Tastes of any sort are 
not true, they're not false;

they're not right, they're not wrong.

They do change over time, however.

We know this 
because more than likely,

none of you have a taste or 
preference for a leisure suit.

Here's another instance of clothing 
as a custom of a culture.

This is, of course, the 1980s.

The cheesy '80s clothes 
displayed above in these photos

is not better, more correct 
than the clothes of the 1970s.

The big hairdo and the pastel colors 
are the essence of the 1980s.

If you're from that time, 
you would recognize that.

With that said, they are simply 
different ways of wearing clothes,

the clothes you that you see 
these people are wearing,

these actors and actresses.

And these clothes simply 
express the various tastes

that people had at that time.

These tastes are not true, 
they're not false.

We could, if not use the word “taste,”
we could say "preference."

But preferences and tastes 
are not true, they're not false.

They're not right, they're not wrong.

They're just what we had in the 1980s

and we no longer have a taste or a
preference for these kinds of clothes.

The clothes haven't changed.

What has changed is our taste for them.

Here's a final example of clothing
within various cultures.

What you see on the left

would be what's best 
described as hipster culture,

and what's on the right would 
be best described as hip-hop.

These are just different 
ways of wearing clothes,

reflecting different tastes in clothes.

Again, these clothes are neither 
right nor wrong, true or false.

They are simply expressing 
the taste that people living today

(as opposed in the 1980s and ‘70s)

have about what looks good 
to wear in the streets.

So it would be incorrect to say
that the clothes that the hipsters wear

is more correct, better than what 
people wore in the ‘70s or ‘80s

or what hip-hop wears in distinction
from what hipsters wear.

These are just two different ways 
of how people prefer to wear clothes.

There's nothing right or wrong 
about any of these examples.

That's because they simply are 
expressing tastes and preferences

that people have within a culture.

On a side note here,

if you do wear your pants 
as low as the hip hop culture does,

over a period of time, 
your spinal— your skeletal system,

I should say your backbone will be 
elongated as this illustration shows.

(That's a little comedy there for you.)

Our last example here is about greetings.

In some parts of the world 
(in Asia, in particular), people bow.

There's nothing right
or wrong about bowing,

but that's just what people 
in Asia have decided to do

when they express greeting someone.

They have various levels of bowing

based on the respect they 
have for the other person.

Again, that's just what they do.

There's no right way about greeting,

but that's what they chose in their 
culture as a way of greeting people.

In other cultures 
(like in the United States),

people shake hands.

That's the way of greeting people 
in this country in particular.

There's nothing right or 
wrong about shaking hands.

But it's interesting here, 
whether you bow or shake hands,

you could do both and there's nothing 
ethically wrong or right about either one,

just different preferences or different 
conduct behavior, I should say,

that people adopted that identify 
them within a given culture.

And ethics is not that way.

It's not about what we believe we 
should do for some arbitrary reason

that we just made that decision,

like inventing a sport 
or a game like chess.

It's about what we do in the world

in terms of the consequences of our 
action and behavior toward others.

That's what ethics is going to be about
in a large sense, in a broad sense.

It won't be based on our 
mere beliefs about the world,

but in fact, what we do 
out there in the world

toward others and other living beings.

Now I have tried in several ways 
to describe what culture is

and indirectly make the claim

that culture and ethics are not 
related in any significant way.

But with that said, there 
are those people in society

who believe that culture 
is the foundation of ethics,

and this view is called 
cultural or ethical relativism.

Okay, so I'm going to let you know now

that this is a view that I will be 
critiquing as we move along.

It really holds no place in ethics,

but it's very common, 
as I've been trying to point out.

Cultural relativism has two premises, 
I guess you could say.

One is that not only is it true

that ethical beliefs vary
from culture to culture,

such that there's a set of 
ethical beliefs for each culture,

but each culture’s set of beliefs 
is normative and true.

Okay, so let's unpack that.

The first claim is not controversial.

That is, if you go to a given culture
in some country somewhere,

that the ethical beliefs of that 
culture would be likely different

from the ethical beliefs 
of another culture

in another country somewhere.

So this is not radical.

This is not a mysterious 
or problematic claim.

In fact, we have a name for Number I,

and that's what we call 
descriptive relativism.

Descriptive relativism basically says

that if you go to a culture 
or investigate a culture

as an anthropologist or as a sociologist,

you would discover that various
cultures have different beliefs,

whether they be ethical beliefs or 
beliefs about any number of issues, okay?

So the person who proposes
descriptive relativism

is simply, as the phrase is stated here,

simply describing the relativism 
that exists among different cultures.

Okay?

So if an anthropologist or a sociologist
said something like this:

“In culture X, they believe in honor killing,

where the family could 
stone to death their daughter.

That's just what they believe in culture X.

But culture Y has a 
totally different view

that says people should not be killed 
because they dishonor the family.”

The person who reports this information

is not taking a side or a position.

They're simply describing 
two different viewpoints

about, say, marriage,

where one believes that the daughter 
should marry who the parents have selected;

and in another culture, 
they don't hold that same view.

So descriptive relativism does not 
favor a certain ethical position.

It simply describes the variation

that is out there in the world 
among different cultures.

So that's the first premise 
of cultural relativism,

which is that there are 
various beliefs in the world

that are held by various cultures.

Ethical beliefs vary
from culture to culture.

That is, again, not problematic.

Premise number 2 is 
where we have problems.

Here, cultural relativism says
that each culture's ethical beliefs

are normative and true,

meaning [that] this is 
how things out to be done

and these beliefs are true 
within the context of that culture.

That's like saying that if Hitler believed 
that Aryans were the superior race,

that would be true within his culture,

meaning, not because they just believe it,

but it's actually true that Aryans are 
the superior race within that culture.

Okay?

So Premise number 2 
is what's problematic.

It is making a claim that not only 
do beliefs vary from culture to culture,

but these beliefs are actually true 
and they have a normative status,

meaning that you should honor and 
be bounded to them or obey them.

Okay?

Descriptive relativism, again,
does not make that claim.

It just simply says that ethical 
beliefs vary from place to place.

Cultural relativism says 
the mere belief of a claim

is what makes it be true.

It is not considered true;

it actually is true within 
that particular culture.

Cultural relativism is problematic. 
Descriptive relativism isn't.

So in conclusion, what I've tried to do here

is point out that cultures consist of 
normative beliefs, values, and actions

that are neither true nor false,

meaning there's a certain expectation

of how you ought to 
believe within a culture,

how you ought to see things.

There's a certain way 
that you ought to value,

there are certain values you ought to have,

and there are certain things 
you ought to do within a culture

that are neither true nor false, 
via things like customs, for example.

Ethics, on the other hand,

consists of beliefs, values, 
and actions that are objective

and involve things about 
what we do to each other,

things we do in the real world,

and they are true,

regardless of the culture 
that they are expressed in.

The culture does not determine ethics.

But there is a view 
that denies what I just said,

and this is called cultural relativism,

and we will destruct and 
critique cultural relativism

in the next PowerPoint.