WEBVTT

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

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then you're part of that group.

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And that's basically what a culture is.

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

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clothes, greetings, things of that sort.

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

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

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You're just not identified 
with that particular culture.

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This is the definition of culture.

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Let's take a look at 
some examples here.

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Let's consider customs 
within cultures like weddings.

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In the United States,

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

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In India, it lasts several days.

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

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

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We just don't use words like true or false

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or even correct or incorrect
or wrong or right.

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

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

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

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They just simply made a decision

00:18:43.891 --> 00:18:47.518
that a wedding will be 
(in the case of the United States)

00:18:47.518 --> 00:18:49.800
45 minutes to an hour;

00:18:49.800 --> 00:18:52.740
and in India, over several days.

00:18:55.715 --> 00:19:01.482
Let's shift from weddings to clothing,
another custom within cultures.

00:19:01.482 --> 00:19:03.587
The clothes from the 1970s

00:19:03.587 --> 00:19:08.702
is definitely not what most people on 
planet Earth wear in the 21st century,

00:19:08.702 --> 00:19:09.885
but that's okay.

00:19:09.885 --> 00:19:12.473
There's nothing wrong 
about wearing leisure suits,

00:19:12.473 --> 00:19:15.966
which is what these models are wearing.

00:19:15.966 --> 00:19:19.726
The culture of the 1970s had 
a preference for leisure suits,

00:19:19.726 --> 00:19:25.879
but it was neither right nor wrong 
for them having this preference.

00:19:25.879 --> 00:19:30.208
Leisure suits were simply 
the taste at that time.

00:19:30.208 --> 00:19:32.072
Here's an important point.

00:19:32.072 --> 00:19:36.364
Tastes of any sort are 
not true, they're not false;

00:19:36.364 --> 00:19:38.267
they're not right, they're not wrong.

00:19:38.267 --> 00:19:41.501
They do change over time, however.

00:19:41.501 --> 00:19:43.955
We know this 
because more than likely,

00:19:43.955 --> 00:19:48.662
none of you have a taste or 
preference for a leisure suit.

00:19:50.147 --> 00:19:56.795
Here's another instance of clothing 
as a custom of a culture.

00:19:56.795 --> 00:19:59.517
This is, of course, the 1980s.

00:19:59.517 --> 00:20:04.186
The cheesy '80s clothes 
displayed above in these photos

00:20:04.186 --> 00:20:09.433
is not better, more correct 
than the clothes of the 1970s.

00:20:11.255 --> 00:20:19.799
The big hairdo and the pastel colors 
are the essence of the 1980s.

00:20:19.799 --> 00:20:23.139
If you're from that time, 
you would recognize that.

00:20:24.073 --> 00:20:27.702
With that said, they are simply 
different ways of wearing clothes,

00:20:27.702 --> 00:20:32.996
the clothes you that you see 
these people are wearing,

00:20:32.996 --> 00:20:36.305
these actors and actresses.

00:20:36.932 --> 00:20:41.982
And these clothes simply 
express the various tastes

00:20:41.982 --> 00:20:44.995
that people had at that time.

00:20:44.995 --> 00:20:48.141
These tastes are not true, 
they're not false.

00:20:48.141 --> 00:20:52.155
We could, if not use the word “taste,”
we could say "preference."

00:20:52.155 --> 00:20:56.196
But preferences and tastes 
are not true, they're not false.

00:20:56.196 --> 00:20:58.502
They're not right, they're not wrong.

00:20:58.502 --> 00:21:02.025
They're just what we had in the 1980s

00:21:02.025 --> 00:21:08.136
and we no longer have a taste or a
preference for these kinds of clothes.

00:21:08.136 --> 00:21:09.550
The clothes haven't changed.

00:21:09.550 --> 00:21:12.029
What has changed is our taste for them.

00:21:14.811 --> 00:21:19.253
Here's a final example of clothing
within various cultures.

00:21:19.253 --> 00:21:21.046
What you see on the left

00:21:21.046 --> 00:21:26.910
would be what's best 
described as hipster culture,

00:21:26.910 --> 00:21:31.260
and what's on the right would 
be best described as hip-hop.

00:21:31.260 --> 00:21:34.895
These are just different 
ways of wearing clothes,

00:21:34.895 --> 00:21:38.901
reflecting different tastes in clothes.

00:21:38.901 --> 00:21:45.360
Again, these clothes are neither 
right nor wrong, true or false.

00:21:45.360 --> 00:21:51.324
They are simply expressing 
the taste that people living today

00:21:51.324 --> 00:21:54.346
(as opposed in the 1980s and ‘70s)

00:21:54.346 --> 00:22:02.011
have about what looks good 
to wear in the streets.

00:22:02.991 --> 00:22:07.997
So it would be incorrect to say
that the clothes that the hipsters wear

00:22:07.997 --> 00:22:14.690
is more correct, better than what 
people wore in the ‘70s or ‘80s

00:22:14.690 --> 00:22:20.942
or what hip-hop wears in distinction
from what hipsters wear.

00:22:20.942 --> 00:22:26.134
These are just two different ways 
of how people prefer to wear clothes.

00:22:26.134 --> 00:22:29.847
There's nothing right or wrong 
about any of these examples.

00:22:29.847 --> 00:22:33.080
That's because they simply are 
expressing tastes and preferences

00:22:33.080 --> 00:22:35.911
that people have within a culture.

00:22:35.911 --> 00:22:37.227
On a side note here,

00:22:37.227 --> 00:22:43.537
if you do wear your pants 
as low as the hip hop culture does,

00:22:43.537 --> 00:22:50.216
over a period of time, 
your spinal— your skeletal system,

00:22:50.216 --> 00:22:57.221
I should say your backbone will be 
elongated as this illustration shows.

00:22:57.221 --> 00:22:59.338
(That's a little comedy there for you.)

00:23:00.832 --> 00:23:03.825
Our last example here is about greetings.

00:23:03.825 --> 00:23:08.660
In some parts of the world 
(in Asia, in particular), people bow.

00:23:08.660 --> 00:23:11.007
There's nothing right
or wrong about bowing,

00:23:11.007 --> 00:23:16.042
but that's just what people 
in Asia have decided to do

00:23:16.042 --> 00:23:19.071
when they express greeting someone.

00:23:19.071 --> 00:23:20.746
They have various levels of bowing

00:23:20.746 --> 00:23:23.757
based on the respect they 
have for the other person.

00:23:23.757 --> 00:23:26.459
Again, that's just what they do.

00:23:26.459 --> 00:23:28.923
There's no right way about greeting,

00:23:28.923 --> 00:23:33.964
but that's what they chose in their 
culture as a way of greeting people.

00:23:33.964 --> 00:23:36.435
In other cultures 
(like in the United States),

00:23:36.435 --> 00:23:38.757
people shake hands.

00:23:38.757 --> 00:23:41.922
That's the way of greeting people 
in this country in particular.

00:23:41.922 --> 00:23:45.920
There's nothing right or 
wrong about shaking hands.

00:23:46.753 --> 00:23:51.348
But it's interesting here, 
whether you bow or shake hands,

00:23:51.348 --> 00:23:56.913
you could do both and there's nothing 
ethically wrong or right about either one,

00:23:56.913 --> 00:24:02.994
just different preferences or different 
conduct behavior, I should say,

00:24:02.994 --> 00:24:08.202
that people adopted that identify 
them within a given culture.

00:24:08.202 --> 00:24:11.322
And ethics is not that way.

00:24:11.322 --> 00:24:17.894
It's not about what we believe we 
should do for some arbitrary reason

00:24:17.894 --> 00:24:19.563
that we just made that decision,

00:24:19.563 --> 00:24:23.394
like inventing a sport 
or a game like chess.

00:24:23.394 --> 00:24:26.194
It's about what we do in the world

00:24:26.194 --> 00:24:32.410
in terms of the consequences of our 
action and behavior toward others.

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.

00:24:37.297 --> 00:24:41.426
It won't be based on our 
mere beliefs about the world,

00:24:41.426 --> 00:24:44.131
but in fact, what we do 
out there in the world

00:24:44.131 --> 00:24:46.894
toward others and other living beings.

00:24:48.926 --> 00:24:54.179
Now I have tried in several ways 
to describe what culture is

00:24:54.179 --> 00:24:56.661
and indirectly make the claim

00:24:56.661 --> 00:25:02.142
that culture and ethics are not 
related in any significant way.

00:25:02.142 --> 00:25:09.159
But with that said, there 
are those people in society

00:25:09.159 --> 00:25:15.439
who believe that culture 
is the foundation of ethics,

00:25:15.439 --> 00:25:20.382
and this view is called 
cultural or ethical relativism.

00:25:20.382 --> 00:25:22.313
Okay, so I'm going to let you know now

00:25:22.313 --> 00:25:28.934
that this is a view that I will be 
critiquing as we move along.

00:25:28.934 --> 00:25:32.484
It really holds no place in ethics,

00:25:32.484 --> 00:25:36.070
but it's very common, 
as I've been trying to point out.

00:25:36.070 --> 00:25:41.869
Cultural relativism has two premises, 
I guess you could say.

00:25:41.869 --> 00:25:44.183
One is that not only is it true

00:25:44.183 --> 00:25:49.527
that ethical beliefs vary
from culture to culture,

00:25:49.527 --> 00:25:53.012
such that there's a set of 
ethical beliefs for each culture,

00:25:53.012 --> 00:25:57.430
but each culture’s set of beliefs 
is normative and true.

00:25:59.233 --> 00:26:00.988
Okay, so let's unpack that.

00:26:00.988 --> 00:26:04.923
The first claim is not controversial.

00:26:04.923 --> 00:26:10.728
That is, if you go to a given culture
in some country somewhere,

00:26:10.728 --> 00:26:18.207
that the ethical beliefs of that 
culture would be likely different

00:26:18.207 --> 00:26:21.950
from the ethical beliefs 
of another culture

00:26:21.950 --> 00:26:24.143
in another country somewhere.

00:26:24.143 --> 00:26:26.516
So this is not radical.

00:26:26.516 --> 00:26:30.227
This is not a mysterious 
or problematic claim.

00:26:30.227 --> 00:26:34.105
In fact, we have a name for Number I,

00:26:34.105 --> 00:26:37.791
and that's what we call 
descriptive relativism.

00:26:37.791 --> 00:26:41.893
Descriptive relativism basically says

00:26:41.893 --> 00:26:45.995
that if you go to a culture 
or investigate a culture

00:26:45.995 --> 00:26:50.162
as an anthropologist or as a sociologist,

00:26:50.162 --> 00:26:57.576
you would discover that various
cultures have different beliefs,

00:26:57.576 --> 00:27:03.739
whether they be ethical beliefs or 
beliefs about any number of issues, okay?

00:27:04.850 --> 00:27:11.112
So the person who proposes
descriptive relativism

00:27:11.112 --> 00:27:14.516
is simply, as the phrase is stated here,

00:27:14.516 --> 00:27:20.584
simply describing the relativism 
that exists among different cultures.

00:27:20.584 --> 00:27:21.576
Okay?

00:27:21.576 --> 00:27:26.757
So if an anthropologist or a sociologist
said something like this:

00:27:26.757 --> 00:27:30.382
“In culture X, they believe in honor killing,

00:27:30.382 --> 00:27:35.158
where the family could 
stone to death their daughter.

00:27:35.158 --> 00:27:38.652
That's just what they believe in culture X.

00:27:38.652 --> 00:27:42.246
But culture Y has a 
totally different view

00:27:42.246 --> 00:27:47.173
that says people should not be killed 
because they dishonor the family.”

00:27:48.010 --> 00:27:51.405
The person who reports this information

00:27:51.405 --> 00:27:55.156
is not taking a side or a position.

00:27:55.156 --> 00:27:58.840
They're simply describing 
two different viewpoints

00:27:58.840 --> 00:28:01.574
about, say, marriage,

00:28:01.574 --> 00:28:09.081
where one believes that the daughter 
should marry who the parents have selected;

00:28:09.081 --> 00:28:13.513
and in another culture, 
they don't hold that same view.

00:28:13.513 --> 00:28:19.030
So descriptive relativism does not 
favor a certain ethical position.

00:28:19.030 --> 00:28:22.057
It simply describes the variation

00:28:22.057 --> 00:28:26.487
that is out there in the world 
among different cultures.

00:28:26.487 --> 00:28:30.106
So that's the first premise 
of cultural relativism,

00:28:30.106 --> 00:28:34.204
which is that there are 
various beliefs in the world

00:28:34.204 --> 00:28:37.957
that are held by various cultures.

00:28:37.957 --> 00:28:41.050
Ethical beliefs vary
from culture to culture.

00:28:41.050 --> 00:28:43.844
That is, again, not problematic.

00:28:43.844 --> 00:28:47.540
Premise number 2 is 
where we have problems.

00:28:47.540 --> 00:28:54.251
Here, cultural relativism says
that each culture's ethical beliefs

00:28:54.251 --> 00:28:57.932
are normative and true,

00:28:57.932 --> 00:29:00.737
meaning [that] this is 
how things out to be done

00:29:00.737 --> 00:29:06.170
and these beliefs are true 
within the context of that culture.

00:29:06.170 --> 00:29:12.703
That's like saying that if Hitler believed 
that Aryans were the superior race,

00:29:12.703 --> 00:29:15.488
that would be true within his culture,

00:29:15.488 --> 00:29:17.891
meaning, not because they just believe it,

00:29:17.891 --> 00:29:26.576
but it's actually true that Aryans are 
the superior race within that culture.

00:29:26.576 --> 00:29:27.548
Okay?

00:29:27.548 --> 00:29:30.500
So Premise number 2 
is what's problematic.

00:29:30.500 --> 00:29:37.485
It is making a claim that not only 
do beliefs vary from culture to culture,

00:29:37.485 --> 00:29:42.264
but these beliefs are actually true 
and they have a normative status,

00:29:42.264 --> 00:29:48.825
meaning that you should honor and 
be bounded to them or obey them.

00:29:48.825 --> 00:29:50.260
Okay?

00:29:50.260 --> 00:29:53.074
Descriptive relativism, again,
does not make that claim.

00:29:53.074 --> 00:29:57.448
It just simply says that ethical 
beliefs vary from place to place.

00:29:58.710 --> 00:30:04.604
Cultural relativism says 
the mere belief of a claim

00:30:04.604 --> 00:30:07.010
is what makes it be true.

00:30:07.010 --> 00:30:09.649
It is not considered true;

00:30:09.649 --> 00:30:14.582
it actually is true within 
that particular culture.

00:30:14.582 --> 00:30:19.520
Cultural relativism is problematic. 
Descriptive relativism isn't.

00:30:21.329 --> 00:30:26.488
So in conclusion, what I've tried to do here

00:30:26.488 --> 00:30:33.616
is point out that cultures consist of 
normative beliefs, values, and actions

00:30:33.616 --> 00:30:35.287
that are neither true nor false,

00:30:35.287 --> 00:30:38.448
meaning there's a certain expectation

00:30:38.448 --> 00:30:42.327
of how you ought to 
believe within a culture,

00:30:42.327 --> 00:30:45.612
how you ought to see things.

00:30:45.612 --> 00:30:47.899
There's a certain way 
that you ought to value,

00:30:47.899 --> 00:30:50.365
there are certain values you ought to have,

00:30:50.365 --> 00:30:53.299
and there are certain things 
you ought to do within a culture

00:30:53.299 --> 00:30:58.273
that are neither true nor false, 
via things like customs, for example.

00:30:58.651 --> 00:31:00.482
Ethics, on the other hand,

00:31:00.482 --> 00:31:05.984
consists of beliefs, values, 
and actions that are objective

00:31:05.984 --> 00:31:10.149
and involve things about 
what we do to each other,

00:31:10.149 --> 00:31:12.355
things we do in the real world,

00:31:12.355 --> 00:31:14.436
and they are true,

00:31:14.436 --> 00:31:19.659
regardless of the culture 
that they are expressed in.

00:31:19.659 --> 00:31:22.667
The culture does not determine ethics.

00:31:22.667 --> 00:31:26.147
But there is a view 
that denies what I just said,

00:31:26.147 --> 00:31:28.387
and this is called cultural relativism,

00:31:28.387 --> 00:31:32.817
and we will destruct and 
critique cultural relativism

00:31:32.817 --> 00:31:34.941
in the next PowerPoint.