tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8387521016377592700.post5951131703380828598..comments2008-07-19T23:16:30.408-07:00Comments on Collected Works: UDK article on cultural relativismEclectic Essayisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04111440251080887582noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8387521016377592700.post-13739169154474573542007-12-30T00:30:00.000-08:002007-12-30T00:30:00.000-08:00The topic of this essay is one of my seriously pro...The topic of this essay is one of my seriously prominent pet peeves. For reasons which elude me, the scourge of cultural relativism has pervaded academia and spread the message that making normative judgments about other cultural contexts is unacceptable, since moral judgments arise out of the cultural context of the person making them, as opposed to the context which is being judged.<BR/><BR/>Simply on the surface, this argument flies wide of its intended mark, since in no way is someone who criticized another culture trying to assert that the people of the culture he is criticizing, themselves, view their own practice as immoral. That they believe it to be perfectly acceptable is fully consistent with a claim that it is in fact unacceptable.<BR/><BR/>Nevertheless, the argument, even if assumed to show what it intends to show with its internal logic fails because it has faulty premises. Morality does arise, in part, through culture, but science has long ago proved that human minds and human morality are not issues of tabula rasa. We do not enter the world a clean slate upon which the environment can write whatever the hell it wants. Our biology and our evolutionary past provide a fairly large amount of information to a newborn infant, and it is that information which is the underlying basis for much morality.<BR/><BR/>Thirdly, the cultural relativist fails on another level since they are asserting that no trans-cultural normative standards exist, while simultaneously announcing a trans-cultural normative standard that says that it is immoral to criticize other cultures.<BR/><BR/>There are dozens of other responses to cultural relativism that I could list. The idea has been so thoroughly debunked in philosophy that entry-level students in ethics read about it in their books as a cautionary example. Nevertheless, some disciplines in academia have failed to keep abreast of developments in the disciplines which study precisely the issues on which the cultural relativist makes pronouncements.Eclectic Essayisthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04111440251080887582noreply@blogger.com