FREE ESSAY ON MORAL STANDARDS

MORAL STANDARDS

ARE MORAL STANDARDS "RELATIVE"?
Ethics are moral principles or values that specify acceptable conduct, and determine how
an institution will be governed. According to Shanahan and Wang, in their book Reason and
Insight, the subject of ethics is morality, which is concerned with the practices,
judgments, principles, and beliefs that guide people's actions. It attempts to address
the issue of how we ought to live. Many people have different values that guide their
lives, but some of these values are better supported than others. Since people have
different morals and values, it is important to distinguish between cultural and moral
relativism. First, I will explain the difference between moral and cultural relativism.
Next, I will indicate the claims that are supposed to follow from cultural relativism.
Then I will explain one of the claims and show Shanahan and Wang's argument against this
claim. Lastly, I will show why Shanahan and Wang's argument for this claim are true, and
why I accept it. 
We grow up in a social atmosphere that tells us what is right and wrong. If our own
personal morality is different from another culture's, we tend to believe that they are
wrong, and our cultural views of morality hold more merit. Societies, in general, must
adhere to certain core values for them to exist. However, not all societies value the
same morals. With this in mind, moral relativism is the theory that all moral
perspectives are equally acceptable. What may be acceptable in one culture may not be
acceptable in another, and neither is objectively right. 
Cultural relativism ascertains that moral standards differ from one culture to the next.
It says that good and bad are relative to culture. What is "good" is what is "socially
approved" in a given culture. Cultural relativism holds that "good" means what is
"socially approved" by the majority in a given culture. This means that anyone who is
born into a particular culture is expected to follow the moral codes of that culture
because they were already in existence. In addition, cultural relativism states that
there are different ways of applying basic ethical principles from one culture to the
next.
Given that moral standards differ from one culture to the next, a number of claims are
supposed to follow from cultural relativism. The first claim states that there are no
universal or general moral principles common to all, or most cultures. The second claim
states that there is no objective, culturally independent standard by which to judge the
moral code of any culture. The last claim states that the moral code or each culture
determines what is right and wrong for the members of that culture. 
The first claim assumes the fact that there are no universally agreed upon moral truths.
This means each culture decides for itself what is morally accepted in that given
culture. Therefore, each culture differs in their ethical principles, and has their own
set of guidelines that they must follow in order to be to be considered virtuous in their
culture. Since cultures have different moral codes, this is the foundation for the claim
that there is no universally agreed upon set of moral judgments, because if there were
every culture would be practicing them.
The first argument assumes the fact that there are no universally agreed upon moral
truths. According to Shanahan and Wang, there are, however, many universal moral truths
that all cultures value to be important. They believe that there is the presence of
diversity among different cultures' moral codes, but it doesn't mean that there are no
moral principles common across most cultures. Shanahan and Wang state, "The ethical
diversity among cultures may be at a fairly high level and may be grounded on more basic
moral principles that cultures have in common." 
They go on by explaining how basketball, baseball, and football are completely diverse
sports, yet there are a set of common underlying principles that each take on. Some of
these include, not hiring assassins to take out members of the other team, not using
explosives devices, and not to using force on an official's head if he makes a wrong
call. Even though the rules are different in each sport, these basic principles are
common to all sports, and allow them to exist. Furthermore, Shanahan and Wang believe
that there are universally agreed upon set of moral judgments that sometimes are
overlooked by overstressing diversity at the expense of communality. 
Shanahan and Wang's argument against the first claim 
There are universal moral truths that all cultures deem important or else they wouldn't
exist. For example, many most cultures value honesty and prohibition of murder.
Obviously, these values can be broken based on given situations, but these exceptions
would depend on the situation. A society that allows murdering and lying would be shortly
lived. 
Moral relativism allows for the possibility that something could be morally right in one
society, but morally wrong in another. Moral relativism takes tolerance and acceptance to
an extreme, which is its Achilles' heel. It is not possible for something to be right and
wrong at the same time, but moral relativism allows for the possibility of this to be the
case.
The variance in moral belief in a society is often portrayed to be greater than it
actually is. For example, leaving a newborn baby in the snow to die, as the Eskimos often
do, is entirely unacceptable in our society. However, it is not that they believe that
murder is morally acceptable, but instead that they value the importance of the tribe
over the individual. This varies little from ones held in this country. America sending
its troops to foreign land is an example. America is willing to sacrifice some to save
the whole. The Eskimo tribe would be in danger of starvation at times if they kept every
baby girl. The young boys are not sacrificed because they are needed to hunt and provide
for the rest of the tribe when they grow older. In this way, the perceived differences in
culture may not be as different as they seem on the surface. Just because cultures have
different practices, it doesn't mean that they don't have common ethical principles.