Thursday, September 4, 2014

When reading this passage I found myself especially drawn to one of the closing arguments in the cultural and moral relativity section. The claim states that in small homogeneous cultural groups one could expect to find a high consensus of a specific and identifiable moral code. Then however, it goes on to ask about larger heterogeneous cultures like the Western culture, or the American culture. The argument starts to break down larger cultures into smaller and smaller subset cultures wondering if any singular specific moral code can be found. The questions of where the division of groups should end, and could it go all the way down to the limit of individual human beings then followed. I think that different specific sets of morals can certainly go all the way down to the personal level. People that are very close to one another like family members may have many similar beliefs in their own moral code, but there is a likelihood as well that, between them, one or two of there individual moral beliefs could conflict with another's. That, to me, makes the moral code of each member in that family specifically different in a very identifiable way that breaks perhaps the smallest subset culture that can be broken down. I would ask then, if it is possible that different identifiable moral codes can be broken down all the way to the personal level in the large Western heterogeneous culture, could it not also be likely that even in those small homogeneous cultures like African and Inuit tribes? I would think there is a large likelihood that there are individuals in those tribes that have issues of morality with some of the aspects of that tribe's culture and moral code. I think that the reason these individual morality conflicts are not seen over the "high degree of consensus" of the tribe's culture is because any raising of a personal morality conflict is likely suppressed due to the type of culture that tribes generally have. I know that if my parents were to scream at or punish me every time I voiced an opinion, I would likely stop speaking up. Never the less, my point is that a line is very likely to be able to be drawn all the way to the individual level on specifically different moral codes in every different type of culture which would certainly take away from cultural relativity. Also, if that is true, different cultural ideals and moral beliefs may, in some cases, overpower an individual's morality issues which simply takes away that person's ability to make their own moral choices, but does not remove their own personal moral beliefs that are specifically different. In having that freedom to make one's own moral choices taken away simply because of the culture they were born into, like the child from the third world country in the picture in the store window in the first section of the reading, I believe goes against moral relativity as well,

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