What is the argument for cultural relativism?
Emotivism also provides a curious account of how reasons function in moral discourse. Our commonsense view is that a moral judgment is the kind of thing that makes a claim about moral properties and that such a claim can be supported by reasons. If someone asserts “Euthanasia is
wrong,” we may sensibly ask her what reasons she has for believing that claim. If she replies that there are no reasons to back up her claim or that moral utterances are not the kind of things that can be supported by reasons, we would probably think that she misunderstood the question or the nature of morality. For the emotivist, “moral” rea- sons have a very different function. Here reasons are intended not to support statements (since there are no moral statements) but to influence the emotions or attitudes of others. Since moral utterances express emotions or attitudes, “present- ing reasons” is a matter of offering nonmoral facts that can influence those emotions and attitudes. Suppose A has a favorable attitude toward abor- tion, and B has an unfavorable one (that is, A and B are having a disagreement in attitude). For A, to present reasons is to provide information that might cause B to have a more favorable attitude toward abortion.
This conception of the function of reasons, however, implies that good reasons encompass any nonmoral facts that can alter someone’s atti- tude. On this view, the relevance of these facts to the judgment at hand is beside the point. The essential criterion is whether the adduced facts are sufficiently influential. They need not have any logical or cognitive connection to the moral judg- ment to be changed. They may, for example, appeal to someone’s ignorance, arrogance, racism, or fear. But we ordinarily suppose that reasons should be relevant to the cognitive content of moral judgments. Moreover, we normally make a clear distinction between influencing someone’s attitudes and showing (by providing reasons) that a claim is true—a distinction that emotivism can- not make.
The final implication of emotivism is also problematic: there is no such thing as goodness or badness. We cannot legitimately claim that any- thing is good or bad, because these properties do not exist. To declare that something is good is just to express positive emotions or a favorable
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attitude toward it. We may say that pain is bad, but badness (or goodness) is not a feature of pain. Our saying that pain is bad is just an expression of our unfavorable attitude toward pain.
Suppose a six-year-old girl is living in a small village in Syria during the civil war between Presi- dent Bashar al-Assad’s Baathist government and rebel forces. Assad’s henchmen firebomb the vil- lage, destroying it and incinerating everyone except the girl, who is burned from head to toe and endures excruciating pain for three days before she dies. Suppose that we are deeply moved by this tragedy as we consider her unimaginable suffering and we remark, “How horrible. The little girl’s suffering was a very bad thing.”7 When we say something like this, we ordinarily mean that the girl’s suffering had a certain moral property: that the suffering was bad. But according to emo- tivism, her suffering had no moral properties at all. When we comment on the girl’s suffering, we are simply expressing our feelings; the suffering itself was neither good nor bad. But this view of things seems implausible. Our moral experience suggests that some things in fact are bad and some are good.
The philosopher Brand Blanshard (1892–1987) makes the point in the following way:
[T]he emotivist is cut off by his theory from admit- ting that there has been anything good or evil in the past, either animal or human. There have been Black Deaths, to be sure, and wars and rumours of war; there have been the burning of countless women as witches, and the massacre in the Katyn forest, and Oswiecim, and Dachau, and an unbearable proces- sion of horrors; but one cannot meaningfully say that anything evil has ever happened. The people who suffered from these things did indeed take up attitudes of revulsion toward them; we can now judge that they took them; but in such judgments we are not saying that anything evil occurred. . . . [Emotivism], when first presented, has some plausi-
bility. But when this is balanced against the implied unplausibility of setting down as meaningless every suggestion that good or evil events have ever occurred, it is outweighed enormously.8
Obviously, emotivism does not fare well when examined in light of our commonsense moral experience. We must keep in mind, though, that common sense is fallible. On the other hand, we should not jettison common sense in favor of another view unless we have good reasons to do so. In the case of emotivism, we have no good rea- sons to prefer it over common sense—and we have good grounds for rejecting it.
SUMMARY
Subjective relativism is the view that an action is morally right if one approves of it. A person’s approval makes the action right. This doctrine (as well as cultural relativism) is in stark contrast to moral objectivism, the view that some moral principles are valid for everyone. Subjective relativism, though, has some troubling implications. It implies that each per- son is morally infallible and that individuals can never have a genuine moral disagreement.
Cultural relativism is the view that an action is morally right if one’s culture approves of it. The argu- ment for this doctrine is based on the diversity of moral judgments among cultures: because people’s judgments about right and wrong differ from culture to culture, right and wrong must be relative to cul- ture, and there are no objective moral principles. This argument is defective, however, because the diversity of moral views does not imply that morality is rela- tive to cultures. In addition, the alleged diversity of basic moral standards among cultures may be only apparent, not real. Societies whose moral judgments conflict may be differing not over moral principles but over nonmoral facts.
Some think that tolerance is entailed by cultural relativism. But there is no necessary connection
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7This scenario is inspired by some of Brand Blanshard’s examples from “Emotivism,” in Reason and Goodness (1961; reprint, New York: G. Allen and Unwin, 1978). 8Blanshard, 204–5.
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between tolerance and the doctrine. Indeed, the cultural relativist cannot consistently advocate toler- ance while maintaining his relativist standpoint. To advocate tolerance is to advocate an objective moral value. But if tolerance is an objective moral value, then cultural relativism must be false, because it says that there are no objective moral values.
Like subjective relativism, cultural relativism has some disturbing consequences. It implies that cul- tures are morally infallible, that social reformers can never be morally right, that moral disagreements between individuals in the same culture amount to arguments over whether they disagree with their cul- ture, that other cultures cannot be legitimately criti- cized, and that moral progress is impossible.
Emotivism is the view that moral utterances are neither true nor false but are expressions of emotions or attitudes. It leads to the conclusion that people can disagree only in attitude, not in beliefs. People can- not disagree over the moral facts, because there are no moral facts. Emotivism also implies that present- ing reasons in support of a moral utterance is a mat- ter of offering nonmoral facts that can influence someone’s attitude. It seems that any nonmoral facts will do, as long as they affect attitudes. Perhaps the most far-reaching implication of emotivism is that nothing is actually good or bad. There simply are no properties of goodness and badness. There is only the expression of favorable or unfavorable emotions or attitudes toward something.
EXERCISES Review Questions
1. Does objectivism entail intolerance? Why or why not? (p. 20)
2. Does objectivism require absolutism? Why or why not? (p. 20)
3. How does subjective relativism differ from cultural relativism? (p. 20)
4. What is emotivism? How does emotivism differ from objectivism? (p. 21)
5. How does subjective relativism imply moral infallibility? (p. 22)
6. According to moral subjectivism, are moral disagreements possible? Why or why not? (pp. 22–23)
7. What is the argument for cultural relativism? Is the argument sound? Why or why not? (pp. 23–26)
8. Does the diversity of moral outlooks in cultures show that right and wrong are determined by culture? Why or why not? (pp. 24–26)
9. According to the text, how is it possible for people in different cultures to disagree about moral judgments and still embrace the same fundamental moral principles? (pp. 25–26)
10. Is there a necessary connection between cultural relativism and tolerance? Why or why not? (p. 26)
11. What does cultural relativism imply about the moral status of social reformers? (p. 26)
12. What is the emotivist view of moral disagreements? (p. 28)
13. According to emotivism, how do reasons function in moral discourse? (p. 29)