Chapter 2: THE AGENT
Module 2: Culture in Moral Behavior and Developing Virtue as a
Habit
Introduction
This module is concerned with developing your understanding of Ethics on
the aspect of the moral agent. The discussion, description and explanation in
this module hope to equip you students with ideas on the role of culture in
developing your moral character.
Learning Objectives
With the completion of this self-learning module, you should be able to:
1. Articulate what culture means and attribute facets of your
personal behavior to culture
2. Recognize and appreciate the differences of moral
behavior in different culture.
3. Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of cultural
relativism
4. Analyze crucial qualities of the Filipino moral identity in
your moral experiences
5. Identify universal values and explain why universal
values are necessary for human survival
6. Recall defining moments in your moral formation and the
relationship between individual act and moral character
you find in your moral formation
Developmental Activities (most discussions here are lifted from the
book of De Guzman, (2017) -Ethics: Principles of Ethical Behaviour in
Modern Society)
Culture in Moral Behavior
To understand the role of culture in moral behavior, it is important to
first of all have an understanding of what culture is and its necessary
relationships with man.
The term culture is so complex that it not easy to define. In one sense,
culture is used to denote that which is related to the arts and humanities. But in
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broader sense, culture denotes the practices, beliefs, and perceptions of a
given society. The following are other definitions of the term culture:
1.
Culture refers to the cumulative deposit of knowledge, experience,
beliefs, values, attitudes, meanings, hierarchies, religions, notion of
time, roles, spatial relations, concepts of the universe, and material
objects and possessions acquired by a group of people in the
course of generations through individual and group striving.
2. Culture is the sum total of the learned behaviour of a group of
people that are generally considered to be the tradition of that
people and are transmitted from generation to generation
3. Culture in its broadest sense is cultivated behaviour;
Defined broadly therefore, culture includes all the things individuals
learn while growing up among particular group: attitudes, standards of morality,
rules of etiquette, perceptions of reality, language, notions about the proper
way to live, beliefs about how females and males should interact, ideas about
how the world works and so forth. We call this cultural knowledge.
Culture’s Role in Moral Behavior
A culture is a ‘way of life’ of a group of people, and this so called
way of life actually includes moral values and behaviors,
Many aspects of morality are taught. People learn moral and aspects of
right or wrong from transmitters of culture: respective parents, teachers, novels,
films, and television.
It is improbable, if not impossible, to live in a society without being
affected by its culture. It follows too that it is hard to grow up in a particular
culture without being impacted by how it views morality or what is ethically right
or wrong.
Moral Standards as Social Convention and the Social Conditioning
Theory
Among the popular notions which attempt to give account for basic
concepts in Ethics, such as the existence of moral rules, the senses of moral
obligation, and the moral accountability, are the so called social conventions
and social conditioning theories. These views are upshot of the fact that we can
learn from morality culturally or through socialization.
Theories Explained.
By convention, they mean those things agreed upon by people like through
their authorities. Convention also refer to the usual or customary ways through
which things are done within a group.
Since it is observed that morality is something that is handed down to
us primarily by education or socialization, either through parents and elders or
though teachers, some believe that moral standards are merely a human
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invention., like those other inventions we learn from school or home.
However, just because something is learned at home or school does
not necessarily mean that it is a social convention. Mathematical operations,
geographical facts and scientific laws are also taught in those institutions, yet
they are never considered as mere human fabrications. Meaning, whether or
not people know and like them, they are as they are.
The philosopher C.S. Lewis offers two reasons for saying that morality
belongs to the same class as mathematics:
1. Although there differences between the moral ideas of one time or
another country and those of another, the difference are not really
very great.
2. We affirm that the morality of one people is better or worse than that
of another which means that there is a moral standard or rule by
which we measure both moralities and that standard is real.
Culture Relativism in Ethics
Cultural Relativism is the most famous and dominant form of moral
relativism. Moral Relativism fundamentally believes that no act is good or bad
objectively. It also submits that different moral principles apply to different
persons or group of individuals.
Cultural Relativism defines ‘moral’ as what is ‘socially approved’ by the
majority in a particular culture. It maintains that an act is ethical in a culture that
approves of it, but immoral in one that disapproves of it.
Cultural relativists claim the following:
1. Different societies have different moral codes.
2. The moral code of a society determines what is right or wrong within
that society.
3. There are no moral truths that hold for all people at all times.
4. The moral code of our own society has no special status; it is but one
among many.
5. It is arrogant for us to judge other cultures. We should always be
tolerant of them
It is concluded that morality differs in every society as concepts of right
and wrong vary from culture to culture.
Cultural relativism: an analysis
1. Valuable lessons from ethical relativism
In proposing that there’s no independent standard in Ethics, moral
relativism does encourage tolerance. Without a doubt, tolerance is necessary
for people of different cultural origins to co-exist and live peacefully in a society.
The theory also teaches us to be open minded, thereby being more
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open to discovering truth. Cultural relativism warns against being judgmental as
it reminds us that some of our beliefs and practices are mere conventional, and
thus not absolutely and exclusively correct.
2. The theory’s ethical faults
Cultural relativism discourages analytical thinking and independent
decision-making in Ethics as it requires unsuspecting compliance and
subscription to social norms. The theory teaches that to be ethical, folkways
and cultural norms should be followed uncritically.
Cultural Relativism is inconsistent in promoting tolerance while
teaching that no culture is morally superior or more progressive than others.
The theory is practicable only if people do not belong to more than
one institution.
Moral relativism is fundamentality self-defeating.
3. Rachels’ evaluation of cultural relativism
Philosophy professor James Rachels (1941-2003) made a compelling
assessment of Cultural Relativism.
The Cultural Differences Argument
Rachels explained that cultural relativists’ approach is to argue from
facts about the differences between cultural outlooks to a conclusion about the
status of morality.
Thus we are invited to accept reasoning like these:
The Greeks believed it was wrong to eat the dead, whereas the
Callatians (an Indian Tribe) believed it was right to eat the dead.
Therefore eating dead is neither objectively wrong. It is merely a matter
of opinion, which varies from culture to culture.
The Eskimos see nothing wrong with infanticide, whereas we believe
infanticide is immoral. Therefore, infanticide is neither objectively right
nor objectively wrong. It is merely a matter of opinion, which varies from
culture to culture.
Different cultures have different moral codes. Therefore, there is no
objective “truth” in morality. Right and wrong are only matters of opinion, and
opinions vary from culture to culture.
Rachels call these cultural differences argument. It is nonetheless
unsound because its conclusion does not follow from its premise.
Against cultural differences argument, this counter-argument could be
submitted:
People in some societies (e.g. Primitive Tribes) believe that the Earth is
flat, whereas Europeans hold that truth that the Earth is spherical. This
argument is obviously unsound because some societies might simply
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be wrong in their beliefs
Cultural Relativism goes wrong in drawing a conclusion about an issue
from the mere fact that people disagree about it.
The Disagreements among Cultures
The Case of Eskimos and Callatians
In sociology and Anthropology, the Eskimos are popular for killing
normal infants, especially girls. This makes them appear to possess
significantly different values from ours.
It is not that Eskimos have less affection for their children or less
respect for human life. An Eskimo will always protect its babies if conditions
permit. But they live in a harsh environment where food is in short supply that
“life is hard, and the margin of safety is small” (1999, p. 28).
In Eskimo’s very special case, Infanticide is thus a recognition that
drastic measures are sometimes needed to ensure the family’s survival.
The Bad Consequences of Cultural relativism
If we took cultural relativism seriously, we would be necessitated to
deal with the following corollaries enumerated by Rachels (1999, pp.25-27)
1. We could no longer say that the customs of other societies are
morally inferior to our own
2. We could decide whether actions are right or wrong just by consulting
standards of our society.
3. The idea of moral progress is called to doubt.
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