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
Among the Etoro people of New Guinea, ‘penis feeding’ is considered not only morally acceptable, but medically and socially necessary for adolescent males.
 According to Herodotus, the Callatians ate their dead fathers. The ancient Greeks cremated dead bodies;
Christians mainly bury them.
 Some “Eskimo” (i.e., Inuit, Yupik, Kalaallit…) groups traditionally practiced open marriage and ‘wife loaning’
Supposedly, some of these same groups also practiced infanticide and eldercide (though this is disputed)
 Partly on the basis of empirical evidence; partly on the basis of testimony .
Though in some cases, we should bear in mind, such claims might be the result of prejudice or fantasy or projection .
 Nonetheless, it’s surely true that, at least when it comes to specific practices, there is a substantial degree of diversity among cultural norms…
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So, from the perspective of the social sciences, history, and (in a globalized world) even everyday experience, it is perhaps just obvious that the claim is generally true:
“Different cultures have different moral codes…”
But what, if anything, follows from the descriptive fact of cultural relativism?
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Well, for one thing, if we think that truth is intrinsically valuable , then knowing the truth about the variety of human norms and practices is valuable for that reason alone…
Beyond that, coming to know the descriptive truth about cultural differences can be morally valuable to us. It can:
1. Alert us to the danger of assuming that all of our preferences must be based on some absolute moral standard.
Eating the dead, e.g., may seem horrific to us, yet it may be that, despite our strong feelings, funerary practices are more like matters of etiquette than matters of morals.
They may be things about which there could be reasonable disagreement…
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2. Similarly, confronting the fact of cultural relativism may help us to keep an open mind —it can provide “an antidote to dogmatism” (30)
We may have been socialized to find repugnant, e.g., public nudity or homosexuality. To the degree that our socialization has been successful, we are then likely to have strong negative feelings about nudity or homosexuality.
But feelings aren’t reasons. Our socialization may have been morally mistaken. The fact of diversity forces us to consider the reasons (if any) underlying that socialization.
But many people have sought to draw further, stronger conclusions from the descriptive fact of cultural relativism.
In particular, some people attempt to draw normative inferences from this fact, possibly using an argument of the form:
1. Different cultures have different moral codes.
2. Therefore, there is no objective ‘truth’ in morality. Right and wrong are only matters of opinion, and opinions vary from culture to culture.
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1. Different cultures have different moral codes.
2. Therefore, there is no objective ‘truth’ in morality. Right and wrong are only matters of opinion, and opinions vary from culture to culture.
Logically, the argument as stated is unsound . Its premise is true, but its inference is invalid (i.e., not truth-preserving).
Nothing necessarily follows from the fact of disagreement about anything.
Compare: Some people think the world is flat. Does it follow that the shape of the Earth is merely a matter of opinion?
Moreover, if we accepted normative cultural relativism
(the ‘when in Rome’ view):
A. We could never criticize the customs of other societies.
They would instead merely be ‘different’. (But what about, e.g., oppressive regimes?)
B. We could determine right and wrong in moral matters simply by consulting the existing standards of our society or culture. (But what if our society is evil, e.g., a slave-owing society?)
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C. Similarly, there could be no criteria for judging moral progress ; no non-arbitrary grounds for undertaking reform of social norms.
(If there is no moral fact of the matter about how we ought to treat people, then why not continue to oppress gay people or ethnic minorities, provided that majority culture concurs?)
 Confronting the descriptive fact of cultural relativism can teach us the virtues of tolerance (of other people’s norms) and humility (about the warrants of our own).
 As the preceding arguments suggest, however, all cultures, all societies are in the same boat: We may have objectively good reasons for some of our beliefs; others may be founded on prejudice and/or uncritical acceptance of tradition.
None of this, however, implies that we need a perfectly objective, neutral perspective from which to criticize the norms of other people…
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The Argument from Relativity
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For moral skeptics like J. L. Mackie (1917-81) , such criticism must always be arbitrary (i.e., irrational).
Consider our earlier argument: When we disagree with others about whether or not the Earth is flat, there is an
‘objective fact’ (namely the sphericality of the Earth), and plenty of observational evidence for that fact, to which we can appeal…
…but when it comes to moral disagreement, Mackie asks, ‘where in the world’ is there any objective moral fact to which we could point? (39)
 Moral claims do not seem to be objective facts (at least to Mackie). Instead, they seem simply to be intuitions or assertions of ideals.
If there was anything like an “objective moral fact,” it would be a metaphysically ‘queer’ sort of thing— something “utterly different from anything else in the universe” (40)
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 While specific cultural norms are obviously diverse, there also appears to be a significant core of moral norms shared amongst all sustainable cultures and societies.
E.g., prohibitions against lying; at least some prohibitions against indiscriminate killing.
 The general theoretical point: “There are some rules that all societies must have in common. Because those rules are necessary for society to exist.” (23)
The causal mechanism: Selection? Game theory?
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
At its normative core, moral subjectivism is really just a generalization (to individuals) of the sort of skepticism that can be engendered by normative cultural relativism.
People have different moral opinions. But there is no moral fact of the matter. So, really, people just feel differently about moral issues. And that’s really all there is to it.
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So, at its core, moral subjectivism can be addressed with the same objections that we’ve offered for normative cultural relativism. But some theorists have linked subjectivism to more fundamental claims in metaethics..
David Hume (1711-76) raised the possibility that purportedly objective reports about moral beliefs are fundamentally reports about feelings:
“ Take any action allowed to be vicious. Wilful murder, for instance. Examine it in all lights, and see if you can find that matter of fact, or real existence, which you call vice…You can never find it. Till you turn your reflection to your own breast, and find a sentiment of disapprobation, which arises in you toward this action.
Here is a matter of fact, but ‘tis the object of feeling, not reason.” ( Treatise of Human Nature , 1740)
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Simple subjectivism:
“X is immoral” = “I disapprove of X”
“X is the morally right thing to do” = “I approve of X”
This seems clear enough, but it is open to some serious objections:
1. It cannot make sense of disagreement
2. It implies that we are infallible
Charles Leslie Stevenson (1908-79) developed a somewhat more sophisticated version of the subjectivist idea: Emotivism .
 Moral claims are not propositions, but imperatives which express emotional attitudes. (Non-cognitivism)
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As a metaethical theory, this has some initial plausibility: When we use moral language we aren’t just uttering propositions, we are normally also expressing attitudes and trying to influence other people…
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
Imperatives, unlike propositions, are neither true nor false (e.g., “shut the door!”; “fuck off!”), so the problem of disagreement is avoided. Famously, people can have different, contrary attitudes.
 But just because emotivism holds that moral claims are non-cognitive, it (arguably) only partly avoids the infallibility problem: We may enjoy privileged access to our attitudes and preferences (“I am in pain”; “I prefer vanilla to chocolate”), but we can (surely) at least occasionally be mistaken in our feelings…
Subjectivism can admit that there are such things, yet they become facts about our feelings . This may leave room for being mistaken about our feelings and attitudes, but it doesn’t provide any non-arbitrary way of evaluating or revising our feelings.
Stevenson:
“Any statement about any fact which any speaker considers likely to alter attitudes may be adduced as a reason for or against a moral judgment.” (40)
If (or to the extent that) this really is our moral condition, it seems to imply or support moral skepticism…
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The Argument from Queerness
 Mackie, as we’ve seen, embraces this possibility: Appeal to ‘moral facts’ is really an appeal to ‘ways of life’ and/or intuition.
 If there really were any moral facts, of the sort that actually justified moral claims (as opposed to explaining the effects of moral sentences), then we should be able find empirical evidence for them. But there are none, says Mackie. So, if they exist, they must be some ‘queer’ sort of thing. (Philosophical naturalism)…
But why should we assume that morality is like empirical science? Compare science, in this respect, to the rules of chess, or proofs in mathematics.
Rachels: “…when proof is demanded (in morals), people often have in mind an inappropriate standard.” (43)
Korsgaard (1996): “ It's true that [moral concepts] are queer sorts of entities and that knowing them isn't like anything else. But that doesn't mean that they don't exist... For it is the most familiar fact of human life that the world contains entities that can tell us what to do and make us do it. They are people, and the other animals.”
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