Ethical Relatvism

Kopelman makes a distinction between ethical relativism and cultural relativism. The difference between the two is very subtle but it is there. Ethical relativism is to say that something is accepted in one’s culture but cultural relativism is to say something is accepted because it is culturally approved. With cultural relativism though there isn’t a way to place one’s own moral claims from their own culture upon the moralities of another culture. You can’t necessarily say that one culture ascertains a distinctive level of morality above another because there is no way to judge that. Some say that it is possible to judge but it would always be biased in one form or another which in turn causes the judgement skewed and therefore not sound. For example what the text delves into about female genitalia mutilation is something that is not culturally accepted at all in Western culture but highly accepted in the African culture and the Middle East but take for example something that isn’t as controversial such as disciplining your child. Spanking your child at least in the Hispanic culture is something that isn’t just approved but almost a rite of passage for all children but on the flip side there’s many that say that it is child abuse and I understand their viewpoints and arguments but to say it is immoral to spank your child is a stretch.

The shared methods are tools that we can use to assess to help assess moral judgements. It’s almost as a blank-wide basis for how to judge morals even across cultural lines. I would agree that these methods allow for cross-cultural judgements because it’s not necessarily disapproving or approving a moral value or practice solely on the reason that one “feels” as if it is not ok in accordance with their own moral values from their culture. It uses the culture that is being studied as a basis on how to judge actions not an outsider culture. It uses more logical reasoning from within the culture itself to distinguish whether or not something is immoral according to that same culture’s values. The example given in the text on page 61 goes through this and flows through a moral acceptance to reach the conclusion that moral B is fundamentally immoral based off of what the culture thinks because of moral A. What they say is that if the culture values maternal-fetal health then how is it ok to promote something that is known to cause perinatal and neonatal infections or even complications during child birth. It is contradictory. I agree that the shared methods of discovery, evaluation and explanation help to draw a bridge between cultures and make it so that cross cultural moral judgement is possible. This is something I think can be used to around the globe especially now a days in relation to other topics that still don’t receive as much spotlight as it should. This principle can be applied to the Middle East and the treatment of women and I believe it should be applied to also help open the eyes of people that believe in the notion that since we are outsiders in a specific culture we can’t have at least an opinion on how things are done.

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