Culture in Moral Behavior

1. Culture: Some Definitions

*It is commonly said that culture
is all around us. Practically, culture
appears to be an actual part of our
social life as well as our personality.
*For some, culture is a quality
that some people have more than
others: how ‘cultured’ somebody is
depends on some factors like
status, class, education, taste in
music or film, and speech habits.
The term ‘culture’ is so complex
that it is not easy to define.
*In one sense, culture is used to
denote that which is related to the arts
and humanities. But in a broader
sense, culture denotes the practices,
beliefs and perceptions of a given
society.
*Culture consists of patterns, explicit
and implicit, of and for behavior
acquired and transmitted by symbols,
constituting the distinctive
achievement of human groups,
including their embodiments in
artifacts.
The essential core of culture
consists of traditional ideas and
especially their attached values.
Culture systems may, on one hand,
be considered as products of action,
on the other hand, as conditioning
influences upon further action.
*Culture is the sum total of the
learned behavior of a group of people
that are generally considered to be the
tradition of that people and are
transmitted from generation to
generation.
*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 are all
the learnings we get from we call
‘cultural knowledge’.
2. Culture’s Role in Moral Behavior
Based on the definitions of culture,
it is not hard to pinpoint the role of
culture in one’s 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, along with
knowledge, beliefs, symbols that
they accept.
Many aspects of morality are taught.
People learn moral and aspects of
right or wrong from transmitters of
culture.
Observing or watching, say,
parents, teachers, novels, films, and
television, from them, people
develop a set of idea of what is right
and wrong, and what is acceptable
and what is not.
*Even experientially, 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.
*Moreover, “individuals are a
product of their culture”.
*“Learning a culture is an essential
part of human development”.
Therefore, we can now understand
that, social learning is the process by
which individuals acquire knowledge
from others in the groups to which
they belong, as a normal part of
childhood.
The process by which infants
and children socially learn the
culture, including morality, of
those around them is called
enculturation or socialization.
3. Cultural Relativism in Ethics
Cultural relativism is perhaps the most
famous form of moral relativism, a
theory in ethics which holds that ethical
judgments have their origins either in
individual or cultural standards.
Moral relativism fundamentally
believes that no act is good or bad
objectively, and there is no single
objective universal standard
through which we can evaluate the
truth of moral judgments.
Moral relativism submits that
different moral principles apply to
different persons or group of
individuals. Claiming that various
cultures have distinct standards of
right and wrong, it maintains too,
that moral standards change over
time even in the same culture.
Cultural relativism, the most
dominant form of moral
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 base their moral theory on
the observation that societies fundamentally
disagree about ethical issues. What is deemed
moral within one group may be totally
despicable to the members of another group,
and vice versa. It is thus concluded that
morality differs in every society as concepts of
right and wrong vary from culture to culture.
Defining morality as a product of
culture, the theory submits that there are
no objective values and ethics is merely a
matter of societal convention. Advocates
see themselves as open-minded as they
consider other cultures, not as ‘wrong’,
but simply as ‘different’.
For instance, concerning fixed marriage,
male circumcision and excision, cultural
relativism would say that it is mere
arrogance for us to try to judge the
conduct of the peoples practicing them.
Relativists thus suggest that we should
adopt instead an attitude of tolerance
toward any of the practices of other
cultures.
END