Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Culture in Moral Behavior
Culture in Moral Behavior
Culture in Moral Behavior
Behavior
Culture: Some Definitions
CULTURE
cumulative deposit of knowledge, experience, beliefs, values, attitudes,
meanings, hierarchies, religion, notions 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 or group striving
consists of patterns, explicit or implicit, of and for behavior acquired and
transmitted symbols, constituting the distinctive achievement of human groups,
including their embodiments in artifacts
sum total of the learned behavior of a group of people that are transmitted from
generation to generation
cultivated behavior
symbolic communication
Culture’s Role in Moral Behavior
Culture is a ‘way of life’ of a group of people.
Culture is learned as children grow up in a society and discover how their
parents and others around them interpret the world.
People learn moral and aspects of right or wrong from transmitters of culture.
Social Learning
it is the process by which individuals acquire knowledge from others in the
groups to which they belong as a normal part of childhood.
Enculturation/Socialization
the process by which infants and children socially learn the culture of those
around them
“Moral Standards as Social Convention” and
the Social Conditioning Theory
Theories Explained
Things we regard as moral laws are nothing but
“social conventions”
Convention – the usual or customary ways through which
things are done within a group
Moral standards is merely a human invention.
“Moral Standards as Social Convention” and
the Social Conditioning Theory
Theories Explained
Morality is nothing but an effect of social conditioning
Richard Robinson, an atheist, claimed that morality is
nothing but an outcome of social conditioning.
Demands of conscience are also due to society.
“Moral Standards as Social Convention” and
the Social Conditioning Theory
Theories Analyzed
Not all that we’ve learned in our homes or schools are
social convention.
Some of the things that we’ve learn from our teachers,
parents, and other siblings are mere conventions,
which might have been different.
Many of the things taught in schools and homes are
real truths and not mere convention.
“Moral Standards as Social Convention” and
the Social Conditioning Theory
Which class does moral law belong?
According to C.S. Lewis, morality belongs to the same class as
mathematics for two reasons:
a) Although there are differences between moral ideas of one time
or country and those of another the differences are not really
very great.
b) 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.
“Moral Standards as Social Convention” and
the Social Conditioning Theory
Changes in people’s morality have been deemed as
improvements.
if moral law or rule of decent behavior means simply “whatever
each nation happens to approve”, there would be no sense in
saying that one nation had ever been more correct in its
approval than any other.
Social Conditioning Theory
when one says that a particular action ‘ought’ or ‘ought not’ to
be done, he/she is not simply echoing social approval or
disapproval.
“Moral Standards as Social Convention” and
the Social Conditioning Theory
Moral obligation cannot be squarely explained by social
conditioning.
We do not submit that social conditioning does not in any way
affect our ethical knowledge.
Ethical decisions are supposed to be made in relation to
something not itself due to social conditioning but due to some
sort of moral law that presses down on every person.
Cultural Relativism in Ethics
Cultural Relativism
most famous/ dominant form of moral relativism
defines “moral’ as what is socially approved by majority in a
particular culture.
every standard is culture-bound
other culture is “not wrong’, just simple ‘different’
Cultural Relativism: An Analysis
Valuable lessons from ethical relativism
moral relativism does encourage tolerance
all our practices are mere cultural products