Subjectivism, Relativism,

and Emotivism
Case 1
• Abdulla Yones killed his sixteen-year-old daughter Heshu in their
apartment in west London. The murder was yet another example of
an “honor killing. “ an ancient tradition still practiced in many parts
of the world.
• Using kitchen knife, Yones stabbed Heshu eleven times and slit her
throat. He later declared that he had to kill her to expunge a stain
from his family, a stain that Heshu had caused by her outrageous
behavior.
• What was outrageous to Yones, however, would seem to
many Westerners to be typical teenage antics, annoying but
benign. Heshu's precise offense against her family's honor is
unclear, but the possibilities include wearing makeup, having
a boyfriend, and showing an independent streak that would
be thought perfectly normal throughout the West.
• In some countries, honor killings are sometimes endorsed by
the local community or even given the tacit blessing of the
state
Question
• What do you think of this time-honored way of
dealing with family conflicts?

• What is your opinion regarding morality of honor

killing?
Objectivism

• The doctrine that some moral norms or

principles are valid for everyone -universal-
• In other words regardless of how cultures
may differ in their moral outlooks.
Cultural Relativism

• The view that an action is morlly right if

one's culture approves of it. Moral
rightness and wrongness are therefore
relative to cultures. So in one culture an
action may be morally right; in another
culture it may be morally wrong.
Case 2: Female Circumcision and Cultural
Reltivism
Question:
1. Do you think that FGC is morally permissible? If you judge
the practice wrong, are you appealing to some notion of
objective morality? If you judge it permissible, are you
doing so because you are a cultural relativist? explain
your reasoning.
Some arguments about Cultural
Relativism
1. People's judgments about right and wrong differ
from culture to culture.
2. If people's judgments about right and wrong differ
from culture to culture, then right and wrong are
relative to culture, and there are no objective moral
principle.
3. Therefore, right and wrong are relative to culture,
and there are no objective moral principle.
• Premise 1 is most certainly true, people's judgments about
right and wrong do vary from culture to culture.
• Premise 2 is false why? because there are disagreements
among cultures about right and wrong, there must not be
universal standards of right and wrong. but even if the
moral judgments of people in various cultures do differ,
such difference in itself does not show that morality is
relative.
• Another reason to doubt the truth of Premise 2 comes
from questioning how deep the disagreements among
cultures really are.
• Judgments about the rightness of action obviously do
vary across cultures. But people can differ in their
moral judgment not because they accept different
moral principles, but also because they have divergent
nonmoral beliefs.
• Cultural relativism also has the peculiar consequences that social
reformers of every sort would always be wrong.
• Their culture would be the ultimate authority on moral matters, so if
they disagree with their culture, they could not possibily be right
• if genocide would be right, and antigenocide reformers would be
wrong to oppose the practice, in this upside-down world, the
antigenocide will be immoral and the genocidal culture would be the
real paragon of righteousness.
Subjective Relativism
• The view that an action is morally right if one
approves it.
• That individuals are morally infalliable and that
genuine moral disagreement between
individuals is nearly impossible
Emotivism
• The view that moral utterances are neither true nor false
but are expressions of emotions or attitudes.

• That people cannot disagree over the moral facts because

there are no moral facts, that presenting reasons in support
of a moral utterance is a matter of offering nonmmoral
facts that can influence someone's attitude, and that
nothing is actually good or bad.
 Cultural Relativism
• The view that an action is morally right if one's culture approves of it. the
argument of this doctirne is based on the diversity of moral judgments
among cultures: because people's judgments about right and wrong differ
from culture to culture, right and wrong must be relative to culture, and
there is no objective moral principles.

• This argument is defective, because the diversity of moral views does not
imply that morallity is relative to cultures.

• The alleged diversity of basic moral standards among cultures maybe only
apparent, not real. Societies whose moral judgments conflict may be
differing not over moral principles but over nonmoral facts.
Summary
• Subjective relativism is the view that an action is
morally right if ones approves of it. A person's
approval makes the action right,. This doctrine (as
well as cultural relativism) is in stark contrast to
moral objectivism, the view that some moral
principles are valid for everyone.
• Subjective relativism, though has some troubling
implications. it implies that each person is morally
infallible and that individuals can never have a
genuine moral disagreement.