Every human being is raised in different environment, interacts with different group of people, and face distinctive challenges and opportunities. These experiences play a major role in shaping people’s perspective and values. Therefore, people hold different opinions and are prone to make unique decisions that may be contrasting from you and even the story. In “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” the Omela community is living a joyful life because of the sacrifice of the innocent boy. The people who are leaving the town feel guilty about their happiness and decide to protect the boy’s rights: “But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.” This clearly shows that the author advocates for the people who are leaving the town and are acknowledging their wrongdoings. The author values human rights and amendments more than her own individual happiness. However, for some people who rank happiness as their most important value, they will continue to ignore the existence of the boy and live in the town of Omelas. It is hard to blame the people who choose happiness, as it is their own values, but these polarizing viewpoints make the stories that contain moral decisions interesting. There is never a correct solution for…
Ethical relativism is a concept in which most simple minded individuals adhere to. According to definition in the chapter, ethical relativism is the normative theory that what is right is what the culture or individual says is right. Shaw argues that it is not very plausible to say that ethical relativism is determined by what a person thinks is right and wrong. He gives reason that it “collapses the distinction between thinking something is right and it’s actually being right.” Ethical relativism may be justified occasionally. William H. Shaw examines ethical relativism by providing comprehensive examples on why relativism is a weak method in gaining morals.…
A moral relativist is someone who views that ethical standard, morality, and positions of right or wrong are culturally based and therefore subject to a person’s individual choice. In regards to Pojman beliefs, I do agree that most American students tend to be moral relativists. It is because of the culture that we grew up in. Morality depends on the amount of social acceptance it gets to morally good or bad. For example, he stated that individuals said they were relativists contended in the same polls that abortion is only right if the mother is in danger or that the capital punishment is wrong, but this is not always the case. Given certain circumstance, many individuals will do what he/she feels is morally right. If a mother to be feels the need to abort an unborn child so her life can be easier, she will do so. The attraction of relativism depends on, if an individual feels what they are doing in a certain situation is worth the…
Except this example, there are lots of behaviors that are relativistic because they are individually or culturally based. The absolute answer of right or wrong is not set in stone. Therefore, there can’t be objective moral values in the world.…
Many people are lead to adopt Ethical Relativism because they believe that it justifies their view that one ought to be tolerant of the different behavior of people in other cultures. However, Ethical Relativism does not really justify tolerance at all. All around the world, there are different types of cultures, which have different ethical values that will be correct according to their cultures. Nevertheless, some people might argue about different cultures that have different moral codes that they can not accept; examples: polygamy and infanticide. On the other hand, Ethical Relativism proposes that we can stop the criticism and be more tolerant with other cultures. To illustrate, we could no longer say that custom of other societies…
Moral relativism is one’s perception of what is acknowledged to be morally just or unjust depending on accepted demeanor. Certain behaviors and manners that a specific culture may consider to be acceptable, another culture may consider to be unethical. In such an instance, neither one of the cultures would be incorrect. Morals are culturally defined in that it originates from the root as to what is considered socially acceptable.…
Rachels is in agreement with cultural relativist in recognizing that we should keep an open minded approach when making ethical judgments about other societies. His thoughts differ from cultural relativist in that he believes that there exist objective moral standards. He puts forward this motion well on two fronts: first, he presents a major flaw in the way that cultural relativist think; second, he puts forward three arguments that support objective moral standards.…
Mary Midgley argues that ethical relativism agrees to the truth's of moral isolationism. Moral Isolationism is the view that one society should not worry about what is going on outside of their immediate…
Moral Relativism is what determines whether the action or conduct is right or wrong. This article states how from a moral absolutist standpoint, some things are always right, while some things are always wrong no matter how much one tries to rationalize them. At the same time, this article defines moral relativism as the belief that conflicting moral beliefs are true. What this means is that what you think is morally right, may not be morally right for someone else. Basically relativism replaces the search for absolute truth. Moral relativism and moral absolutism are means of deriving the morality of the character from The Road. They are tools to use to judge the characters actions, if they can be considered morally correct or morally unethical.…
Moral Relativism is the thought that the moral beliefs held by individuals is influenced and dependent on the culture in which they live in considers tolerable. Hence, what is considered morally appropriate in a single society perhaps is perceived as immoral in a different society. In actuality they both maybe right as they have distinct creators resulting in different laws, diversity, and possibly religious views of each other. Ruth Benedict defends the theory of moral relativism in her article A Defense of Moral Relativism from The Journal of General Psychology. In contrast, William B. Irvine author of Confronting Relativism feels in a few swift examples people can be talked out of their views on moral…
Relativism gives us a greater understanding of other cultures as it explains the discrepancies in moral codes. Herodotus, a Greek historian recounted when the King of Persia offered both the Greeks and the Callatians money if they adapted to each other’s funeral practices (the Greeks burnt the bodies of their fathers, while the Callatians ate the bodies of their fathers). However both disagreed and would not swap for any amount. What was right for one tribe was wrong for the other. What is right or wrong depends upon the nature of the society; different cultures create different values. We all live with unique cultures and so have our own idea of ‘good’.…
A relativist cannot pass judgement but yet to be true to their name ‘relativist’ they would be practising ‘do not pass judgement’ thus they are preaching to others that they should not do something in order for others to follow relativism. This concludes that relativism is self – refuting because a concept of relativism has been broken in order to follow it. This could be seen as unfair because to put relativist morality into…
The article was very clear and left no room for grey areas but as history would show, and as it’s stated in the first chapter, “the view of ethical relativism regards values as determined by one’s own ethical standard, often those provided by one’s own culture and background. Rather than insisting that there are moral absolutes, moral claims must be interpreted in terms of how they reflect a person’s viewpoint; moral claims are then said to be “right in a given culture” or “wrong for a given society”. (Mosser, 2010)…
This premise of cultural relativism shows prefigure of moral relativism. Moral relativism can be generally grouped into three categories; (1) descriptive moral relativism, (2) normative moral relativism, and (3) meta-ethical moral relativism. Descriptive relativism, according to Frankena, is the idea ‘that the basic ethical beliefs of different people and societies are different and even conflicting’ [1973:109]. The second form of ethical relativism conceives the idea that ‘what is really right or good in the one case is not so in another. Such a normative principle seems to violate the requirements of consistency and universalization’[1973:109]. The last among the three reveals that ‘there is no objectively valid, rational way of justifying one against another; consequently, two conflicting basic…
What is moral relativism? Relativism is the position that all perspectives are similarly legitimate and the individual figures out what is valid and relative for them. Relativism hypothesizes that fact is distinctive for various individuals, not just that diverse individuals accept diverse things to be valid. While there are relativists in science and arithmetic, moral relativism is the most well-known assortment of relativism. Nearly everybody has heard a relativist trademark: What's ideal for you may not be what's appropriate for me.…