Cultural Relativism - Essay Example

Cultural Relativism Cultural relativism is generally the attitude of society’s mores and ideas that is viewed within the framework of society’s problem and opportunity. It is simply stated as a belief that a particular society has no right to place over its own values and cultures onto another society. However, these meaning differs from the Rachel’s understanding of the cultural relativity. To him, he views the cultural relativity as an attitude of objectivity towards another culture.The major believes of the cultural relativism is not a single doctrine but several views of families who has common theme of central aspect of experience, evaluation, thought and reality which is relative to something else (Atran and Medin,46).

In the video session, Rachel’s rejects cultural relativism since in his understanding, cultural relativism is similar to ethical relativism, which in turn leads to inability to criticize believes and practices of different societies (Atran and Medin,67). Despite the fact that relatives lines of thought a times leads to improbable conclusions, there is always something seductive about them, which has captivated wide range of thinkers from various traditions.The major philosophical issues of intellectual descendants of cultural relativism includes the multiculturalism which gives equal value for all cultures, racism which is a type of multiculturalism where individual has an erroneous idea about his or her race, political correctness, deconstructionism and postmodernisms.

In the video summary of James Rachel, he explains the elements of moral philosophy by first defining the meaning of morality. He gives an example of baby Theresa who was born without auxiliary functions of her brain, the baby is left so that her organs can be used to help others, and this creates an argument that life is worthless without better interaction with each other. The other side argues that using other person’s life to fulfil the other is wrong and unethical (Atran and Medin, 98).

Rachel also continues to explain that different cultures have unique customs and different ways of thinking. This shows that it would be very hard for a particular individual of one culture to understand these differences (Atran and Medin, 156). This makes it difficult to judge individual culture of living, the problem with this cultural relativism is that as an argument it does not make sense in universal truths of ethics. ReferenceAtran, Scott, and Douglas L Medin. The Native Mind And The Cultural Construction Of Nature.

Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2008. Print.