By Dr. Steve Wyre
Faculty Member, Philosophy, American Public University
For reasons unknown to me, many students gravitate toward the theory of moral relativism when they first encounter ethics. Without an understanding of the darker side of the theory, they embrace the notion that there are no absolute right answers.
But when you tell them that believing in moral relativism also means they cannot defend their own morals with anything other than cultural mores or that cultures that practice female circumcision or honor killings are just as morally justified by their own moral belief system, these same students usually rethink their position.
My goal here is not to defend moral relativism, but to explain it in a more rational context, as a part of our evolutionary development.
Cultural Mores Concerning Moral Rights and Wrongs Vary Across the World
When you explore the worldwide myriad cultural mores concerning moral rights and wrongs, it is easy to see that if there were a common thread that could justify beliefs in female circumcision, human sacrifice, cannibalism, slavery, and many other practices, that thread was not a divine or even natural law.
However, claiming there are no commonly shared beliefs would also be wrong. There is likely not a rational society on the planet that would reject the claim that to torture a child without a just reason is morally wrong.
But the definitions of “torture” and what qualifies as “a just reason” would vary greatly. For example, to become men in Amazon’s Satere Mawé tribe, young men are forced to wear gloves filled with bullet ants and dance around for 10 minutes without showing pain. Also, some cultures practice circumcision in adolescence without an anesthetic.
There is good evidence available about the origins of morality. In his book “Just Babies: The Origins of Good and Evil,” Yale University professor of psychology and cognitive science Paul Bloom discusses the innate human disposition toward fairness, but also with a bias. Patricia S. Churchland provides great details on what is currently known about the brain and morality in her book “Braintrust, What Neuroscience Tells Us about Morality,” so the research is out there.
It Is Well Documented that Humans Are Innately Social Animals
But let me put my own spin on this if I may. It is well documented that humans are innately social animals. We are still here as a species because we learned to cooperate with each other.
There is ample evidence to say that humans are born with an innate sense of fairness and justice, but also with an innate bias toward beings who have similar likes and against those who do not have similar likes. But what can be done with this information?
Imagine a time when humans first roamed the savanna where their primary concerns were eating what they could to survive and trying not to be eaten. Within families, humans found a way to get along and work in a cooperative way to survive. There is no need to get into the minutiae; this is just a broad outline.
As humans advanced from families to clans and then to tribes to nation-states, and as our numbers grew, we needed more rules and practices to ensure that cooperative effort. This change included both positive practices and rituals and prohibitions against actions that disrupted the cooperative effort.
This practice continued as groups of humans expanded to the point where they produced more elaborate codes like the Code of Hammurabi, the Analects of Confucius, the 613 laws contained in the Torah (Old Testament) and even the Edicts of King Ashoka.
Take any cultural practice related to morality anywhere on the globe and the best way to explain it is to point to evolution and our innate senses of justice, fairness, and the need to cooperate. Religion has played a huge part in this development, but that is a different discussion.
Ideally, religion produced practices that would unite communities in a shared positive belief, but there are many examples, like the Mayan civilization, where practices like human sacrifice were an important part of the culture. Then again, is there a religion that does not have a dark side? Perhaps, but it would be rare.
What Is Morally Right or Wrong Is Determined to a Great Degree by One’s Culture
So how does all of this help a person win a discussion about ethical actions? What is morally right or wrong is determined to a great degree by one’s culture.
But one can also look at pluralistic societies like that in the United States to see that people can work cooperatively without agreeing on topics like abortion or physician-assisted suicide. Within a given society, the way to win — if there is such a thing as winning — is to justify one’s action with an argument such that other rational people can agree with the reasoning, even if they reject the conclusion.
When teaching ethics, in situations when individuals disagree on a core issue, the only way to change someone’s mind is to have one or both present coherent arguments justifying their position. In the rare times when this happens, it usually results in opening a doubting mind enough to accept a position contrary to a deeply held belief.
If there is a chance to bring the world together in practices that lead to human thriving, the only way to get there is for individuals to present coherent and cogent arguments that other rational beings can accept without necessarily accepting our conclusion.
Not everyone of course is open to reason. But only by resorting to open and logical discussions about how to justify our beliefs can we see that these beliefs may not be as well-grounded as we think or that they are better supported by empirical evidence.
The more this happens, the more things will change, hopefully for the better. There should come a day where no woman is denied a driver’s license just because she is a woman. And it is only through rational discourse that humanity can continue to embrace practices that lead to human flourishing and reject those that do not.
About the Author
Dr. Steve Wyre received his B.A. and M.A. in philosophy from the University of Oklahoma and his Ed.D. from the University of Phoenix. He has been teaching various ground-based philosophy courses since 2000 and online since 2003. Steve has served as a subject matter expert (SME) for courses in ancient philosophy, ethics, logic and several other areas.
