Cultural Moral Relativism

"Is morality different for different cultures?" There are two different questions we might have in mind here.

First, we might mean: "Do people's beliefs about morality differ across cultures?" This question is easy. Yes, different cultures have different moral beliefs. We can call this view "Descriptive Relativism."

Second we might mean:  "Does morality itself (i.e. the moral truth) differ across cultures?" This is harder. According to the view "Cultural Relativism" (which is a version of "Moral Relativism"), the answer is "yes." Morality is nothing more than whatever your culture approves or disapproves of.

But is cultural relativism true? Perhaps. However, it's important that we not make a mistake in our reasoning. The fact that cultures disagree about morality does not prove that morality isn't real or objective. That is, we shouldn't conclude that "cultural relativism" is true simply because "descriptive relativism" is true.*

*SOURCES:
The examples in the video (infanticide and killing cows) and the argument in the section "Is cultural relativism true?" which points out that descriptive relativism does not entail cultural relativism, are both drawn from chapter 2 ("the Challenge of Cultural Relativism") of James Rachels' textbook "The Elements of Moral Philosophy."

Further reading:
For more information on various forms of moral relativism (including cultural relativism) check out:
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Entry on "Moral Relativism":

Media Sources:
Tea Leaves Photo: "he reads tea leaves" by Peter-Ashley is licensed with CC BY 2.0

[TheLivingPhilosophy]

Love it! Haven't come across that distinction before but makes perfect sense. I wonder if there's a third point in the middle of these...I guess I'm just spitballing here but what would an objective morality look like? Like for cultural moral relativism to be wrong. Would it exist regardless of humanity? So I guess I would stand between these two and maintain that morality is a subjective experience and yet one that is shared universally. Morality is a core aspect of human culture and maybe you could broaden that for all of life (the air that is life to the monkey is death to the fish). So the experience of morality like the role it plays in culture and the subjective affective experience of good bad right wrong etc is a common experience even if the content is different. Maybe that's what you meant by objective morality again it's a new distinction to me so I'm just spitballing here. Loved the video very thought provoking!

[muhammadfarhan]

If the moral standards of good & bad depend on each culture, then there is a culture that considers corruption to be good & a culture that considers corruption to be bad. The question is, is there a culture that considers corruption both in the past and in the present?

[sam]

Thinking about a good stuff to correct the distorted mind.

[Google_Censored_Commenter]

Weak sauce. Should have just nipped the problem in the bud and disproved moral relativism. We don't need more nutjobs in the streets who buy into it. I get you're playing it safe by just being descriptive, but you can do better. It's like making a youtube video merely describing that a position called "flat eatherism" exists, without going out of your way to tell the viewer why it is laughable. So until then? Dislike from me.