Business Ethics HW Please see first attachment for requirement

Business Ethics – Thomas A. Package

Lecture 3 - Addendum

I. What is Cultural Relativism (CR)?

A) Cultural Diversity is a descriptive claim about culture - how cultural principles such as etiquette, dress, music and arts, and even a culture’s moral values and principles change or vary from culture to culture.

Cultural Relativism is a theoretic claim about the nature of morality, namely that moral principles are true or false, but only RELATIVE to some culture. CR is one form of relativism, such as subjectivism or extreme relativism.

“X is wrong” means X is not embraced, endorsed, preferred or practiced by my society,

CR implies that you ought to obey YOUR culture’s agreed upon or embraced principles, moral and otherwise.

B) Argument from Variance. Proponents of CR are often swayed by this argument:

1. Cultures disagree, or vary, upon which moral principles are true. (Cultural Diversity)

2. Therefore, since whole cultures and people disagree, there is no truth of the matter, just varying cultural assertions. (Cultural Relativism)

CR implies that you ought to obey YOUR culture’s agreed upon or embraced principles, moral and otherwise. Bowie incorrectly states the motto of CR as “When in Rome, do as the Romans do”, when the motto should be “When you are a Roman, do as the Romans do.” CR is not Geographical relativism, so the even for CR, the moral rules don’t simply depend on where your feet are standing.

II. Criticisms of the Argument From Variance and CR.

Sidney Morgenbesser – ANY and ALL responses to an opponent’s arguments can be classified as either an “Oh, Yeah!?!” response or a “So What!” response. “Oh, Yeah!?!” means your opponent’s argument fails because of some internal flaw in her reasoning, or the argument is not valid. “So What!!” means your opponent’s argument fails because even if her reasoning is internally valid, it is not sound because she has failed to account for other variables external to her account.

A) Bowie’s “Oh, Yeah!?!” #1. Stop the Argument from Variance at the assertion of Variance. Bowie asserts that variance might not be as widespread as it seems. What looks like variance is in fact thinly veiled convergence... witness the conversion on the treatment of the elderly. Eskimos and Americans agree – don’t be cruel, and merely seem to disagree since there are explanatory circumstances to justify the differing treatment. In other words, if convergence is important then notice how there is more convergence than divergence or variance. Thus, perhaps CR is defeated by first denying variance.

Response : This attack on variance simply seems implausible. Were the Nazis and the Allies united over the treatment of people, but disagreed over simply who turned out to be a person? Who counts as a person is itself a moral question. There is widespread variance on deep moral issues, and some variance on simple moral issues. Witness the Ik and their treatment of human babies.

B) Bowie’s So What! #1 Principles can be instantiated by different behaviors in different places – Minimum wage is different in Oaxaca from the wage in C-ville. The difference in the cost of living would dictate that a smaller wage could be enough to live on in a cheaper place.

Response: What UNIVERSALLY accepted principles are there? The Chinese embrace torture and the Ik embraced everything bad. Perhaps the same principles demand different behavior in different circumstances, but what UNIVERSAL agreement is there over very basic moral principles? The Chinese embrace torture and imprisonment of dissidents, and the Ik embraced nearly everything bad.

C) Bowie’s So What! #2 Believing something is so don’t make it so. Believing something is morally acceptable does not make it morally acceptable.

Response: RIGHT ON! Thinking something is so don’t make it so in physics (see Copernicus) nor does it make it so in moral theory (see MLK) Of course adding up the number of people who believe X does not make X true! As Bowie argues “Thinking something is morally permissible does not make it so!” If it did, you wouldn’t need moral philosophy, just anthropologists and polling companies.

D) Bowie’s So What! # 3 CR is inconsistent with our moral language and concepts. We defer to universal principles to say the other side is incorrect. CR can’t represent disagreements as disagreements in any meaningful sense.

1. Inter-schemic – CR can’t represent disagreements between cultures as disagreements.

Chinese – “Torture of dissidents is justified” – True, if the Chinese culture embraces the practice.

Americans – “Torture of dissidents is not justified” – True, if the American culture disapproves of the practice.

But saying both statements are true is not a disagreement! But we certainly DO disagree with the Chinese with regard to torturing, imprisoning, and “re-educating” our political dissenters.

2. Intra-schemic – MLK is a reformer, and we talk about him as right not because he was successful, but because he was always right. For CR, MLK must be a counter-cultural moral criminal with a minority view, and then just a common person with a shared opinion after the civil rights movement. This is surface problem regarding the way we talk about reformers, AND a deep problem since the position of a person in possession of the truth who changes a culture for the better does not exist in the CR scheme.

Response: RIGHT ON!

E) Bowie’s So What #4. Just what is a culture and which one is relevant? CR trades in the difficult subject of moral theory for the difficult subject of determining two things: what is a culture and how do you determine which culture takes moral precedence? National boundaries are insufficient since culture clearly crosses those boundaries. In a multi-cultural society, this question is even more problematic for the proponent of CR. Within a culture there are sub-cultures, counter-cultures, and cultural dissidents. For business ethics, there is also the problem of Corporate Culture, probably something more important than business casual versus business dress. In order to make CR work, you’d need a workable theory of how to pick out the relevant culture at play.

Response: RIGHT ON!

F) Bowie’s So What #5 What if some culture embraces a claim to Universal moral principles? Relativist’s must admit that some kinds of moral principles are not relative. Some deal with what other cultures should or should not do.

Response: RIGHT ON!

G) Bowie’s So What #6 The priority of morality to culture. Bowie claims some principles are necessary to all cultures. Some principles that seem like moral principles are necessary to be called a culture. To count as a culture, it seems reasonable to say that there must be certain restrictions on behavior in place, such as don’t lie, steal, or kill from others in your culture. This seems to indicate that to be properly called a culture is dependent on a having a unifying moral view of some kind. If true, it seems absurd to say that culture precedes or explains morality as a moral view is a necessary condition for having a culture!

Response: RIGHT ON!

III. CR & Imperialism

A) Many people want CR to be true to avoid moral conflicts, physical and otherwise. Perhaps there would be less violence if we all just stopped believing in the truth of our own narrow points of view. The first step in Imperialism and nation building is to believe in the truth of your position. Maybe if we don’t hold fast to outdated notions of moral truth, we can rid ourselves of distasteful moral conflicts that disintegrate into vicious squabbles and violence.

B) Holmes addresses this argument directly. In the first place, this assertion cannot be verified from the armchair. More importantly, it is just as likely a priori that more conflicts would result in violence if CR were to be believed. Afterall, why talk to somebody to convince them of the truth of your position instead of fighting for converts, when no such truth exists?!?

At this point, an exasperated proponent of CR might say “what’s the right answer regarding the so-called true moral theory?” In reply to III D, apart from an assertion, it may be possible that there are no real moral reformers or perhaps you’re possessed of false consciousness since maybe there aren’t such things and we shouldn’t talk like that. I’ll join Bowie in saying that at this point, you simply have to engage the skeptic at the level of justifying a full normative moral theory, principles and all.

IV. Back to Anzen.

1) According to CR, Stan should behave according to his cultural principles. Okay, but which ones? The Canadian principles or the Motorolan cultural principles? What if the two conflict? According to CR, Stan should do what his culture prescribes, probably fire his workers.

2) But what about Willard’s recommendation to keep both employees and let the event pass? That is what Nambunese culture requires and is thus what Willard should recommend, according to CR. Here is a very bad problem for CR. In CR’s analysis, these two contrary positions are not in disagreement. They both are correct, since they are both properly reporting the background culture’s view. But we know, contra CR, that this is a deep disagreement!

V. Questions you should now be able to answer!

1) What is the difference between a deontological and an axiological approach to moral theory, with regard to theories of the right and theories of the good. Do all kinds of axiological theories consider consequences exclusively?

2) What is the difference between a theory of good character and a theory of right conduct as an approach to morality?

3) How do you distinguish between a micro-ethical view and a macro-ethical view?

4) What is the difference between cultural diversity and cultural relativism?

5) What is the argument from variance and how does it relate to cultural relativism?

6) Should a reasonable person be convinced by cultural relativism? Why or why not? What are the toughest problems for CR as a theory about the nature of the Moral Point of View?

7) What does CR tell Stan to do? Can CR make sense of the moral concerns at Anzen?

8) Who injured Tommy? Did Tommy's employer also fail Tommy in some way, and would CR be able to make good sense in describing this failing? Worse yet, would CR be able to argue in favor of rectifying this failure?