The
article “Folk Moral Relativism” attempts to use empirical means
to show that previous studies, which concluded that most were moral objectivists, arrived at that conclusion by looking at the same
culture as the respondents, and that by expanding the study to
include other cultures they hoped to show that people hold a
relativistic view of morality. However,
while their studies may show that there is a common tendency to view
that cultures hold different moral standards, the inequality of
justifications of standards suggests objectivism is the folk norm.
Before
examining the article, it would be useful to understand the meaning
of Moral Relativism (MR), and Moral Objectivism (MO) in this context.
MR claims that the correctness of any given moral action needs to be
evaluated in the context of a culture, sometimes resulting in
contradictory conclusions being correct.1
MO claims that there is only one truth about morality in a similar
manner as there is only one truth about empirical claims.2
If there are two competing notions of the rightness of a given
action, one “is surely mistaken”.3
Previous studies show that a majority of people hold MO to be correct, but this study set out to demonstrate that the findings were skewed by methodology, and that the truth was far more complicated.4 By pointing out that there are external facts which have a bearing on the truth of any claim, like the seasons being relative to the hemisphere, considering moral claims with reference to other cultures leads to relativistic conclusions; the more extreme the difference in cultures, the greater likelihood neither stance is viewed as wrong.5
The
first study demonstrated this by surveying students from Baruch
College, New York City, on the moral correctness of two actions,
killing a child based on appearance, and testing the sharpness of a
knife by random stabbings. Conflicting opinions were reported of
judges from wildly different cultures, two from their own culture
(specifically one from their own immediate collective), one from an
isolated warrior tribe, and one from an alien culture.6
The results showed that the closer to their own culture, the more
likely the students would say at least one of the conflicting
opinions was wrong, but that is less true as people think about
different cultures.7
