ANT100Y1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Moral Relativism, Noam Chomsky, Cultural Relativism

• School: UTSG
• Department: Anthropology
• Course: ANT100Y1
• Professor: Shawn Lehman

Document Summary

Ant100y1 lecture 6: our world and their world: Absolute values and cultural relativism | universal and particular structures in language and culture | How do we judge moral issues when what is moral differs from culture to culture? the answer. The answer is not really either or, but we"re going to try and find. Cultural and moral relativism cultural relativism: assumptions and behaviours mean different things in different cultures: e. g. manners are something that"s culturally relative; there"s nothing absolute about manners. Our own behaviour, and that of others, is constructed by social and cultural factors. Moral relativism: there are no absolute values; what is good or evil depends on the culture. Many of us would think that infanticide is worse than abortion, whereas some would think of both as equally morally wrong. Believing that universal/absolute moral values exist is the opposite of moral relativism. this is not the opposite of cultural relativism.