Hello World Who is General Failure and why is he reading my drive?

But wait… (continuing from before) … the Utilitarian would argue: “If the greater number benefit, what do intentions matter”. But why are intentions important? In this post we’ll discuss Virtue Ethics, Moral Pluralism and Cultural Relativism.

Big words. I know.

A virtuist would say “Its OK: As long as a selfish persons acts benefit others”.

Virtue Ethics:

A virtuous person develops a beneficial nature that will direct them and try to do the right thing in most cases. Whats the relevance to Professional Ethics?

Well, virtue ethics involves our conduct, attitudes and dispositions. Development of a virtuous character can influence the role of professionals in their workplace - and its not just what professionals do, but what the are ready or disposed to do or say.

But Ro, What if a person thinks they know what is right, but is misguided?

The road to hell is paved with good intentions

There are plenty of examples of this in our lives: We all have friends or relatives who meddle with family matters and other peoples business. We know about people who report neighbours as terrorists simply because they are muslim.

Unfortunately the course is a bit vague on what happens here.

Moral Pluralism:

Its pretty evident that we can’t restrict ourselves to one kind of consideration. In the real world deciding what is moral is untidy, unique to the situation. We can pick and choose from our basket of normative theories depending on the situation. This is known as moral pluralism.

Cultural Relativism:

How can we have truth in ethics if what is right is culturally based? What’s right and wrong is relative to the individual and further their background.

If we reflect on disagreements and conclude they cant be settled we might react by adopting relativism. Relativism (especially cultural) is not specific to ethics, it can apply across a range of fields. It explains away disagreement - by treating them as acceptable in their own place.

It’s a view made popular by anthropologists - that is to say they belive that cultures benefit from the adoption of a “detached” viewpoint. ie. It’s not helpful to view another culture in terms of one’s own cultural norm and for similar reasons ethical relativism has appealed to socioligists, historians and psychologists - professionals working in cultural studies.

But now we have the problem of establishing a value system that applies globally. Who’s values do you choose? What values are universal, independant of culture? There are some obvious ones: murder (except in self defence), rape. But its not that easy…

There are, of course, objections to ethical relativism:

There are two different points made by cultural relativists and it important to recognise the difference:

1. The first point is that cultures do differ around the world - “How the world is”
2. The second is evaluative: to “do” as a culture does - “How the world should be”

Remember that noone, anywhere has a right to dictate the later.

The conclusion is merely this:

Ethical relativism is a moral theory (to an extent) - and there is no universal truth in ethics.