3. Ethical persons are shaped by their values. What are moral values (as described on BB)?
Values are the constructs by which we live. This code is influenced by religion, laws, economics, familial experiences, education, society and technology. Personal morality, is personal shaping based on experience. Social morality, develops based on interactions with our surroundings and is considered to be the social norm.
4. Briefly, define ethical relativism and then discuss how Sumner’s Cultural Difference Argument is relevant to it.
The idea that each culture is entitled to it’s own rules, which are relative to that particular culture. The values and ethics of one culture may not be the same social norm for another culture.
Sumner believed that …show more content…
He highlights folkways as traditions that exist by culturally accepted habits. These habits are taught by the society in which one lives, indicating there are no set rules for all cultures. Relativist believe that what is right for one may not be right for another. We can not assume objective truths because right and wrong depend in perspective. As individuals we teach our culture using society as a medium. With this many moving parts, the range of possible truths are infinite and no one rule can apply to all situations. The relativist theory prohibits people from forcing their values on others and is quite flexible to change. The weakness in this theory is that when you lack absolute truth you also lack an objective measure for …show more content…
For instance, a drunk driver catastrophically collides into a neurosurgeon causing massive damage to many of his major organs, miraculously leaving his brain and the nerve endings in tact. There are many homeless people in the area near the hospital. There is a potential to save the neurosurgeon at the risk of potentially killing at least five of these vagrants in the process of harvesting the necessary organs. Is the value of the vagrants’ life less than that of the neurosurgeon? There are far too many consequences to even remotely entertain this idea in a responsible society.
The problems with utilitarianism are that we can not all agree on what makes us happy. Even after obtaining such a consensus of what happiness is, it is even harder o decide what action allows us to arrive at such happiness for the masses. I agree with Mills when he declared that, utilitarianism is a doctrine worthy of
Values are the constructs by which we live. This code is influenced by religion, laws, economics, familial experiences, education, society and technology. Personal morality, is personal shaping based on experience. Social morality, develops based on interactions with our surroundings and is considered to be the social norm.
4. Briefly, define ethical relativism and then discuss how Sumner’s Cultural Difference Argument is relevant to it.
The idea that each culture is entitled to it’s own rules, which are relative to that particular culture. The values and ethics of one culture may not be the same social norm for another culture.
Sumner believed that …show more content…
He highlights folkways as traditions that exist by culturally accepted habits. These habits are taught by the society in which one lives, indicating there are no set rules for all cultures. Relativist believe that what is right for one may not be right for another. We can not assume objective truths because right and wrong depend in perspective. As individuals we teach our culture using society as a medium. With this many moving parts, the range of possible truths are infinite and no one rule can apply to all situations. The relativist theory prohibits people from forcing their values on others and is quite flexible to change. The weakness in this theory is that when you lack absolute truth you also lack an objective measure for …show more content…
For instance, a drunk driver catastrophically collides into a neurosurgeon causing massive damage to many of his major organs, miraculously leaving his brain and the nerve endings in tact. There are many homeless people in the area near the hospital. There is a potential to save the neurosurgeon at the risk of potentially killing at least five of these vagrants in the process of harvesting the necessary organs. Is the value of the vagrants’ life less than that of the neurosurgeon? There are far too many consequences to even remotely entertain this idea in a responsible society.
The problems with utilitarianism are that we can not all agree on what makes us happy. Even after obtaining such a consensus of what happiness is, it is even harder o decide what action allows us to arrive at such happiness for the masses. I agree with Mills when he declared that, utilitarianism is a doctrine worthy of