Relativism

9 Pages 2197 Words

would be illogical to say
that the first woman is short if she were the only female in existence; if
this were the case then there would not be anyone for her to be relative to
in height. However, this logical fallacy is what the relativist assumes by
stating that there is no standard of rightness for relativity. Quite
simply, the cultural relativist is stating that he is relative to an
absolute which he considers non-existent.

One other logical error that the relativist makes lies in his
"Cultural Differences Argument.1" The premise of this argument is that
"different cultures have different moral codes." The conclusion that the
relativist derives is that "there is no objective 'truth' in morality, [and
therefore] right and wrong are only matters of opinion [that] vary from
culture to culture.2" The main logical problem with this argument is that
the stated conclusion does not necessarily need to be the case if the
premise is given. The premise states what different people believe to be
true, and the conclusion jumps to the assumption that this belief must
necessarily be the case. Let the reader consider this instance, which
closely follows the form of the above given argument. Assume that there is
a society that believes that sunning as much as possible in the nude can
only benefit a person. Due to scientific study, it has been experimentally
shown that overexposure to the sun's ultraviolet rays can cause skin
cancer. Being in the American culture, people know this to be true and
therefore would disagree with sunning too often. According to the
relativist, since the two cultures disagree concerning the practice of
sunning there is no objective truth about it. However, this is a faulty
conclusion because empirical evidence shows that the first culture would be
wrong in its beliefs. In truth, one cannot "derive a substantive
conclusion about a subject (morally) from the mere fact that people...