Can a Culture Be Wrong? Relativism and the Nature of Truth

Different cultures hold different moral views. Does that mean there’s no moral truth at all? In this episode, philosophers Tony Bolos and Jamie Collin take on relativism, one of the most influential ideas in modern culture.

They start with Plato’s Republic, where Thrasymachus claims that justice is just whatever the strong say it is. They also look at Herodotus’s account of King Darius, the Greeks, and the Callatians, which is often invoked to argue for relativism. Tony and Jamie set out what relativism actually claims. Then they test the arguments people give for it: that it supports tolerance, and that objectivism is arrogant. Neither argument holds up as well as it first seems.

Next they turn to the problems with relativism. If it were true, cultures and individuals could never be wrong. Moral progress and moral decline would both be impossible: when William Wilberforce opposed slavery, he would simply have been out of step with his culture. The episode ends by sorting out terms we use loosely every day: fact, belief, opinion and truth. Along the way, they ask why so many of us were taught that moral claims are “just opinions.”

This conversation lays the groundwork for Episode 3, on knowledge, justification, and how philosophers think about the reasons behind what we believe.

KEY TERMS

Moral objectivism: The view that moral truths hold whatever people think or feel about them. If something is wrong, it would still be wrong even if everyone believed it was right.

Mind-independent / mind-dependent: A way of describing whether something’s truth depends on what people think. Jamie notes that the terms need careful handling: moral facts might depend on minds in one sense (with no conscious beings, nothing could be harmed) and still be objective in another.

Moral relativism: The view that moral truths exist but are not absolute. They hold only relative to a particular culture, individual, or moral framework, rather than for everyone everywhere.

Cultural relativism: A form of relativism in which right and wrong are set by a culture’s moral commitments. On this view, a culture’s moral standards cannot be mistaken.

Subjectivism: A form of relativism in which right and wrong are set by each individual’s moral beliefs. On this view, no individual can be mistaken about morality.

Moral nihilism: The view that there are no moral truths at all, so nothing is right or wrong, good or bad. It differs from relativism, which says moral truths exist but are relative.

Ethical egoism: The view that people ought to act in their own self-interest. Tony mentions it as one possible reading of Thrasymachus but doesn’t define it in the episode, so this is the standard definition.

Two-place predicate: Jamie’s description of how relativists treat truth. A claim isn’t simply true; it is “true relative to” some person, culture or framework.

Moral standards (two senses): The phrase can mean what people take to be right or wrong, or what is actually right or wrong. Cultures plainly differ in the first sense. Relativism is a claim about the second.

Alethic vs. epistemic: Alethic questions concern truth: what is actually the case. Epistemic questions concern knowledge and justification: whether we have good reason to believe something. Jamie argues that the “arrogance” case for relativism confuses the two.

Belief: In philosophy, simply taking a proposition to be true, whether on strong evidence or none. In everyday speech, “belief” often means something held without good evidence, as when people contrast it with knowledge.

Opinion: A word philosophers seldom use. In everyday speech, it usually means something taken to be true without good reasons, or without reasons others would recognize.

Fact: Simply a true proposition. Something can be a fact before anyone has evidence for it, or even if no one can ever know it, like the number of carbon molecules in Norway.

Normative vs. descriptive: A descriptive claim describes how things are, such as who is president. A normative claim also evaluates, judging something good or bad, right or wrong. The hosts suggest that people often label normative claims “opinions” for this reason.

Moral progress / moral regress: The idea that a society’s moral views can get objectively better (abolishing slavery) or worse (Nazi Germany). The hosts argue relativism rules out both, leaving only change.