GameBanshee Forums

Isn't this really just a question of moral/societal reletivism vs. absolutism?

I honestly I do not know. If i read your sentence as normal english then yes it is. However if this a theory, then i am not familiar with it so i can't really say if this conversation applies.

It is both a normal sentence and a sentence that has to do with theories. (You can let your guard down Fas; I'm not trying to sucker you into some rhetorical shouting match)

I ask because it seems like you are talking about the tension between the conflicting ideas that:

(a) values are relative. Culture determines values and if, for example, culture A celebrates religion by fasting, then culture B is in no position to judge. The alternative is

(b) some sort of absolute belief. The idea here is that there are certain rights that, due to your very existance as human, you are guaranteed. Usually these rights are at least the right to freedom from discrimination based on gender, sex, race, profession, social status, etc.

(As a side note, I would like to mention that you, Fas, by working for the UN, would appear to be endorsing option B, as the UN is the creator of the [url="http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html"]Universal Declaration of Human Rights[/url]. Just food for thought...)

I suspect that a belief in our own infallibility is a survival trait. What if we didn't believe that our own perceptions were true? What if we always questioned our own beliefs? We would be paralyzed, or our competition would surpass us. If you're a member of species that has a highly developed brain, then it's probably in your nature to feel that you are always right.

If you put a bunch of people who are naturally inclined to believe that they are always right into a complex, highly developed social order, people will try to impose their beliefs on others, just as they will try to impose their will on others. They go hand in hand.

I learned all this by watching television, of course.

C Elegans wrote:
In my opinion it matters to all moral problems whether a behaviour is "innate" in the sense genetically determinated, or not. In fact, that a behaviour is not "innate" in this sense is generally viewed as a prerequisite for even applying moral questions to a phenomenon. Is the eagle immoral for killing the mouse? Is the eagle immoral for not being vegetarian? Is the eagle's offspring immoral for killing each other so that only one, the biggest and strongest, will survive? Usually we answer no to all these questions, since the eagle does not, as far as we know, have a consciousness that allows for alternatives or even moral questioning.

I don't really undestand this. There can be no moral problem if a behaviour is wholly "determined", in any sense. It might be determined genetically, or by drugs, or by physics. There is behaviour which appears to be innate but which is altered by teaching (for example all children, so far as I know, are irresponsible in their toiletting. That seems to make it innate. It doesn't make it unchangeable).That is why I said I did not care if it was innate. Innate and determined are not synonymous, and this is one ambiguity which is confusing this discussion.

I think that you accept that our behaviour towards other cultures is not determined, since you point to differences between groups and between individuals.( I do not think that answers whether it is innate or not.) Where I think we differ is in the meaning of that conclusion. To me, trying to put a percentage on free will is like trying to put a percentage on pregnancy. Either you are pregnant or you are not; either you have a choice or you don't. If I once accept that a particular behaviour allows of choice (and in this case I do) then all of the questions can be approached morally. That does not preclude a scientific approach, but it is not subsumed by such an approach.

Morality does not apply to animals. We don't know to what extent they have choices, since they cannot tell us. The evidence from behaviour may suggest they have no choice. But I don't know if there are eagle's offspring who decide not to kill, and therefore die in the circumstances you describe. I don't really see how that helps us. And it may be that animals vary in the areas of choice they have and in how they excercise that choice.

Is the human immoral for killing a mouse? For killing another human being? For not being vegetarian? This is far more complicated since humans do have choices.

In each of the examples you quote the human being has free will. I do not see any complication related to degrees of determination, for the reasons I have given above.

Moral problems must be viewed differently depending on the degree of freedom of choice. Unless we judge the starving child who steals for survival as equal to the middle-class thief who steals items simple because he or she wants them without paying for them.

Both the starving child and the middle class thief have free will, and can choose to steal or not. They do not have different levels of freedom of choice as regards the stealing How the moral question is judged varies with such things as mitigating circumstances. Perhaps we are using the words "freedom of choice" to mean more than one thing?

CM wrote:My response was to that question. I did not change the definition, rather I only answered a question which you brought up which was not related to my assumptions. Will await your response on friday.

I'm sorry Fas, I still don't understand. Your assumption is that all humans feel their culture is superior to others and that they feel the desire to impose these values on others. My question to you was if this assumption is correct, how do you then explain that there are cultures and individuals who do not demonstrate this feature. (In anthropology, there are descriptions of such cultures in the Pacific islands and in Africa, and such individuals can be found in any culture in my opinion). Now, your response to my statement was "if you can show me a culture which does not at any point on any subject not denote that it has superior values and has the right way of doing things, compared to another culture i will eat a hat!

Maybe I misunderstand you, but this implies that you think it's enough that a culture think itself superior on any point, let's say one point out of 1000, in order for you not to classify that culture as thinking itself superior nd wanting to impose its' values on others. This to me is much like a religious reasoning. It's an assumption that cannot be tested. It is equivalent of saying if I can show you that god does not exist in any corner or dimension of the universe, then you will believe he does not exist. There are several French and English anthropologists who have depicted cultures where enthocentric superiority does not appear to exist, but I can of course not grant you that no single such value exist, that the anthropologists may have missed. There is always the possibility that you can find one or a few points where I culture think it's superior to another culture, but as I said in my last post, also other points where they may find the other culture superior to their own. If you assess your culture at 1000 points, and you find your own culture is superior at 10 points, another culture is superior at 10 points and yet another culture is superior at 5 point and the other points are equal, that does not in my opinion mean you view your own culture as superior. (I stated more examples in my previous post.) The same applies to individuals.

As little as I can show you god does not exist in any corner of the universe, I can show you a culture that I am absolutely convinced do not at any single point find themselves superior to another culture. You cannot make such questions into testable hypothesis, they can only be beliefs. In my opinion, it's fine to base your religious beliefs on belief (obviously!) since religion cannot be tested, but questions about human nature and human behaviour can be tested an should thus, in my opinion, not be subject to belief but to informed opinion. So if you mean that you define "cultural superiority and will to impose your culture on others" as the existence of one single point on one single subject, I cannot really discuss this topic since I totally disagree with your basic definition.

Fiona] I don't really undestand this. There can be no moral problem if a behaviour is wholly wrote:
I will have to get back to you too in more detail later, but I will attempt to clear up what I believe is some basic misunderstandings.

I am very confused about how people use the word "innate" in this thread. As far as I know, "innate" means you are born with something, and then only two alternatives definitions exists. I presented these two alternatives in a previous post directed to Aegis where I wrote: "Do you mean mind set and behaviour are genetically preprogrammed from birth, or do you mean genetic predispositions that increases likelihood to react in a certain way in a certain type of situation, as I described above? I also wrote to yo that I think it matters to moral issues if a behaviour is "innate" in the sense genetically determinated.

Innate can only be genetic, since genes are what we are born with. Then it can be genetically determined, like our body plan (two arms, two legs, a head and a torso) or it can be various degrees of genetic disposition that interacts with environmental factors (like personality traits or breast cancer). So I am saying the same thing as you, innate is not synonymous with determined but since some people have posted statements where they suggest a certain behaviour is unchangeble, and they use the word "innate", I really must clarify what people mean in order to participate in this discussion.

However, if we claim that something is socially determined, then we mean if

To me, trying to put a percentage on free will is like trying to put a percentage on pregnancy. Either you are pregnant or you are not; either you have a choice or you don't.
<snip>
Both the starving child and the middle class thief have free will, and can choose to steal or not. They do not have different levels of freedom of choice as regards the stealing How the moral question is judged varies with such things as mitigating circumstances. Perhaps we are using the words "freedom of choice" to mean more than one thing?

Yep, here we differ. To me it would be absurd to totally dissociate the degree of freedom of action with freedom will, since in my opinion, free will becomes a meaningsless theoretical construct if we do. Let's consider Sartre's (wasn't it him? IIRC it's in Being and Nothingness) prison situation: the prisoner is going to be executed tomorrow. There is absolutely no way to change that. Still, the prisoner is not free from his free will: he can still committ suicide. His suicide is an act of free will, because it is a choice. It is a choice in the same sense that a tortured person can choose to confess in order to survive or cease the pain. Or our starving child can refrain from stealing and die instead. By making "free will" an all-or-nothing polarisation, it becomes useless in moral discussions since you then make the cosmetic life-style choices of the privileged rich world equal to the severly limited choices of other parts of the world. Would you make an equal moral judgeent of me if I had a daughter and I sold her as a sex slave to a pedophile, as if a starving family in Niger sold their daughter in order to support the rest of the family? Probably not, the other circumstances takes precedence far above the notion that we both acted out of free will. And that's what I mean with free will being an unimportant concept for moral assessment if you view it as all-or-none.

Besides, for my part, I don't believe in totally free will. I believe only in a limited sort of free will. If would be helpful to the discussion if you posted your definition of free will, since I know it varies quite a lot.

Cuchulain82 wrote:It is both a normal sentence and a sentence that has to do with theories. (You can let your guard down Fas; I'm not trying to sucker you into some rhetorical shouting match)

I ask because it seems like you are talking about the tension between the conflicting ideas that:

(a) values are relative. Culture determines values and if, for example, culture A celebrates religion by fasting, then culture B is in no position to judge. The alternative is

(b) some sort of absolute belief. The idea here is that there are certain rights that, due to your very existance as human, you are guaranteed. Usually these rights are at least the right to freedom from discrimination based on gender, sex, race, profession, social status, etc.

(As a side note, I would like to mention that you, Fas, by working for the UN, would appear to be endorsing option B, as the UN is the creator of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Just food for thought...)

LOL. When one is in the minority and when people on this forum tend to be extremely picky about word choice one must always be on guard On a more specific note am naturally vague with my posts as that is what i have to do with work. I like wiggle room

This gets back into the conversation Aegis started. But first on the link, i completely agree with the French (http://www.reason.com/hitandrun/2005/10 ... ml#011436). It was their initiative something the americans can hate the french more for The french have a domestic law which prohibits US (and others i believe) movies and media to enter France until after a set period. Its to limit the influence of US media on french culture. I am completely against the concept of a homogenous culture which over rides other cultures and systems. I will be extremely brutal with my wording but it is colonialism all over again. Under colonialism lands were conquered and a foriegn culture was imposed. The French imposed their language and culture on the people, wiping out the domestic systems and values. The british were not as bad as they let people retain their cultural values. The portugese were of course the worst - just look at the cases of nambia and mozimbique (spelling??).

That is the tension i am speaking of (the one you mentioned), as it is more evident today than any time after colonialism. You have the Bush programme to bring democracy to the middle east. You have cotonou and the "Everything but Arms" initiatives with the EU. I agree that these are trade and economic agreements but they do influence policy in countries. A perfect example is the GMO war the EU and US had in Malawi while it was threatened with a famine. Very little media coverage was given to this, but you can find a BBC article or 2 on it.

With that said i do believe in the UN Human rights convention. People can not be discriminated against because of their faith, beliefs or values. You can not force people into slavery. You can't commit genocide. Stuff like this is a common basis of morality. The duality of the situation is easily described by the more controversial cases. Sati or Satki (The Hindu ritual of burning the wife alive if her husband passes away), equal rights for homosexuals, the hijab for muslim women are all issues of cultural variance and definitely issues of morality in different societies. To burn a woman alive will never be acceptible to western societies. But it is a hindu tradition still practiced today. I do abhor the custom. I abhor the caste system in India. But they have a right to practice it as their traditions. I have no right as an outsider to comment on it. To muslims given homosexuals equal rights in society is wrong. But again we don't have a right to comment on what western culture deems to be a right or acceptible. Just like how western culture finds the hijab and burqa to be a vile, its an accepted practice in Islamic society. Western Society does not have a right to comment on the morality of the situation.

To twist a popular TV quote from which i get all my knowledge from "I do not agree with your traditions and cultures, but hell i will defend them". That is however not the case with modern society and individuals in any case. All individuals believe their cultural values are correct. Be they Hindu, Western, Muslim, Chinese or Japanese. They feel their values are correct. Other societies feel they are wrong. Sati, the Hijab and homosexual rights just being a few examples. This is where the issue lies.

This is where my original two assumptions come in:

1. All humans feel their culture and its values are superior to those of others.
2. That on specific issues like mortality, sexuality, religion in life and others they feel they are "right" and all views that do not agree with their point of view is/are wrong and they impose these views on other people/societies/cultures.

Now on to CE. The first sentence is actually incorrect. I stated that all humans feel their culture is superior and on core issues of which some i highlighted they feel that the views of other cultures are infact wrong and wish to impose this on others. You can find examples on SYM. The 3 examples i have stated above are examples of that. CE if there are descriptions of cultures and societies which do not believe they have a superior culture could you link them?

I do understand the point you are making. You are basically taking the concept in absolutes. One culture either assumes it is absolutely superior or it is not. Thus the example of the 10 points out of a 1000. My assumption and premise is not based on the 990 points out of 1000. It is based on those 10. I will try to clear this up. You see the first premise is that everybody believes their culture is superior. That is to me a natural human trait. This is seen through media, the news and generally on human interaction. People are proud of being french, swedish, chinese or pakistani. They aren't proud of the letters that spell our their identity. They are proud of the connatations that come with the letters and the words they form. The french are proud of their food, the wine etc. All part of culture. The same with the Chinese, Indians and Americans.

The second premise is based off of the first stating:

2. That on specific issues like mortality, sexuality, religion in life and others they feel they are "right" and all views that do not agree with their point of view is/are wrong and they impose these views on other people/societies/cultures.

This is easily testible. Heck its testible in France, Holland, the US, Saudi Arabia and every country on the planet. In some cases it is reality. France with the Hijab law. Saudi Arabia with the anti-homosexual laws. Pakistan with its Hudood Ordinance (its basically a warped law that says that victims of rape have to produce 4 witinesses to the rape or are charged with having an affair and languish in jail). These are examples of laws, parts of societies which are abhorrent in others and you have people imposing their views as they are contrary to the others culture. On average NGOs are the most famous cases of such actions and most recently governments as well.

[quote=" CE]. By making "]

I think we are agreed that it is important to try to work out shared definitions of these concepts because there is a lot of scope for misunderstanding here. I don't agree that polarising free will is useless, because it is, for me, a starting point. That is, it is pointless to go further in moral debate if there is no choice at all. However the fact that a choice exists in any given situation does not answer the moral question raised. It merely confirms that the moral argument is worth pursuing. I certainly don't accept that it equalises the choices available to different groups in different circumstances.

More generally
In this thread, despite the way the words were used, there seemed to be two important things to addess. The first was whether people could make a choice about whether to view their own culture as superior. I think it is harder for some people than others but we can all make a choice about it.

The second thing to look at was what the moral responsibility leads to,in the context of cultural imperialism. Some of the arguments seemed to me to amount to " we should all be nice to each other and there won't be any problem". This implies there are no "real" differences and was illustrated by Phreddie's assumption that the original problem could be solved by waiting for the aliens to finish. I think there are real differences and this approach is inadequate( eg in the circumstances I presented in answer to his post.)

The second approach is addressed by CM. He seems to have a settled view that no culture has a right to impose on another, ever. My own quote about the British Raj shows what I see as the problem with this. I have already said that I recognise the colonial powers should not have been there in the first place, so perhaps the problems should not have arisen. That is for another thread. But the basic question of who is imposing on whom still stands. As the protagonist said " we have a custom too". Given the sorry history of imperialism it is not surprising that the cultural basis of western actions is often missed, but it is there, and it is as worthy of respect as any other.

This means that there are real and irreconcilable differences which cannot be dealt with by "live and let live" alone. I do not have any clever answers to this but I am concerned that this fact is at the base of any discussion.

[QUOTE=C Elegans]There is always the possibility that you can find one or a few points where I culture think it's superior to another culture, but as I said in my last post, also other points where they may find the other culture superior to their own. If you assess your culture at 1000 points, and you find your own culture is superior at 10 points, another culture is superior at 10 points and yet another culture is superior at 5 point and the other points are equal, that does not in my opinion mean you view your own culture as superior. (I stated more examples in my previous post[/QUOTE]I'd just like to add some nuance, that when comparing cultures on certain points that another reaction might be: "What you are doing is OK for you and what we are doing is OK for us" So a culture might consider it is superior to another on a certain point within the context of that culture, but accept that the other culture is superior on that same point within the context of that other culture. This type of judgment I have encountered from time to time in my African colleagues.

I apologise for not replying to this thread last week, I was simply too exhausted too post anything serious because my workload turned out heavier than I expected. Anyway, now:

CM] These assumptions are based on mainly the geo-political realities of the day. The role and influence of the media and the way it protrays societies wrote:
The arguments you presented in your post above look like anecdotal arguments to me. I certainly agree with you that many cultures, especially the currently dominating Western cultures and other expansion-oriented cultures indeed do view themselves as superior and strive to impose their values on others. However, it's a circle reasoning to say that cultures with dominating, imperialistic and/or culture-centric values, are dominating and culture centric. Obviously a culture that values power over others will strive towards getting power and influence over others. The interesting thing to me is whether this common behaviour is necessary or not, whether it is an unavoidable part of human nature or not, and I think not since cultures exist that do not have these values.

Threads here at Gamebanshee are also anecdotal evidence, and they are provide a very skew selection. As far as I know, we all come from cultures with culture-centric values. Europe and the US are extremly overrepresented. Nobody as far as I know come from for instance Central Africa or Polynesia.

However, some individuals here at SYM do not at all display a will to impose their culture at others, so I would think it is anecdotal evidence for the fact that not all individuals in a culture share the will to impose said culture on others.

Because every single human being i have met is just as dogmatic and "superior" as the rest. It is human nature, now is it genetic or based on society one can not say as we have such a limited knowledge on genetics and its affects on our behaviours.

But every human being you have met is also a skew selection, especially if you haven't met people from cultures that differ much from Pakistani, European or North American culture. See below for possible cultural bias in the observer, ie you.

I personally agree with Aegis in all that he has said so far about being an innate quality. You asked me earlier how i defined innate. Basically i was using it as an english word. Not as a scientific term as you describe it. In that manner innate describes society "brain-washing" you to think in a certian manner as Aegis has already described.

This paragraph I don't understand. If something is innate, you are born with it. Thus, it must be genetic, not environmental. Do you believe this "innate" trait can change due to environmental factors?

The first sentence is actually incorrect. I stated that all humans feel their culture is superior and on core issues of which some i highlighted they feel that the views of other cultures are infact wrong and wish to impose this on others. You can find examples on SYM. The 3 examples i have stated above are examples of that. CE if there are descriptions of cultures and societies which do not believe they have a superior culture could you link them?

Not sure which sentence you mean is incorrect. However, again, examples are merely anecdotal evidence, they do not provide evidence this behaviour is general to all humans. There are descriptions of cultures that do no view themselves as superior to other cultures. I cannot link to them since this information is nothing I've found on internet, but in the ethnographic and anthropologic literature. One anthropologist who has described such cultures, and also left an extensive references to other, earlier work was the Robert Briffault, author of "The Mothers" and several other books. There are several older accounts of such cultures, written by European and American anthropologists in the 19th and 20th century. You can also check out the work of German-American anthropologists Franz Boas and his students Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead. Here is a link to a biography of Boas, you will find a bibliography in the end as well as further links to biographies of Benedict and Meads.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Boas
Now, this is arts and not natural science so of course one can always question the correctness of the observations since they were made by individuals and not objectivly registered, quantified and replicated, but in arts, this is mostly impossible as you know, so coherence between descriptions must serve as a reliability measurement. It was a long time ago I read about it, but if you are seriously interested I can dig up more references.

I do understand the point you are making. You are basically taking the concept in absolutes. One culture either assumes it is absolutely superior or it is not. Thus the example of the 10 points out of a 1000. My assumption and premise is not based on the 990 points out of 1000. It is based on those 10. I will try to clear this up. You see the first premise is that everybody believes their culture is superior. That is to me a natural human trait.

This is where my major disagreement with you lies. If you make it a premise that everybody believe their own culture is superior, you can choose to interpret the 10 points as evidence for this and ignore the 990 points where the culture in question do not think it is superior. This has the absurd consequence that a culture who view another culture as superior on 100 points, would still according to your interpretation, qualify as believing itself as superior if it held that view on only 10 points. That's like saying we compete and you get 100 points and I get 10 points but I win because you give those 10 points a different meaning because it fits a personal definition that you have decided in beforehand. I think you should investigate the basis for your premise more closely, before building any further assumptions around it.

People are proud of being french, swedish, chinese or pakistani. They aren't proud of the letters that spell our their identity.

Heh, a recent Swedish survey reported that only about 20% of Swedes are proud of being Swedish

2. That on specific issues like mortality, sexuality, religion in life and others they feel they are "right" and all views that do not agree with their point of view is/are wrong and they impose these views on other people/societies/cultures.

This is easily testible. Heck its testible in France, Holland, the US, Saudi Arabia and every country on the planet. In some cases it is reality.

Again, you take examples from countries who already have a culture-centric and/or imperialistic culture, and believe in an exclusive religion that do not accept other religions as equally valid. Maybe it's your own cultural bias that makes you believe the behaviour in these cultures are shared by all human beings?

My main point is simply: because something is common, we cannot take for granted it is "innate". Also, because something is common, we cannot take for granted it is determined and unchangeble. In the anthropological literature, we can find descriptions of culture that do no show any evidence of cultural imperialism. Thus, it cannot be an "innate" behaviour. However, just like the related behaviours ethnocentricity and in-group behaviour, cultural imperialism is common in mankind because the environmental circumstances that trigger this behaviour, are common.

I suspect that the feeling of cultural superiority is connected to high levels of literacy. Writing reinforces beliefs, and it is a tool to further develop those beliefs. In my own studies of history, I see a tendency for writing to lead to dogma and dogmatic thinking. That leads to a feeling of cultural superiority. I don't think I can prove such a thesis, but that's my guess.

In my country, there is a strong tendency for people to believe in the superiority of their own group just because they are members of those groups. "Our team is #1!" That's just like saying, "We're better than everybody else." Could cheering for your own team be an innate behavior, or is it the result of tribalism? I do believe that humans are naturally competitive (it helps ensure survival). I don't see why there couldn't be a connection between the feeling that one tribe's beliefs are superior to all others and the feeling that one tribe is superior to all others, once those beliefs are an integral part of the tribe's consciousness.

I was looking for a thread when I noticed some people had replied. I must have missed this due to work. I am just bumping to make not this that i want to revisit the discussion later on.