The Impossibility of Translation

 

New York City, 1934

 

No man ever looks at the world with pristine eyes. He sees it edited by a definite set of customs and institutions and ways of thinking.

~Ruth Benedict

1934

Our next ethical theory requires us to jump forward all the way to 1934. We will be walking through the halls of Columbia University in New York City. In particular, we will be visiting the anthropology department, where one of the characters in this story—Franz Boas—taught for 40 years. The reason for studying the ideas of Boas, as well as those of his students, will become apparent below. For now, let's prime our moral intuitions with an example.

Members of an uncontacted tribe photographed in Brazil, 2012
Members of an uncontacted
tribe photographed in
Brazil, 2012.

In their popular (but controversial) book Sex at Dawn, Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá (2010: 90-91) report on the sexual practices of some Amazonian tribes. In some of these tribes, pregnancy is thought to be a condition that comes in degrees, as opposed to either being pregnant or not. In other words, the members of these tribes believe you can be "a little" pregnant. In fact, all sexually active women are a little pregnant. This is because they believe that babies are formed through the accumulation of semen. In order to produce a baby, a woman needs a constant supply of sperm over the course of about nine months. Moreover, the woman is free to acquire the semen from any available men that she finds suitable. It may even be encouraged to do so in order for the baby to acquire the positive traits of each of the men that contributes sperm. As such, perhaps the woman will seek out a man who is brave, a man who is attractive, a man who is intelligent, etc. All told, up to twenty men might contribute their seed to this pregnancy, and all twenty are considered the father.

"Rather than being shunned... children of multiple fathers benefit from having more than one man who takes a special interest in them. Anthropologists have calculated that their chances of surviving childhood are often significantly better than those of children in the same societies with just one recognized father. Far from being enraged at having his genetic legacy called into question, a man in these societies is likely to feel gratitude to other men for pitching in to help create and then care for a stronger baby. Far from being blinded by jealousy as the standard narrative predicts, men in these societies find themselves bound to one another by shared paternity for the children they've fathered together” (Ryan and Jethá 2010: 92; emphasis in original).

This practice is called partible paternity, and it is not at all the way that paternity is viewed most everywhere else, especially for us in the West. We are privy to the way pregnancy actually works, and we readily distinguish between, say, the biological father and an adoptive father. But notice something interesting here. In my experience teaching, it is very rare that people judge the behavior of some of these Amazonian tribes to be immoral. Typically, students claim that it is ok for them to practice that "over there", but "over here" we do things differently. If you feel this way, then you might be a relativist.

 

Franz Boas (1858-1942)

 

Boas and his students

Ruth Benedict (1887-1948)
Ruth Benedict (1887-1948).

The reason for this shift into the 20th century is that the seeds of cultural moral relativism, the version of relativism that we'll be focusing on, are found in the work of anthropologist Franz Boas (1858-1942). Boas was a groundbreaking anthropologist who is often referred to as the "Father of American Anthropology." In chapter 2 of The Blank Slate, Steven Pinker explains how Boas’ research led Boas to realize that the people of more primitive cultures were not in any way deficient. Their languages were as complicated as ours, allowing for complex morphology and neologisms (new words). Their languages were also rich in meaning and could be updated rapidly, as when new numerical concepts were adopted as soon as a society needed them. Although Boas still thought Western civilizations were superior, he believed that all the peoples of the world could rise to this level.

Boas was himself likely not a relativist. He never expressed the particular views (which we will make explicit below) which are now known as cultural moral relativism. What he did express was a reluctance to definitively rank societies as either "more evolved" or "less evolved". Instead, he saw the members of different cultures as fundamentally the same kind of being, just ones with a different system of beliefs and ways of living. His students, however, took these ideas and morphed them. It was above all else Ruth Benedict (1887-1948), who like many other intellectuals were thrown into a moral panic after World War I, that developed what we now know as cultural moral relativism.

“The story of the rise to prominence of cultural relativism, [is] usually attributed to the work of Franz Boas and his students... Although Boas’s position on cultural relativism was in fact somewhat ambiguous, he laid the groundwork for the full elaboration of cultural relativism by redirecting anthropology away from evolutionary approaches... and by elaborating on Tylor’s notion that culture was an integrated system of behaviors, meanings, and psychological dispositions... The flowering of classical cultural relativism awaited the work of Boas’s students, including Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead, and Melville Herskovits. Their articulation of a comprehensive relativist doctrine was appealing to intellectuals disillusioned by the pointless brutality of World War I, which undermined faith in the West’s cultural superiority and inspired a romantic search for alternatives to materialism and industrialized warfare… The ethnographer must interpret a culture on the basis of its own internal web of logic rather than through the application of a universal yardstick. This principle applies to everything from language and kinship systems to morality and ontology… Complementing the core principle of cultural coherence is insistence that societies and cultures cannot be ranked on an evolutionary scale. Each must be seen as sui generis [i.e., unique] and offering a satisfying way of life, however repugnant or outlandish particular aspects of it may seem to outsiders” (Brown 2008: 364-5; interpolations are mine).

As this idea of a specifically cultural moral relativism began to spread, other relativisms sprang up. The result is that the term relativism can now signify a variety of views—something we'll learn a little bit more about below.

 

 

 

Decoding Relativism

 

 

 

 

Cultural Practices from Around the World

Welcome to the intermission. In this section, we'll look at different cultural practices from around the world. Although there are many relativisms (as we learned in the video), we will focus once more on cultural moral relativism: the view that an act is right or wrong depending on the cultural context in which it is performed. The point of this activity is to challenge the cultural relativists, to make them see how difficult it really is to say that each culture can develop their own moral code. Warning: Some of the things you'll see here are graphic. However, this is the only way to show you the counterintuitive nature of CR. If you are sensitive, you may skip this section.

 

 

A Tidong community wedding.
A Tidong community wedding.

The Bathroom Ban of the Tidong (Indonesia)

An ancient custom of the Tidong tribe is to ban newlyweds from using the bathroom for three days after being married. Relatives go as far as staying with the newlyweds during this period of time to make sure that they don't eat or drink, or else they'll have to use the restroom. To break this taboo is considered bad luck on the marriage as well as the families of the newlyweds. I might add that holding in your urine causes bacteria build-up which is associated with urinary tract infections—and worse.

Is this morally permissible for them?

 

 

Living with the dead (Indonesia)

Is this morally permissible for them?

 

 

Dani Amputations (Papua New Guinea)

Is this morally permissible for them?

 

 

WARNING: Some of the following images are graphic in nature and might be disturbing to some.
Sensitive viewers may skip to the next section.

 

 

Cannibalism (various)

There are various reports of cannibalism throughout history and even isolated tribes that still practice the eating of humans.

If cannibalism is performed as a way of honoring the dead, is this morally permissible for them?

 

 

 

Baby Throwing (India)

Both Muslim and Hindu parents engage in a baby throwing ritual in some parts of India. The baby drops about 30 feet, and is caught in a sheet by a group below. It is said to bring good luck. You can read more in this article or watch the video below.

Is this morally permissible for them?

 

Americans

If we are extending cultural relativism to include sub-cultures, this might include fringe groups. What would a relativist say about:

  • anti-vaxxers?
  • the Followers of Christ (Idaho), who reject modern medicine and rely solely on faith healing?
  • Evangelical homeschoolers, who teach their children only creationism?

 

 

 

And another thing....

Joshua Greene (2013) gives what he calls the meta-morality argument against cultural moral relativism: Cultural moral relativism answers the question of how morality works within a “tribe”, but it does not and cannot guide us on how morality should work between “tribes.” What Greene is pointing out is that CMR does not resolve our moral debates. This is, of course, the most pressing problem in the 21st century. Of course it's the case that the Taliban has a moral code that is different from most people living in Southern California. The question is: How do we resolve these disputes? How do we come to a moral agreement? But CMR can't answer this question. In fact, it says that there is no answer. It thus fails to guide our actions, and, hence, one might argue that it fails as a moral theory.

This is just one objection to this view. We'll eventually see some more. Stay tuned.

 

 

Executive Summary

  • Cultural moral relativism is the view that an act is morally right if, and only if, the act is permitted by the code of ethics of the society in which the act is performed.

  • There are also other types of relativism, such as perceptual relativism, relativism about truth, and relativism about reason.

  • Tension rises between relativists and non-relativists when different practices around the world appear to be unacceptable or, in the very least, suboptimal.

FYI

Suggested Reading: Gilbert Harman, Moral Relativism Explained

TL;DR: Crash Course, Metaethics

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