Chapter 6 Summary

After identifying its challenge to the ordinary belief in the objectivity and universality of moral values, Rachels attempts to repudiate cultural relativism without denying the truth of some of its elements. It is not legitimate to infer from the existence of different moral codes in different cultures that there is no objective moral truth. The cultural differences argument is invalid, inasmuch as it bases its conclusion about what really is the case on a premise about what people believe to be the case. That conclusion, however, might still be true; to establish its implausibility, Rachels points to some of its more objectionable consequences, including its elimination of all grounds for criticizing our own or other societies’ moral codes and its discrediting of the idea of moral progress. Rachels also suggests that all cultures have some values in common and that what appear to be disagreements about moral values between different cultures might actually be disagreements over factual and religious beliefs. What is right about cultural relativism, on the other hand, is that it warns us against the arrogant presumption that all our values are based on some absolute standard; at least some of these may be based on unjustified prejudices of our society.