When we find ourselves quite uncertain whether particular human institutions, practices or behavior are morally right or wrong, we have some reason to stand back from our moral convictions, whatever they may be, and ask deep philosophical questions about the strange things that moral belief and practice are. These questions arise also when we see how deep and pervasive moral disagreements can be.

Noting our own uncertainty or the conflicting views of others, we might wonder, for example, whether moral principles or convictions can be correct or mistaken in the way that, say, scientific claims can be. If someone maintains that there is liquid water on Mars, he's either right or wrong. Does it make sense to think that her belief that homosexuality is morally prohibited is similarly either correct or incorrect? Or are what we call moral beliefs really more like matters or taste, to which the notions of truth or falsity, correctness or incorrectness are inapplicable? And if are to think of morality in terms of truth or falsity, how can we establish which moral principles are correct?

Historically many deep thinkers about morality have held that moral convictions are no more than deeply felt likings and dislikings. I think that I understand why they have come to this view, but it appears quite obvious to me that we cannot think of morality as being like matters of taste. If my neighbor likes pickles covered with hot chocolate sauce, I'll think he's odd, but not that he's mistaken. But if he also thinks it is okay for him to have sex with his six-year-old daughter, and I think that his behavior is immoral, I can't also think that we simply differ in what we like, different folks, different strokes.

Once we see, however, that moral convictions must be assessed in terms of correctness and truth, we come up against one of the most difficult philosophical questions about morality: how can we verify or justify any moral principle?

Many people in our culture think that there is an easy answer to this question, for the Bible tells us how we should behave. But this answer won't do, because at best the Bible says both too little and too much about what is right or wrong in human behavior. Too little, because it says nothing or nothing determinate about many of the moral problems of contemporary life. Too much, because no reasonable person can accept all of the views that are relatively specifically expressed. So people who rely on the Bible-or on what others tell them comes from the Bible-are kidding themselves. The Bible is used very selectively and is interpreted in terms of moral convictions that can't themselves be traced to the Bible.

In our community, these convictions are, of course, often widely held. But different communities often have different and even contradictory views about how people should behave. Twentieth century anthropology has extensively documented these differences. And, interestingly, it has frequently concluded from these differences that the beliefs of one's community determine how one should behave. In Rome do as the Romans do, and in Utah county do as the Mormons do, not because this well keep you popular and out of trouble, but because the community is the source of moral values. (There is something similar to this view, for example, in the frequent assertion that there should be prayers in the schools because this is what most people want.)

Scholars advancing this view hold, first, that the empirical investigation of cultures establishes that people in different cultures have quite different beliefs about what is right or wrong in human behavior. This is taken to show that there are no standards on which people everywhere across time would agree. Next, this is taken to show that everyone's beliefs about how people should behave are pretty much due to how he or she has been reared or "enculturated," to use the academic term.

Finally it is held that since every culture must have standards of behavior, it follows from the above that the values of each culture determine in an empirically verifiable way what behavior is right and what behavior is wrong for the members of the culture.

Some of you may begin to wonder how all of this can apply to a society as diverse in its beliefs as our own. This is a problem that I can't pursue here, as I want to note just a few features, pro and con, of this cultural relativism. The first is that some philosophers have argued that this view is mistaken in thinking that there are such differences in moral convictions. These philosophers have said that we must recognize that many of our moral disagreements are due to differing beliefs about nonmoral facts. Two individuals might disagree on the morality of the death penalty, for example, because one of them thinks that it is an effective deterrent to murder and the other does not. It seems to me that there is some truth to this but that even when we have taken disagreements of this sort into account, we shall have to concede that there are extensive and systematic differences in moral beliefs across space and time.

More basically, philosophers have pointed out that the view of the cultural relativist is self-contradictory. It uses the fact of differences in moral convictions to conclude that there are no moral principles that apply to everyone, and then it immediately turns around and says, "Oh, by the way there is a principle that applies to everyone, namely, act as your culture expects you to act". We have to wonder what this principle was drawn from.

In more recent years some philosophers have come, correctly I think, to agree with the importance of enculturation and to hold that much of what is right or wrong for an individual is determined by the convictions of his or her culture. These philosophers maintain, however, that there are some principles that apply to everyone, everywhere. This would be an extremely interesting subject to pursue, but it quite obviously puts us back where we came into this discussion. At best, we are again faced with the question of how we are going to verify these principles.

--Mendel Cohen