Cultural Relativism
Citing Paul’s “all things to all people” (1 Corinthians 9), Christian missionaries adapt nonessential practices to local customs while resisting this view that makes moral right and wrong entirely dependent on a culture’s norms.
What is cultural relativism?
This game-theory setup shows how pure self-interest can yield worse outcomes for all.
What is the Prisoner’s Dilemma?
The school of psychology that explains behavior through observable stimuli, responses, and conditioning.
What is behaviorism?
The approach that explains moral tendencies as products of natural selection.
What is evolutionary ethics?
Kant’s supreme principle requiring you to act only on maxims you can will as universal law.
What is the categorical imperative?
Judging another culture by one’s own standards—often seen as the opposite of cultural relativism.
What is ethnocentrism?
The descriptive claim (not a moral theory) that people always act from self-interest.
What is psychological egoism?
The psychologist known for operant conditioning and the “Skinner box.”
Who is B. F. Skinner?
Helping relatives because it promotes shared genes is known as this.
What is kin selection?
Kant says to treat humanity always as these, never merely as means.
What are ends in themselves?
The anthropologist whose Patterns of Culture helped popularize cultural relativism.
Who is Ruth Benedict?
The philosopher-novelist who defended rational self-interest in The Virtue of Selfishness.
Who is Ayn Rand?
In classical conditioning, the bell becomes this after pairing with food.
What is a conditioned stimulus?
The critique that warns you can’t derive moral “ought” from factual “is.”
What is the naturalistic fallacy?
For Kant, the only thing good without qualification.
What is a good will?
Critiqued by cultural relativists, this practice judges other cultures by one’s own standards.
What is ethnocentrism?
his game-theory scenario shows that individually rational self-interest can make everyone worse off.
What is the Prisoner’s Dilemma?
The psychologist who launched methodological behaviorism in 1913.
Who is John B. Watson?
The view that natural selection can favor traits at the level of whole populations, not just individuals or genes.
What is group selection?
This foundational question in philosophy asks how rational thought should guide our beliefs, actions, and moral judgments, a debate spanning from Plato to Kant.
What is the role of reason?
The “father” of American anthropology who argued for understanding cultures on their own terms.
Who is Franz Boas?
This philosopher-novelist championed rational self-interest in The Virtue of Selfishness.
Who is Ayn Rand?
Known for operant conditioning, he designed the “box” that bears his name to study reinforcement.
Who is B. F. Skinner?
This evolutionary account of cooperation—helping with the expectation of return—differs from agape, which gives without seeking payback.
What is reciprocal altruism?
The only thing “good without qualification” in Kant, this aligns with biblical emphasis on the heart’s intention over mere outcomes.
What is a good will?