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Moral relativism or ethical relativism (often reformulated as relativist ethics or relativist morality) is used to describe several philosophical positions concerned with the differences in moral judgments across different peoples and cultures. An advocate of such ideas is often referred to as a relativist.
The book argues for both psychological relativism (the verifiable observation that norms differ between cultures) and ethical relativism, and attempts to base ethics on the biological basis for emotions. Westermarck argues for ethical relativism by emphasizing that there is no empirical basis for objective standards in ethical theory. [2]
Situational ethics can also be classed under the ethical theory genre of "proportionalism" which says that "It is never right to go against a principle unless there is a proportionate reason which would justify it." [6] J. A. T. Robinson, a situational ethicist, considered the approach to be a form of ethical relativism. [citation needed]
Ethical subjectivism is a completely distinct concept from moral relativism. [17] Ethical subjectivism claims that the truth or falsehood of ethical claims is dependent on the mental states and attitudes of people, but these ethical truths may be universal (i.e. one person or group's mental states may determine what is right or wrong for ...
(Many normative ethical relativist arguments run from premises about ethics to conclusions that assert the relativity of truth values, bypassing general claims about the nature of truth, but it is often more illuminating to consider the type of relativism under question directly.) [12]
According to Aristotle, how to lead a good life is one of the central questions of ethics. [1]Ethics, also called moral philosophy, is the study of moral phenomena. It is one of the main branches of philosophy and investigates the nature of morality and the principles that govern the moral evaluation of conduct, character traits, and institutions.
The most common forms of ethical subjectivism are also forms of moral relativism, with moral standards held to be relative to each culture or society (c.f. cultural relativism), or even to every individual.
Descriptive ethics, also known as comparative ethics, is the study of people's beliefs about morality. [1] It contrasts with prescriptive or normative ethics, which is the study of ethical theories that prescribe how people ought to act, and with meta-ethics, which is the study of what ethical terms and theories actually refer to.