Anthropology and ethics Part II

As was mentioned up top, the primary focus of the field of ethics is not the explanation of the many moral structures that exist in various communities. Anthropology and sociology are the disciplines that are best suited to do that objective, given it only involves description. On the other hand, ethics is concerned with the justification of moral principles (or the impossibility of such a justification), and it seeks to answer these questions. However, ethics must take into account the diversity of moral systems since it is sometimes said that this diversity demonstrates that morality is nothing more than a matter of what is traditionally accepted and that it is, as a result, always relative to the particular societies in which it is practised. According to this point of view, a moral principle can only be considered legitimate within the context of the society that upholds it. According to this theory, terms like "good" and "bad" mean nothing more than "approved in my society" or "disapproved in my society," and as a result, the search for an objective or rationally justifiable ethics is a search for something that is, in reality, an illusion.

One method to respond to this position would be to emphasise the fact that practically all human moralities have certain characteristics. This would be one way to respond to this position. One way of thinking about it is that these shared characteristics must be the foundation of morality that is universally legitimate and objective. This argument, on the other hand, would be based on a fallacy. Even if the most straightforward explanation for the shared characteristics is that evolutionary theory finds them to be beneficial, this does not validate those characteristics in any way. The process of evolution is a random mechanism, and as such, it is unable to bestow a moral value on human activity. To claim that care for kin is thus right would be to seek to deduce values from facts (see below The pinnacle of moral sense theory: Hutcheson and Hume). It may be a truth that concern for kin is in harmony with evolutionary theory, but to suggest that concern for kin is therefore right would be to attempt to deduce values from facts. In any event, it does not change the fact that something is wrong just because it is accepted by everyone. If all human nations were to engage in the practise of enslaving every non-human tribe they were able to subjugate, but some freethinking moralists continued to maintain that slavery is immoral, then it would not be reasonable to accuse them of speaking nonsense simply due to the fact that they had so few followers. In the same vein, the fact that the notions of kinship and reciprocity have widespread acceptance does not demonstrate that these ideas are in any way objectively justifiable.

This example demonstrates how ethics is distinct from the descriptive sciences in a number of important respects. The question of how a person ought to behave stays unanswered from the standpoint of ethics, regardless of whether human moral codes are strikingly similar to one another or remarkably different from one another. People who are unsure of what they should do in the situations in which they find themselves will not benefit from being taught what their society believes they should do because this will not assist them decide what they should do. Even if they are told that almost all other human cultures concur and that this consensus arises from the developed human nature, it is possible that they will still choose to behave differently. This is a reasonable possibility. Even if they were told that there is significant disagreement among human societies over the appropriate actions for individuals to take in such situations, they would still be faced with the same predicament, and they could start to wonder whether there is any objective answer at all. In point of fact, this variability does not preclude the existence of an objective answer; it is very possible that the majority of societies have just gotten it wrong. This is another topic that will be discussed in greater depth later on in this piece; after all, the idea of an objective morality is one of the recurring themes that emerges throughout ethical theory.