Cultural Relativism

Cultural Relativism 
In a one-page paper, answer the following questions:
What is “cultural relativism”?
What problems does Rachels have with this view? Explain these. Can you think of any other
problems?
NOTE: (No outside sources. Sources are provided by me, which are the PDF files that I upload.)
1- your first sentence could be something like the following: “Yes, it is morally permissible to
believe whatever one wants, because ____”, or “No, it is never morally permissible to believe
something on insufficient evidence” (these are just examples, yours could be different).
2- Then, defend your position. When writing philosophy, you are almost always writing an
argument. This means that you are trying to prove something to your reader. This is different
from explaining what you believe to your reader. When you take the stance of explaining, you will
often say what you believe and why, but you won’t be proving it to your reader. This is a mistake.
When writing, always be thinking about how someone might disagree with what you are saying,
and write so as to convince them.
You will be graded on the following:
Accuracy:
1- Are you correctly representing the argument? Have you understood the ideas? If you are
criticizing the argument, have you missed a possible counter-argument that they have?
2- A ‘C’ paper will have some significant error in interpretation.
3- A ‘B’ paper will have all major elements of the idea represented correctly.
4- An ‘A’ paper will have everything represented correctly and will do this with precision and
insight
Clarity:
1- s it clear what you are saying? Can an average reader follow your writing?
2- A ‘C’ paper may be difficult to follow.
3- A ‘B’ paper will be easy to follow, though there will be some confusion in the writing
4- An ‘A’ paper will make the ideas clear and accessible for the reader.
Strength of argumentation:
1- If you are required to make an argument, you want to make it as strong as possible. I will not
require you to make a perfect argument that settles the matter for all philosophers. This will be
much too high of an expectation. I do require two basic things: first, it has to take the form of an
argument, where you state a claim and defend this claim. Second, it has to be strong enough for
an introductory philosophy course. There is no simple way to quantify this, since we will study a
variety of different arguments, some much more difficult than others. Here are some basic
guidelines:
2- A ‘C’ paper will have the form of the argument, but will be easy to defeat. There may be a
problem with the argument that is already given by one of the philosophers that we study that
should have been taken into account. By this I mean that if we study someone who has argued
against what you are saying, you need to take account of this; otherwise, why shouldn’t we just
believe what they said instead?
3- A ‘B’ paper will have the form of the argument and takes account of any counter-arguments to
your position that we have studied. It will also be able to defend itself from “easy” counterarguments.
a. An easy counter-argument would be like this: if you say “anything is true as long as someone
believes it”, I could counter by saying “does this mean if you believe that you can fly, you can
actually fly?” I would take this to be an easy counter-argument. You aren’t expected to be able to
defend yourself against anything that I can think of, but you should be able to anticipate
objections like this one.
4- An ‘A’ paper will have the form of the argument, take account of anything that we have
discussed, and be something that most people, say, in the class would have to seriously
consider.
There is no exact length, but about 300-400 words will be enough for most assignments.
Please follow the prompt and the rubric properly