Anthropologist Edward Sapir 

                               (credit: Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons) 

Chapter 3                          Reactions and Discussion

It is worth reminding ourselves at the start of this chapter that each of us is mostly programmed by her/his culture to act in certain, fairly specific ways that are considered “normal” in that culture and “natural” for humans generally. None of these sets of morés and customs is somehow “normal” or “natural” for all human beings as is shown by the wide variety of actual cultures that exist in the world now and that have existed in the past.

Furthermore, children from one culture who are adopted and raised in another take on the ideas and ways of their adoptive culture, not the one they are connected to genetically, which proves culture is made of social constructs, not genetic ones. You are mostly what you were programmed to be before you were six. Culture is the main shaper by far of human thinking and behavior.

Cultural programming is hard to alter once a human is past about twelve years of age, but not impossible. There is hope in your culture for people to grow past the limitations of their culture’s programming as is demonstrated by the ways in which children can learn several languages and learn to move between their birth culture and others that are perhaps widely subscribed to in their area. In fact, even many adults learn to do the same. Such adults sometimes move to another culture, work, live, and choose to stay. Our cultures are hard to rise above, but not impossible.

You are a product of the culture that you grew up in, but you can learn to fit into other cultures, and yet remain flexible enough to live in your old one if you choose to do so or move back and forth at will. Facts prove this.

At this point, we can discuss some major criticisms of Moral Realism.

There are people in the Humanities and Social Sciences who argue vehemently that a culture – any culture – can only be truly understood by a person who has lived among the people of that culture. Once you have lived with the Trobriand Islanders, or the Kwakiutl, or whatever culture you care to study, you realize that their way of life can only be truly understood by those inside it.

An ethnographer, after years or decades, may be accepted by the tribe, but he/she will still be learning the finer nuances of the simplest of everyday morés and customs and may only be adept enough at the culture to successfully signal, for example, her willingness to go along with a plan proposed by a friend in the tribe one time in five. Perhaps a rising vocal intonation must be accompanied by an upward glance and an upward movement of the hand or a facial tic of some sort. The point is that the whole signal system that enables daily social life to function in most cultures is much subtler than just a mastery of the language or cookery or kinship system or commerce of that culture.

Thus, these critics say, there can be no translating of any culture into any other. This is the view called “cultural relativism”. And it is partly true. Cultures can be hard to translate. But not impossible. Unfortunately, cultural relativism is often used to justify moral relativism. This step in the argument has no logical foundation. The possibility that there may be universal standards of right and wrong is not negated by any evidence for cultural relativism.   

Edward Sapir and his student/colleague Benjamin Whorf were giant figures in the development of this moral relativist position in Anthropology. They argued that each culture in its verbal language, body language, morés, customs, art, cooking, etc. – in its totality, in other words – is so subtle and complex that there is no way to translate it into the terms, vocal nuances, and gestures of any other culture. To try to do so would be to do violence to both cultures. In his most famous argument, Whorf gave evidence to support this thesis from the terms used by the Hopi tribe (of Arizona) to describe features of their architecture.

Whorf argued that the Hopi descriptions of their pueblos could not be rendered into English. The Hopi use words that name structural parts, rather than rooms or spaces. But in English, buildings are described using terms for rooms and spaces. He further argued that his study of other native American languages had convinced him that the only way one could study a culture meaningfully was by accepting as an axiom of one’s work that no culture can be translated into any other. The result of any translation attempt is always a thing of shreds and patches. Therefore, he claimed, anthropologists must aim to describe other cultures – ways of life – carefully, honestly, but not to attempt to translate them, nor to try to create a model or theory of culture that embraces all cultures. To try to create such a model, given that the maker of the model likely comes from a European heritage, would be the worst form of ideological colonialism.

This is the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. It has been basic to the arguments of most moral relativists in Anthropology for at least three generations.

This position was more than adequately answered by Steven Pinker in the early 2000s. He makes several telling points. For example, he points out that we’ve all had debates the gist of which we could remember afterwards, even though we might not be able to remember the exact words used by the debaters. What this example shows is that thought is not language.

In addition, if language preceded thought, how could new words be coined? But it is well-established that all languages are evolving all the time, adding words, modifying grammar rules, etc. (What is “cyberspace”? How does one “google” a topic? Has “google” been “verbed”? How does one “surf the web”?)  

Furthermore, how could written works in any language be translated into any other language. Yet, such translations are created all the time, with the consent and approval of the original authors.

The independence of language and thought has even been demonstrated in experiments done with infants. (Pinker is a cognitive scientist who has worked on this subject specifically.) Babies can think well before they talk.

And I’d like to add a personal reaction here. When I read Whorf’s explanation of how profoundly “untranslatable” Hopi words for traits of their architecture are, I stopped reading and burst out: “What did you just do?” It seemed clear to me that he had just explained what he had called “unexplainable”.            

One can further ask, how do the relativists know a culture is untranslatable? If they have been to the land where that society – living within its culture – resides, how did they get proficient enough in that culture’s language and customs to live among them and even to write coherently about their ways? Are moral relativists saying they’re smart enough to “get it”, but no one else ever can be? 

It is also worth emphasizing that each culture, though it may be very unique, must have some morés and customs in place that enable it to deal with physical reality. That is a key aspect of the thesis of this essay: there is a material reality, and we all have to deal with it: its entropy, uncertainty, predators, etc.

Finally, we can say there is a harsh, long-term downside to moral relativism.

An individual who has lost her capacity to process and respond to sense data that stream through her consciousness second by second becomes desperately anxious, in extreme cases, catatonic. Sanity means being in touch with physical reality. The other choice – insanity – no one wants to experience.

A tribe that has lost faith in the most basic parts of its culture – its concepts and words for its ways of understanding the real world – goes through an analogous trauma, a kind of tribal nervous breakdown. Sadly, we have seen examples of this phenomenon happen to indigenous peoples all over the world.

The larger point is that a society has to have some basic morés in place just to function. If its culture begins to deteriorate, or the colonizers purposely attempt to destroy that indigenous people’s culture, the target people likely will go through horrific times as they lose faith in their culture’s morés and customs. They will experience increased substance abuse, poverty, and violence. In the wake of European invasions, indigenous peoples all over the earth have endured this same list of woes. And still, moral relativists insist that they must not act, only watch. 

                                            Hopi pueblos (Wolpi, Arizona) 

                     (credit: Terry Eller, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons)