The Due Date:

Purpose:

The purpose of this assignment is to give you practice particularly in:

1. Identify and apply a variety of ethical theory

2. Evaluate and differentiate between an epistemological, a metaphysical and an ethical question

3. Understand and apply the criteria of correct philosophical reasoning

4. Understand the difference between a rhetorically good argument and a rationally good argument.

5. Identify, reconstruct and evaluation arguments posed by philosophers

Outside of this course, this will help you understand and apply good reasoning, spot problems in another person’s side of a debate (or spot them in your own) and know how to rephrase a person’s stance in better, more easy to understand ways. Also, in a more practical way, this also lets you see the faults and how to better defend the common-place view that ethics are relative.

Task:

Cultural Differences Argument

In class and in the readings, we covered what the different kinds of relativism are and some of the various arguments for moral relativism. In this assignment you need to:

1. Explain that argument

2. Explain at least one of the problems the argument has

3. Say how serious you think the problem is and why you think that

Each of these should take you around a paragraph to answer. Each of them are worth 5pts. Since this is worth 20pts, this is worth 5% of your total grade.

Example:

This is a bare outline of a possible paper, there is no explanations or anything like that in it:

1. One of the arguments for moral relativity is the Cultural Differences Argument.

– Explanation of the Cultural Differences Argument.

2. One of the problems for this argument is that it is not valid.

– Examples of its invalidity

3. I think that this is not a damning objection.

– The reason for this is that I am a poor scientist/philosopher and will hold my stance no matter what and for any reason.

In this version, I would be able to do the entire paper in 3 paragraphs. If you go that route, make it clear to me where the individual parts are.

Submission:

To submit this assignment, I only accept .pdf, .doc, .odt, and .docx. I do not accept .pages. You can find where to submit in the upper right of this screen. As for all assignments in this class, the standard is Times New Roman, 12pt font, double spaced, 2-3 pages (that is, at least a few words onto the second page to the bottom of the third).