What is cultural relativism, and can we judge others?

Note:  this topic will be discussed on Nov. 13.

On October 11th the Seattle Times published 2 articles by Ron Judd concerned with the subject of George Washington.  The questions raised were essentially, why was our state named for someone who owned slaves and never set foot here, and how can we venerate founding fathers who promoted the ideals of universal freedom for all and still owned slaves?  Click here and here to read the articles.

The philosophical question behind these questions is, do we have a right to judge others in different cultures or from different times using the standards we have today?  Is it right to think that our values and norms are somehow universally correct for everyone, everywhere, and everywhen?   Or, do we need to step back and say, they lived in a different time and by different norms we can't really judge?  The subtext is, are there universal norms that always apply, like murder is always wrong, and slavery is always wrong, no matter what?

I liked the even-handedness Judd uses in his articles, and how he included interviews with black historians who study Washington and others of the founding fathers, and shares their perspectives.  I can feel the relativistic process at work, tying in the recent Civil War statue removal backlashes, among other current issues.  At one level you can see a revisionist history being written while, at the same time, we are asking ourselves if it is right to change the way we interpret and report on past events.  Can't we accept that things were different then, and accept the people of that time (in this case), and somehow understand their perspectives and motivations?

The practice at the time of the young USA was for a slaveholder to free his slaves upon his death through his will, which Washington did.  Jefferson did the same (for the most part).  Judd's historians raise the question, how different would the fledgling USA have turned out if he had freed his slaves while serving as president?  He missed his chance to be that shining example that maybe he should have been.

What is consciousness?

One of the more interesting philosophical ideas of the past few years is the concept that "machines" might be able to think.  Most of the Sci Fi books I read today include at least 1 character who is an Artificial Intelligence, or AI.  When the author embraces the concept and imbues the AI with a quirky personality, or some sort of noble purpose, he makes them into a human-sort of character we can all identify with and enjoy.

At the root of all this is the idea that a machine, a computer in most cases, can think in the same way we all believe we think, including having emotions, feelings, motivations, and so forth.  Collectively we might call the running cognitive process in our minds consciousness and identify it as something special that only humans and other biologic close relatives might be capable of having.  Can your computer be said to have consciousness?  Can a collection of silicon chips and metal wires be conscious?  What is the underlying essence that makes human consciousness so special?

If you haven't run across John Searle's Chinese Room Experiment, please look it up.  In this thought experiment Searle shows how, at the level of actually manipulating machine code, a computer of any kind does not actually know what it is doing - it only manipulates information according to the programming that runs it.  For this reason the machine cannot be said to actually "understand" the information it is dealing with, it only manipulates 1's and 0's.  Searle goes on to talk about how a computer can be made to run in almost any sort of medium, not just the silicon chips we talk about commonly today, so we need to keep a very broad concept of what a computer might be in our minds.

Alan Turing's AI Test, which I like to call the If It Walks Like A Duck, It's A Duck Test, says that if you cannot tell the difference between a machine and a person in a blind test (you send in questions and read the answers without knowing which is which, for example) there is no difference.  If a computer can be programmed to replicate any nuance of human responsiveness you can think of, and could then respond in a way indistinguishable from a human response, then the machine can be said to have all the cognitive properties a human has. In the movie Blade Runner you might recall that the future robot police developed very sophisticated tests to identify the androids/robots among us, since their responses to human life and situations were indistinguishable from almost all human responses.

Which brings me back to consciousness, and what it is.  Like free will, where we are free if we believe we are free, is consciousness ours to claim if we simply believe we are conscious?  Is a dolphin not conscious only because a dolphin has never asked itself that question?  Or your dog?  Are these other biologic creatures, who are clearly intelligent in some ways but who act predominantly according to some genetic or basic survival programming and not with willful intent, actually conscious in the same way we feel we are?

And for the Trekkies out there, are the “individuals” in the Borg conscious?

What ought we to do?

Ethics.  Always a difficult subject for people.  Where do we find the blueprint for our actions that help us live healthy, happy, productive lives, free of worry and in harmony with others?  Philosophical thinkers have weighed in on this issue down through the ages, and their thoughts can be roughly sorted into categories we might want to take the time to explore.

Main Ethical Theories

Religion Based:  Divine Command Theory  -  The divine command theory asserts that an action is morally right if the action is in harmony with God's commands.

Consequence Based:  Utilitarianism  -  A utilitarian believes that an action is morally right if it maximizes overall well-being and happiness.

Duty Based:  Deontology  -  A deontologist believes that an action is morally right if the motive behind the action is good.

Agent Centered:  Virtue Ethics  -  A virtue ethicist holds that an action is morally right if an agent who has all the virtues would have performed the action.

To prepare for the meeting you might want to look these up in your favorite search engine and see where your ideas fall.  Where would an atheist most likely feel comfortable?  A person strongly committed to the Bible?  A pagan?  A Buddhist?  A humanist?  You can see where I am going.

Enjoy the process.  If we were doing this "the old way", I'd have several volumes of books arrayed on my coffee table when you arrived that address this topic in many different ways.  The popularity of the concepts leads to a plethora of authors who like to talk about it.  Including me, apparently.

Leave a comment, please.  I'd like to know where you all stand.