William's Arguments Against Vulgar Relativism

In this paper, I will be evaluating whether or not the following two statements are incompatible. Claim one states that “What’s morally right for someone to do is whatever people in his or her culture do.” Claim two states that “It is never morally right to interfere with what people in other cultures do.” I will define vulgar relativism and its three propositions according to William’s “Interlude: Relativism.” Then I will provide William’s arguments against relativism and the problems he finds with relativism. Using William’s arguments against relativism and an example that shows the issues with relativism, I will argue that both claim one and claim two are incompatible and both claims should be given up. According to Williams, vulgar relativism is built upon the following three propositions. The first

Suppose Pizarro, a Spanish conquistador, saw some Incas performing a child sacrifice and decided to stop the act because he believed that it was immoral for any person to perform a child sacrifice. A relativist would argue that it would be morally wrong for Pizarro to interfere with the child sacrifice. Sacrificing children might be wrong in Pizarro’s culture but it is not wrong in Inca culture. The Incas believed that such sacrifices were necessary for the well-being and survival of their society. Proposition two clearly states that what is right for a society is what encourages survival for them. Therefore when Pizarro stops the sacrifice from happening he prevents the Incas from doing something that would have promoted the Incas’ survival. Let us assume that Pizarro’s culture promotes the condemnation of performing child sacrifices. Then it could be right for Pizarro to stop the child sacrifice. However, this is not compatible with the rewritten proposition and in this case relativism is incompatible with the proposition that it is wrong for a society to interfere with another