Cultural relativism Essay

Cultural relativism is the construe that all horticultures that is dogmas, customs and ethical motive are relative the individual indoors his social linguistic stage setting. It simply organization agency what is right or wrong is culture specific because what may be considered clean in one order may be considered im clean in otherwise. Therefore, because in that respect is no habitual measure to standards of clean-livingity in the society, no one has the right to arbiter the other on what is wrong or right (Martin 1950). According to Kenneth (1981) an anthropologists, no culture is superior to the other, for cause you shadownot be allowed to condemn a terrorist community of interests or vampires or night runners as evil.Cultural relativism sees nothing inherently wrong or good in any ethnical toughened up. Therefore, viewing one culture as immoral receivable to their moral beliefs could be seen as ethnocentrism. Cultures are diverse and even those with conflicti ng moral beliefs should not be viewed in terms of right and wrong or good and bad. We can therefore conclude that ethnical relativism is being widely accepted in upstart anthropology. Cultural relativism has touched on all aspects of life and computers and schooling technology has not been spared either.Computer revolution has necessitated the sop up on for future spheric ethics or teaching ethics. Computers through entropy technology and the cyberspace suck up created a global community. With the creation of global community and therefore giving rise to the need for unification of moral systems or what has been referred to as global ethics. Therefore, unifying ethical rules have to be constructed within a cyberspace that can serve a hot global ethic. Cultural relativism has had great bewitch on computer ethics oddly on information technology.The main affected areas are privacy, smart property rights and immunity of information. Information ethics could be looked at f rom gull cultural and inter cultural contexts. In cross cultural context differences exist between moral systems of different cultures which have very pregnant implications for moral attitudes towards uses of information and information technology. In intercultural information ethics context we reflect moral questions regarding information technology and use of information on the basis of different cultural conditions. This should be focused comparative conceive of moral systems.Its overall aim would be to interpret compare and critically evaluate moral systems in different cultures regarding their moral attitudes and behavior towards information and information technology (Brey 2007). We need to specifically look into these three areas that is privacy, independence of information and intellectual property rights whose ethics differ is relative especially between air jacketern and non western countries. These countries have different policies regarding the ethics brass those three issues due to different moral attitudes on information systems. cloisteredness of information is well instituted in some countries while in others there are no policies governing privacy. Privacy is an individual right, unless such(prenominal) right may not be recognized in countries that belief in incarnate interests which take priority over individual rights. For example in non western countries like mainland China Japan and Thai have no concept of privacy. So probably privacy laws let simply on information are not enacted (Martin 1950). For instance, what they refer as private sphere in Thai and Japan has different meaning in western countries (David 2006).In china, a interchange close to privacy is yinsi which means shameful secret and is associated with shameful things. In Japan, they have a word for private, watakusi meaning partial, secret and selfish (Bao and Xiang 2006). Although these words have started to take the privacy meaning in the novel past due to wester n influence, the individual rights have not been well implemented in those countries. Japan, china and Thai have only recently implemented privacy laws however though Thai privacy laws are hardly enacted may be due to western influence.This cannot be narrowed to those countries only, there are some(prenominal) more through out the demesne who believe in collective recognition due to their cultural beliefs (Brey 2007). Intellectual property rights are other issue characterizing the revolution of computers. This touches on those individuals and companies that develop soft ware and other applications and who feel that there intellectual property should be protected by for example copyrights. In the west the governments are keen on defend such rights, unlike, taking a case study of china where due to communist rule such property is not protected by the government.To them all means of production like farms and factories are communally own until very recently. However due to frugal r eforms and increased interaction with the west they have had to institute IPRs (intellectual property rights) only to harmonize Chinese economic systems with the rest of the world. China is still struggling with this concept up to date. In such countries which have communist culture, piracy cannot be labeled as crime but copyrights and patents are viewed as selfishness (Paul 1955).Freedom of information is another issue that has displayed an aspect of cultural relativism in computers. Freedom of information exist cardinal principles freedom of reference which is expressing ones opinion or ideas in speech freely or in writing and secondly freedom of approach shot to information. Freedom to express one self through publication can be viewed as the third principle (Brey 2007). In western countries freedom of information is basically a constitutional and inalienable right to all(prenominal) individual.The government can only be allowed to sensor information in extreme cases like ha te speech and information undermining national security. In such countries people post all types of information on the internet and it is upon the parent and other individuals to protect their children from information that should not be sociable to the children especially pornography and bad eating habits (Paul 1955). On the contrary in other non western countries freedom of information is not a direct principle and there are many practices interfering with freedom of information.This is because of their close culture or their religious beliefs. In these countries the internet, databases and libraries are censored especially when they are accused of disseminating inappropriate information to the society. Mass media being government owned, they see it as the right thing to do to protect its citizens and turn back they have access to the right information (Brey 2007). The value of privacy, freedom of information and intellectual property are pro make in analyzing cultural relati vity in computer world and information ethics.In western world information is accessible to everyone and there is respect for individual information ethics and is not concentrated on morality that is the values that are central in western information ethics are not the values central in many non western systems of morality (David 2006). We can vastly conclude that cultural relativism is true for computers through information systems. In conclusion, cultural relativism touches on every aspect of human life and in the recent part it is becoming more widely acceptable.The value systems of different countries influence the way they perceive computer and information ethics. At least two different approaches to morality are found in the world a virtue centralizeed morality that emphasizes good for the community and are found in traditional cultures like southern and eastern Asia and in Africa, and rights center morality that that stresses value of individual freedom like the west. Despi te the modern technology and some expected rules to play along like Christianity, cultural relativism is here to stay and it is really gaining ground despite its challenges.Reference Bao, X & Xiang, Y. (2006). ethics and information digitalization Digitalization and global ethics Journal. (8), 41-47. Brey, P. (2007). worldwide information ethics and the challenges of cultural relativism. New York SAGE. David, Wong (2006). A defense of pluralistic relativism. New York Oxford University Press. Kenneth, E. Goodpaster. (1981). Relativism in ethics. New York HBS Case Services. Martin, Gardner. (1950). Beyond Cultural Relativism. Ethics Journal, (1)38-45. Paul, F. Schmidt (1955). Some Criticisms of Cultural Relativism. Journal of Philosophy, (25)780-791.