is prescriptive, even though it does have the word “is” and does not have the word “ought”. Here’s why:
To say that murder is wrong is to say that one ought not to murder. It’s implicit, to be sure, but make a note: When we say that X is right or X is wrong, we are making a prescriptive claim, a normative claim (prescriptive and normative are synonymous).
The First Moral Theory of the Semester: Ethical Relativism
Two Correct Definitions
Ethical Relativism (definition 1): The view that what makes an act right or wrong is one’s culture: one’s culture is the only moral standard there is.
Ethical Relativism (definition 2): The view that one ought only to follow the rules of one’s culture, that there is nothing more to morality than that.
A Fallacious Argument in Favor of Ethical Relativism
Different cultures have different moral standards
Therefore, one ought only to follow the rules of one’s culture, that there is nothing more to morality than that.
Why is this argument invalid, fallacious?
Even though the most common argument in favor of Ethical Relativism is a fallacy, we need a good argument against it if we are justified in concluding it is false (It is one thing to say that an argument in favor of X is no good and it is quite another thing to say that there is good reason to think that X is false. If someone proposes an argument in favor of God’s existence that turns out to be faulty, we cannot, for that reason alone conclude that God does not exist).