Ruth Benedict:
We recognize that morality differs in every society and is a convenient term for socially approved habits.  Mankind has always preferred to say “It is morally good,” rather than “It is habitual,” and the fact of this preference is matter enough for a critical science of ethics.  But historically the two phrases are synonymous.
The concept of the normal is properly a variant of the concept of the good.  It is that which a society has approved.  A normal action is one which falls well within the limits of expected behavior for a particular society…[I]ndividuals whose characteristics are not congenial to the selected type of human behavior in that community are the deviants, no matter how valued their personality traits may be in a contrasted civilization.

B.F. Skinner:
What a given group of people calls good is a fact: it is what members of the group find reinforcing as the result of their genetic endowment and the natural and social contingencies to which they have been exposed.  Each culture has its own set of goods, and what is good in one culture may not be good in another.  To recognize this is to take the position of “cultural relativism.”  What is good for the Trobriand Islander is good for the Trobriand Islander, and that is that.  Anthropologists have often emphasized relativism as a tolerant alternative to missionary zeal in converting all cultures to a single set of ethical, governmental, religious, or economic values.

Empirical Claim
Value Claim
Metaphysical Claim

Empirical Claim:
 There are no universally held moral values.
(A contentious issues among anthropologists/ sociologists)

Value Claim:
People ought to do what their culture says they ought to do.  (It is always morally right to follow the moral traditions of one’s culture)

Entails:

• Genocide is/was morally right for early European explorers, Nazis, and Rwandan Hutus.
• “Imperialist zeal” is/was morally right for Europeans, Australians, Americans.
•  Hindus in India ought to force 9-year old widows to live a life a self-denial.

A culture of one?
(It is morally right for me to do whatever I believe)
 
Metaphysical Claim:
Morality is not “real.” There are no moral values, only moral attitudes.

Logical positivism:
Can’t meaningfully say:
 “X is wrong,”
But only:
“I disapprove of X”

Where’s the immoral part?

• Human suffering
• The suffering serves no purpose other than to give the torturer pleasure
• The torture acts with malicious intent.

Three Categories of Sentences
ANALYTIC(True by definition)
“Unicorns have one horn," “Triangles have 3 angles”

SYNTHETIC(Established by observation)
“Pickles are sour,” “This culture believes that torture is wrong”

NONSENSE
“Bolerk gibby,” “God loves you," “Torture is wrong”
 

KANT’S SYNTHETIC A PRIORI

In virtue of what is something true?
Analytic:  true by definition/convention.
Synthetic: true in virtue of the world.

How can we know whether something is true?
A priori: independent of observation
A posteriori: through observation
 

Table of possibilities:
                             Analytic     Synthetic
A priori
A posteriori
 

Consider the sentence:
1.  The cat is on the mat.

Now consider:
2.  Material objects exist in space and time.
3.  Material objects stand in causal relations with each other.
4.  Humans are free and responsible
     agents.