CULTURE – AGAIN

(Remember: the following generalizations are heuristic starting points only. There will be plenty of counterexamples, nuances, and greater complexities as we go along.)

In addition to culture correlating with basic assumptions regarding the individual/community relationship and the nature of property rights (inclusive/exclusive), we have seen that it may further correlate with the basic ethical frameworks we have been using:

Roughly, if you have been acculturated in a Western/Northern country such as the US and the UK, it may be that your arguments largely emphasize utilitarian approaches.

If you have been acculturated in a Western/Northern country such as the Germanic countries and Scandinavia, it may be that your arguments more likely include deontological approaches.

If you have been acculturated in a non-Western country – especially one shaped by the sorts of traditions we have explored so far (ubuntu, Confucian thought, and Buddhist thought) that emphasize the well-being of the community, you may have a stronger likelihood of appreciating virtue ethics approaches – i.e., beginning with questions about what kinds of human beings we need to become – and thus what sorts of habits and practices of excellence we must pursue, for the sake of both our own contentment and well-being (eudaimonia) and that of our larger community; and/or you may have a stronger likelihood of

appreciating the importance of doing what will benefit the larger community in any event, insofar as we as individuals are crucially interdependent with the other members of our community.(Similar comments may also hold for those acculturated in Scandinavian countries, as marked by strong traditions of shared public goods, as exemplified in allemannsretten and social democratic approaches to public infrastructure, including ICTs and the internet.)

What role – if any, so far as you can tell – does your own culture play in shaping your attitudes, beliefs, and practices in these matters? Stated differently: can you see whether or not your own arguments have been reinforced in one or more ways by the larger cultural tradition(s) that have shaped you? And/or do your own arguments tend to run against the prevailing ethics of the larger cultural traditions that have shaped you?

(After responding to these questions, you may want to revisit the questions regarding our meta-ethical frameworks – ethical relativism, absolutism, and pluralism – raised above in questions (1)(C)(i) and (1) (C)(ii),

Notes 1 For non-geeks: the operating system, or OS, is the base-level

software required to make your computer “work” – including reading and writing files from various media (CDs, DVDs, memory sticks, hard drives) and through various communication channels and networks (phone lines, Ethernet connection, wireless networks), along with the many operations required to let you interact with and use that information (e.g., keyboards and mice and the computer screen). Application software, by contrast, is software that runs, so to speak, on top of the OS: this commonly includes applications for wordprocessing, email, spreadsheets, presentation, web-browsing, instant messaging, etc.