A relativist says 'Honor killing was morally acceptable in culture X because their culture endorsed it.' What is the standard objection to this claim?
Think about your answer, then reveal below.
Model answer: If morality just is what a culture endorses, then we cannot rationally criticize other cultures' practices — we can only note that they differ from our own. But this seems to preclude exactly the kinds of cross-cultural moral judgment we routinely and plausibly make (condemning slavery, genocide, torture). The relativist appears to be saying that any practice is 'correct' just in case a sufficient number of people in a society endorse it, which collapses moral truth into majority opinion or tradition.
This is the 'problem of cross-cultural criticism.' Cultural relativism is often motivated by a desire for tolerance and open-mindedness, but it ironically undermines the grounds for tolerance as a universal value — because tolerance itself would then only be binding for cultures that happen to endorse it.