ABSTRACT
This chapter examines cultural theory’s capacity for organizing the empirical and normative variations of cultural relativism. It shows that cultural theory’s version of “constrained relativism” admits sufficient moral pluralism to encompass, predict, and explains a broad range of variation with respect to empirical patterns of acceptance for prominent moral rules. The chapter presents an explicit metaethical argument for cultural theory and relies on moral pluralism and a functional second-level criterion in order to produce an objectivist account. It argues that it is possible to make objective determinations concerning the approximate mix of moral goods—the products of social institutions developed by different “ways of life”—required for societal viability. Cultural relativists often contend that moral and social conventions appear in unending variety that cannot be reduced to a limited number of types. Cultural theory portrays adherents of various cultural biases as constructing distinctive “stipulated realities” with empirical and normative aspects, in other words, portrays them as objectivists.
