RT Article
T1 What Should Realists Say About Honor Cultures?
JF Ethical theory and moral practice
VO 17
IS 5
SP 893
OP 911
A1 Demetriou, Dan
LA English
PB Springer Science + Business Media B. V
YR 2014
UL https://www.ixtheo.de/Record/1687922047
AB Richard Nisbett and Dov Cohen's (1996) influential account of "cultures of honor" speculates that honor norms are a socially-adaptive deterrence strategy. This theory has been appealed to by multiple empirically-minded philosophers, and plays an important role in John Doris and Alexandra Plakias' (2008) antirealist argument from disagreement. In this essay, I raise four objections to the Nisbett-Cohen deterrence thesis, and offer another theory of honor in its place that sees honor as an agonistic normative system regulating prestige competitions. Since my account portrays honor norms as radically different from liberal ones, it actually strengthens Doris and Plakias' case in some respects: cultures of honor are not merely superficially different from Western liberal ones. Nonetheless, the persistent appeal of honor's principles, and their moral plausibility in certain contexts, suggests not antirealism, but pluralism—a reply on behalf of realism that itself has considerable empirical support.
K1 cultural psychology
K1 Honor cultures
K1 Metaethical realism
K1 Moral Disagreement
K1 Pluralism
K1 Social Psychology
DO 10.1007/s10677-014-9490-3