This is something I've been thinking about lately...
Let us say there exists some sort of core universal moral principles / views / ideas that are shared by all cultures everywhere. But each culture, individually, adds some / many arbitrary moral claims in addition to the underlying universal morality. The sources of these distinctive claims might be the local religion, the local authorities, the local environment, or by happenstance some idea gets incorporated into the local culture and passed on from generation to generation.
When people from different cultural backgrounds meet in a pluralistic society, lots of conversations start to happen where one person tries to convince the other person that something is right or wrong. In these conversations, if the people from different cultural backgrounds want to convince the other person to change their minds on a particular issue, they have to resort to reasoning that that other person will accept as valid. They have to search for, and find, commonalities.
If the Indian wants to convince the Christian that widows shouldn't eat fish, they can't just say "well it's in my religious text so you should agree it's immoral", because the Christian doesn't accept the Hindu religious texts as a moral authority. So the Indian has to start looking for reasons that the Christian might accept. In this instance, they probably wouldn't find any compelling reasons and are likely to fail to convince the Christian that widows shouldn't eat fish.
Gradually in pluralistic societies, people have lots of these types of conversations, and gradually from their experiences, get an idea of what kinds of moral arguments do and don't get accepted by others. They start to learn from experience what kinds of moral principles and ideas they have to use as their jumping-off points in order to make their arguments.
In the case where you've got two very culturally similar viewpoints (e.g. Catholics and Protestants) they might be able to make types of moral arguments that they both accept as valid (e.g. God commands it in the Bible), but which wouldn't be agreed on by a 3rd party (e.g. by an atheist or a Hindu). So as society expands toward being more pluralistic and include people of more different cultural backgrounds and more different religious viewpoints, the society pushes people more and more toward using universal moral reasoning principles only.
The people in these pluralistic societies may well not be consciously aware of all this, or any of this. They might not have any clue what universal morality is. But if you asked them "how would you go about trying to convince the person down the road from you who's from a different culture and religion that X is right or wrong?" they would have a decently approximate idea of where to start. They would be vaguely aware of what kinds of moral principles are thought to be convincing moral reasoning within their society because they have seen others use them, though they may have no clue whatsoever as to why those principles and not others are thought by their society to be convincing and no clue where those principles came from.
So I suggest that the product of all these individual conversations about morality occurring between people of different cultural and religious backgrounds in the wider pluralistic society, is that the people within the pluralistic society tend towards increasingly articulating more universalistic moral principles in the public space without necessarily understanding the origins of what they are articulating. This is because they learn over time and from experience what kinds of arguments do and don't convince others, and gradually get better at making the arguments that others do find convincing. So within public discourse within these societies, types of arguments and types of principles that have universal acceptance and speak to people from all backgrounds and cultures and moral codes, increasingly come to the fore. The next generation in these pluralistic societies then grows up in a society where the public discourse is dominated by those universal moral reasoning principles, and that generation imbibes them as its morality and gets better at articulating them and making those arguments.
As a result, pluralistic societies bumble their way toward the increasing articulation of universal moral principles as a product of the discussion everyone in society is having. The people in these societies get better and better at articulating these universal principles, better at discarding moral views that are cultural or conditional or historical, and better and better at cutting to the core of the universal moral ideas shared by all cultures and peoples. They may well not understand that this is what they're doing. They may falsely assume that the principles they are articulating are just their own culture's morality and that it's no more or less accurate that any other. But they would be wrong because the gradual product of their pluralist society is that the principles they have been pushed towards espousing are more universalistic on average than the principles espoused by people from non-pluralist cultures.
I think that progression is somewhat evident in Western society (although some Western countries are farther along the path than others). As Western society placed Catholics and Protestants on equal footing, then in the 20th century, atheists and Christians on equal footing, and immigrant cultures on equal footing, this pluralism caused an evolution of Western morality. It bumbled its way from the morality of medieval Catholicism toward more and more universalistic ideas, with subsequent generations refining the principles they were articulating to be increasingly universal in scope.
Let us say there exists some sort of core universal moral principles / views / ideas that are shared by all cultures everywhere. But each culture, individually, adds some / many arbitrary moral claims in addition to the underlying universal morality. The sources of these distinctive claims might be the local religion, the local authorities, the local environment, or by happenstance some idea gets incorporated into the local culture and passed on from generation to generation.
When people from different cultural backgrounds meet in a pluralistic society, lots of conversations start to happen where one person tries to convince the other person that something is right or wrong. In these conversations, if the people from different cultural backgrounds want to convince the other person to change their minds on a particular issue, they have to resort to reasoning that that other person will accept as valid. They have to search for, and find, commonalities.
If the Indian wants to convince the Christian that widows shouldn't eat fish, they can't just say "well it's in my religious text so you should agree it's immoral", because the Christian doesn't accept the Hindu religious texts as a moral authority. So the Indian has to start looking for reasons that the Christian might accept. In this instance, they probably wouldn't find any compelling reasons and are likely to fail to convince the Christian that widows shouldn't eat fish.
Gradually in pluralistic societies, people have lots of these types of conversations, and gradually from their experiences, get an idea of what kinds of moral arguments do and don't get accepted by others. They start to learn from experience what kinds of moral principles and ideas they have to use as their jumping-off points in order to make their arguments.
In the case where you've got two very culturally similar viewpoints (e.g. Catholics and Protestants) they might be able to make types of moral arguments that they both accept as valid (e.g. God commands it in the Bible), but which wouldn't be agreed on by a 3rd party (e.g. by an atheist or a Hindu). So as society expands toward being more pluralistic and include people of more different cultural backgrounds and more different religious viewpoints, the society pushes people more and more toward using universal moral reasoning principles only.
The people in these pluralistic societies may well not be consciously aware of all this, or any of this. They might not have any clue what universal morality is. But if you asked them "how would you go about trying to convince the person down the road from you who's from a different culture and religion that X is right or wrong?" they would have a decently approximate idea of where to start. They would be vaguely aware of what kinds of moral principles are thought to be convincing moral reasoning within their society because they have seen others use them, though they may have no clue whatsoever as to why those principles and not others are thought by their society to be convincing and no clue where those principles came from.
So I suggest that the product of all these individual conversations about morality occurring between people of different cultural and religious backgrounds in the wider pluralistic society, is that the people within the pluralistic society tend towards increasingly articulating more universalistic moral principles in the public space without necessarily understanding the origins of what they are articulating. This is because they learn over time and from experience what kinds of arguments do and don't convince others, and gradually get better at making the arguments that others do find convincing. So within public discourse within these societies, types of arguments and types of principles that have universal acceptance and speak to people from all backgrounds and cultures and moral codes, increasingly come to the fore. The next generation in these pluralistic societies then grows up in a society where the public discourse is dominated by those universal moral reasoning principles, and that generation imbibes them as its morality and gets better at articulating them and making those arguments.
As a result, pluralistic societies bumble their way toward the increasing articulation of universal moral principles as a product of the discussion everyone in society is having. The people in these societies get better and better at articulating these universal principles, better at discarding moral views that are cultural or conditional or historical, and better and better at cutting to the core of the universal moral ideas shared by all cultures and peoples. They may well not understand that this is what they're doing. They may falsely assume that the principles they are articulating are just their own culture's morality and that it's no more or less accurate that any other. But they would be wrong because the gradual product of their pluralist society is that the principles they have been pushed towards espousing are more universalistic on average than the principles espoused by people from non-pluralist cultures.
I think that progression is somewhat evident in Western society (although some Western countries are farther along the path than others). As Western society placed Catholics and Protestants on equal footing, then in the 20th century, atheists and Christians on equal footing, and immigrant cultures on equal footing, this pluralism caused an evolution of Western morality. It bumbled its way from the morality of medieval Catholicism toward more and more universalistic ideas, with subsequent generations refining the principles they were articulating to be increasingly universal in scope.
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