Based on the material covered so far, we will explain human moral development and relativist traditions: individual, religious and cultural. As for the latter, we'll talk about how they can go wrong and the ways in which they are problematic or have failed. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Mastery motivation is a key theory of development that hypothesizes that the desire and potential to do better is innate in humans. Moral development begins with conscience. It is crucial to our moral growth that the conscience is "well developed" as it "provides us with knowledge of right and wrong." It motivates and allows us to feel, reason and think critically. It guides most actions and requires our cooperation. These, however, are innate mechanisms. We cannot rely on default settings as our only moral guide because they would leave us susceptible to external pressures. Mastery motivation causes us to improve our reasoning abilities and maneuver our environment with increasing complexity. These additional inputs are “culturally formed.” Consciousness is shaped by biology, environment, and “conscious moral direction.” Our "most basic moral sense" (at least for most of us) comes from our biological predisposition "to care for and help others"). Thus, cultural forces contextualize our feelings by giving us “boundaries and guidelines” to work with. Sometimes, such guidelines can go against our grain, and this is where “autonomous moral reasoning” comes in, “exercising” our innate ability to reason to find better answers to our moral dilemmas. This is critical for moral growth as we underestimate the hold that peer pressure can have on us. Consciousness is understood in two synergistic elements: affective and cognitive. The affective, which speaks of the "emotions that lead us to feel moral approval or disapproval", such as "among others, sympathy, 'helper intoxication', ... resentment and guilt"; and the cognitive, which deals less with feelings and more with reasoning. Without the well-developed cognitive part, we fail to critically process our emotions and actions, which can direct us towards "evil". Returning to the theory of mastery motivation, psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg observed moral development in most human beings as a set of phases, with each phase passing less selfish and more inclusive than the previous one. Expanding on Piaget's practical morality, his theory infers that we have the potential to reach higher "stages of moral development" as we grow, which provide us with "better tools for resolving crises" if an earlier stage does not satisfy us, although no stage is superior to the other. Kohlberg's stages were criticized by some for being culture- and gender-focused, particularly, regarding the latter, by feminist psychologist Carol Gilligan. While some studies “positively correlated” the stages achieved with moral behavior, others did not, implying that reasoning is not the only aspect of moral behavior nor is it a “guarantee that one will act morally.” James Rest, a developmental psychologist, expanded Kohlberg's work by identifying four parts of moral behavior: "moral sensitivity, moral reasoning..., moral motivation, and moral character." Sensitivity can lead to a better perspective, which can lead to better judgment or reasoning. These first two, however, can be unsuccessful depending on the motivations, as some values ​​cantake precedence over others, which may contradict moral action. Furthermore, moral character, the ability to "integrate the other three components... into" one's personality, also plays a role. Flaws within any of the four codependent parts can lead to "a failure to act morally." In conclusion, conscience makes us “who we are as individuals” and serves as the primary driver of our moral development. “To be at odds with our conscience is to be out of harmony with our very being.”Immerse yourselfRelativist places, individual relativism is a tradition that holds that there are “no objective universal moral standards or truths” and therefore people can never be mislead "about what is morally right or wrong." Since “there are only opinions,” moral truths boil down to the inclinations of the individual. For example, if you believe that torturing animals is right, you are morally obligated to act on that opinion. Likewise, if one thinks differently, one should act accordingly. Moral standards exist, but there is no universality in them. This tradition grew out of 18th-century Romantic sentimentalism, a tradition that believed in the "natural goodness" of man and the way society holds it back. Individual relativism has some ways in which it is problematic. First, it wrongly assumes that moral disagreement suggests that there is no universality when, in fact, it is the application of moral standards that is unchallenged rather than the standard itself. For example, a fraudster on trial would likely argue that he stole and used the victim's credit card to get out of a financial bind rather than argue against the principle against theft. It also falsely assumes that we cannot be wrong about our moral beliefs, which contradicts our judgment of people's actions without regard to their opinions. More importantly, this tradition can be ruinous for the powerless. If one is morally obligated to act on one's feelings and, say, blondes see redheads as a danger to society, how can said redheads claim victimhood according to a tradition that validates their genocide in this particular situation? Individual relativism is a failed and dangerous theory because it holds that moral development stops at individuals and relieves them of reasoning and punishment. Most philosophers disapprove of this tradition. Similar to individual relativism, cultural relativism "looks to people to determine moral standards." Rather than personal opinion, morality comes from ideas that a group or culture can agree on and that these ideas do not translate to other groups or cultures. There is no universality because morality can only be derived from a culture's value system and evaluated accordingly. For example, a cultural relativist would look at slavery in America and say that, for Americans of that time, it was a morally valid system. This tradition neither excuses nor defends. Cultural relativism arose as a reaction to social Darwinism. Social Darwinism is a tradition that expanded “survival of the fittest” from Darwin's theory of evolution and applied it to societies (110). Just as “survival of the fittest” drives the evolution of our species, it can also drive our culture. Social Darwinists saw morality as a matter of “fitness” and based it on wealth and progress. Tradition was used to rationalize attitudes against and imperialization of "minor" societies, something cultural relativists disagreed with. Ruth Benedict, a leader of relativism.