Based on the material covered so far, we will explain human moral development and relativistic traditions: individual, religious, and cultural. Concerning the latter, we will explain how they can be wrong and why they are problematic or have failed. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the original essayMastery motivation is a key developmental theory that hypothesizes that the desire and potential to do better is innate in humans. Moral development begins with conscience. It is essential to our moral growth that conscience be “well developed” because it “provides us with the knowledge of good and evil.” It motivates us and allows us to feel, reason and think critically. It guides most actions and demands our cooperation. However, this is an innate mechanic. We cannot rely on default settings as our sole moral guide, as this would leave us vulnerable to external pressures. Mastery motivation allows us to improve our reasoning skills and maneuver our environment with increasing complexity. These additional contributions are “culturally shaped”. Consciousness is shaped by biology, environment, and “conscious moral direction.” Our "most basic moral sense" (for most of us, anyway) stems from our biological predisposition "to care for and help others"). Then, cultural forces contextualize our feelings by giving us “boundaries and guidelines” to work with. Sometimes these guidelines can clash with our sense, which is where “autonomous moral reasoning” comes in, “exercising” our innate ability to reason in order to find better answers to our moral dilemmas. This is essential for moral growth because 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 “emotions that lead us to feel moral approval or disapproval,” such as “among others, sympathy, euphoria of help,… resentment and guilt”; and the cognitive, which deals less with feelings than with reasoning. Without the well-developed cognitive part, we fail to critically process our emotions and actions, which can lead us toward the “bad.” Returning to mastery motivation theory, psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg observed moral development in most humans as a set of stages: each stage being less selfish and more inclusive than the last. Building on Piaget's practical morality, his theory infers that we have the potential to reach higher "stages of moral development" as we grow, which equips us with "better tools for resolving crises" if a previous step does not satisfy us, although no step satisfies us. is superior to the other. Kohlberg's steps have been criticized for being culture- and gender-centered by some, most notably, with regard to the latter, by feminist psychologist Carol Gilligan. While some studies “positively correlated” the stages reached with moral behavior, others did not, insinuating that reasoning is not the only one. aspect of moral behavior nor does it constitute a “guarantee that one will act morally”. James Rest, developmental psychologist, expanded on Kohlberg's work by identifying four parts of moral behavior: "moral sensitivity, moral reasoning...,moral motivation and moral character. Sensitivity can lead to better perspective, which can lead to better judgment or reasoning. These first two can, however, prove unsuccessful depending on the motivations of each person, because certain values ​​can take precedence over others, which can contradict moral action. In addition, moral character, the ability to “integrate the other three components…into” one’s personality, also plays a role. Deficiencies within any of the four codependent parties can lead to “an inability to act morally.” In conclusion, conscience makes us “who we are as individuals” and is the primary driver of our moral development. "To be at odds with our conscience is to be at odds with our very being."Dive Into Relativist Places, individual relativism is a tradition asserting that there is "no objective universal moral standard or truth" and that people can therefore never be wrong “about what is morally right or wrong.” Because “there are only opinions,” moral truths come down to the inclinations of the individual. For example, if someone believes that torturing animals is a good thing, they are morally obligated to act on that belief. Likewise, if one thinks otherwise, one must act accordingly. Moral standards exist, but they have no universality. This tradition grew out of 18th-century romantic sentimentalism, a tradition that believed in the "natural goodness" of man and how society restrains it. Individual relativism presents several problematic aspects. First, it wrongly assumes that moral disagreement suggests that there is no universality when in reality it is the application of moral norms that remains uncontested rather than the norm itself. For example, a convicted fraudster would be likely to argue that he or she stole and used a victim's credit card to get out of a financial situation rather than object to the principle prohibiting theft. It also falsely assumes that we cannot be wrong about our moral beliefs, which contradicts our judgment of people's actions without considering 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 these redheads declare themselves victims of a tradition that validates their genocide in this situation particular? Individual relativism is a failed and dangerous theory because it holds that moral development stops with individuals and frees them from 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 opinions, morality comes from ideas that a group or culture can agree on and on which those ideas do not translate to other groups or cultures. There is no universality because morality can only come from a culture's value system and be evaluated accordingly. For example, a cultural relativist would look at slavery in America and say that, for Americans of the 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 developed “survival of the fittest” from Darwin's theory of evolution and applied it to societies (110). Just as “survival of the fittest” determines the evolution of our species, it can also determine our culture. Social Darwinists.