From the podcast, Dr. Bezio discussed assumptions and some of the causes and effects. Assumptions are certainly something that is unavoidable regardless of who you are. I believe most people make assumptions to rationalized the actions of the people around them with. This is more specific to individual assumptions, but socially it’s more apparent. Cultures are a lot more concrete than people, meaning the qualities that make up a society are easier to point out than individual people. We make assumptions based upon our own experience in our own culture and compare it to the actions of another. For Americans, a majority of our cultural practices are directly tied to Western European nations which strongly derives from Judeo-Christian values. Our opinions are completely derived from subjectivity which I believe correlates back to the reading we did on ethics.
In the first reading we did, we went over the concepts of cognitivists and noncognitivists. Cognitivitsts believe there are moral arguments and noncognitivists believe that there are no moral arguments. The noncognitivist line of thinking I believe correspondence directly to the idea of assumptions. We make assumptions based upon our culture. Culture can derive many different levels from a national identity to a small social group. Nevertheless, we can’t necessarily say that one culture’s practices are right or wrong. We may disagree with them, but we cannot morally argue that they or right or wrong because it’s based on subjectivity. Therefore, assumptions are subjective in nature and cannot have any moral truth.