| Absolution | Forgiveness; usually God's forgiveness.
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| Absolutism | The ethical theory that there is a universal set of moral rules that can and should be followed by everybody.
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| Acculturation | modification of a culture by using or adopting traits of another culture
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| Agnosticism | The view that God is unknown and that it cannot be known whether or not there is a God.
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| Anthropocentrism | Viewing everything from an exclusively human perspective.
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| Anthropology | The study of humans. Physical anthropology:the study of human biology and biological prehistory
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| Anthropomorphism | Literally: making into a human shape. Projecting human characteristics into the behavior of other animals.
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| Atheism | The conviction that there is no God.
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| Cultural Diversity | The recognition of a variety of ethnic and racial groups within a given region (all the way from a neighborhood to plant Earth).
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| Cultural imperialism | A critical term for the attitude of imposing one's cultural accomplishment sand moral convictions on other cultures.
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| Cultural relativism | The theory that different societies or cultures have different moral codes. A descriptive theory.
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| Cynicism | See Chapter 1 Glossary
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| Deduction | The scientific and philosophical method of identifying an item of absolute truth (an axiom) and using this as a premise to deduce specific cases that are also absolutely true.
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| Descriptive | Describing a phenomenon without making an evaluative or judgmental statement. Opposite of normative.
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| Ethical Relativism | The theory that there is no universal moral code and that whatever the majority of any given society or culture considers morally right is morally right for that culture. A normative theory. See also cultural relativism
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| Eurocentric | A critical term meaning that American culture is overly focused on its European roots. Possibly a misnomer, since Americans rarely focus o European traditions, politics, and history, but rather on the European legacy for mainstream American culture.
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| Evidence | A ground or reason for certainty I knowledge. Usually empirical evidence; facts gathered in support of a theory.
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| Fatalism | The theory that life is determined by a higher power and that our will can't change our destiny.
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| Genocide | The murder of all or most of a population.
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| Hard universalism | See absolutism.
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| Homogeneous | Consisting of similar elements.
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| Hyphenated | A political term for the distinction between one's national or ethnic ancestry and a-one's American identity, such as Swedish-American. To be "hyphenated" indicates for some people that one's loyalties are divided. Today is common to omit the hyphen, as in Swedish American
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| Induction | The scientific and philosophical method of collecting emperical evidence and formulating a general theory based on those specific facts. The problem of induction: because one never knows if one has collected enough evidence, one can never achieve 100 percent certainty through induction.
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| Metaethics | The approach to ethics that refrains from making normative statements, but focuses on the meaning of terms and statements and investigates the sources of normative statements.
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| Monoculturalism | As opposed to multiculturalism. The concept of a dominant culture, viewing its history and cultural practices as the only significant contributions to the culture in question.
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| Mores | The moral customs and rules of a given culture.
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| Multiculturalism | The policy of recognizing cultural diversity to the extent where all cultures within a given region are fairly represented in terms of public life and education. Sometimes includes gender as cultural diversity. See also cultural diversity, pluralism, and particularism.
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| Nihilism | From the Latin nihil, nothing. The attitude of believing in nothing. Moral nihilism: the conviction that there are no moral truths
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| Normative | (See Chapter 2)
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| Particularism | The branch of multiculturalism that believes people not belonging to the dominant culture should retrieve their self-esteem by learning about the traditions and accomplishments of their own cultural group rather than those of the dominant group or any other group. Also call exclusive multiculturalism.
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| Prescriptive | See Normative.
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| Soft Universalism | The ethical theory that although humans may not agree on all moral rules or all customs, there are a few bottom-line rules we can agree on, despite our different ways of expressing them.
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| Superego | Freud's concept o the human conscience, the internalized rules of our parents and our society
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| Universal Law | Kant's term for a moral rule that can be imagined as applying to everybody in the same situation and accepted by other rational beings.
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| Universalization | The process by which one asks oneself whether one's maxim could become a universal law:"What if everybody did this?"
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