Wong
believes that when the anthropologists tried to argue from cultural
relativism to tolerance they left out
the necessary ethical premises. Herskovits may have been working with
a tacit ethical premise that values "mutual consent" when he
made his arguments.
In any case, Wong believes that ethical relativism plus a
suitable ethical premise may allow us to deduce a rule of tolerance
and non-interference. He proposes the following "justification
principle:"
[O]ne should not interfere with the ends of others
unless one can justify the interference to be acceptable to them
were they fully rational and informed of all relevant circumstances.
(Moral Relativity, p. 181, brackets added)
Given the theory of ethical relativism, we could easily have two
people (or two cultures) with two different moralities. In person A's
morality X is prohibited while in person B's morality X is permitted
or even required.
Let's assume that A cannot justify prohibiting X to B and B cannot justify
requiring X to A. Assuming that A and B are both logical and
well-informed, the justification principle seems to imply that A
should practice tolerance and non-interference with B.