Relativism

This article has an unclear citation style. The references used may be made clearer with a different or consistent style of citation and footnoting. (September 2009) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Relativism is a family of philosophical views which deny claims to objectivity within a particular domain and assert that valuations in that domain are relative to the perspective of an observer or the context in which they are assessed.^[1] There are many different forms of relativism, with a great deal of variation in scope and differing degrees of controversy among them.^[2] Moral relativism encompasses the differences in moral judgments among people and cultures.^[3] Epistemic relativism holds that there are no absolute principles regarding normative belief, justification, or rationality, and that there are only relative ones.^[4] Alethic relativism (also factual relativism) is the doctrine that there are no absolute truths, i.e., that truth is always relative to some particular frame of reference, such as a language or a culture (cultural relativism).^[5] Some forms of relativism also bear a resemblance to philosophical skepticism.^[6] Descriptive relativism seeks to describe the differences among cultures and people without evaluation, while normative relativism evaluates the word truthfulness of views within a given framework.