| It depends what you mean by relativism.
There are lots of different theories of relativism; but most share two features:
1. The 'object' of the study is relative to a given standpoint or framework.
2. No framework or standpoint is uniquely priviledged above any other.
The first point is a denial of objective knowledge (Popper described it as 'knowledge without the knower'). Some people apply this to everything; other apply it to specific domains -- such as morality, knowledge, meaning, values etc.
The second point tells us that there is no meta-framework that incorporates all others (one of my lecturers keeps talking about meta-rationality and strategy; relativism is the denial of this meta-framework).
One framework for relativism that's quite common today is cognitive relativism. It basically asserts the relativism of 'truth' (although, as I have pointed out else-where, it is really talking about knowledge of truth). In technical terms, cognitive relativism claims that no one set of epistemic norms is metaphysically priviledged over any other. What this means is that different standards for what constitutes knowledge (epistemic norms) are equivalent.
The standard critique of cognitive relativism is that it is self-refuting. The statement that "no one set of epistemic norms can be priviledged over any other" is, in fact, an epistemic norm that your relativist is telling you should be priviledged over all others. If you can't know anything for certain, how can you know for certain that you can't know anything. The reply is pretty much, "no, you're wrong". The claim of relativistic knowledge does not require a commitment to a non-relativisitic notion of 'truth' or 'knowledge'.
The second critique is less common, but kind of interesting, in light of another discussion. It is that if all claims to knowledge are relative and valid, then you must conceed that from some positions relativism will appear false. So relativism is both true and false. Once again, the reply is, "yeah, so?" More precisely: anyone who is a genuine relativism would not adopt a position where relativism would appear false, so for them it is never false. If someone else adopts a position where it appears false, then they were never a genuine relativist and therefore, they never believed it was true.
I tend to losely split things into four areas. On material issues, I'm all for science and relativism goes out the window. On social issues -- my speciality -- it's all relative. Morally, I'm not sure. I tend to argue for moral relativism, but there's usually a sneaking notion of objective morality in the backgroud: different people or cultures tend to enact objective moral standards in different, and imperfect, ways. Cognitively, I am a relativist (which sits uneasily with the notion of science in the material world: I resolve this by recognising that 'science' is a work in progress that will never end, but is useful along the way). |