Epistemic relativism concerns knowledge, but rather than tread the dangerous, self-defeating ground of alethic relativism, it does not claim that it is impossible to know anything as truth, it deals more closely with science and to what extent cultural differences account for different uses of logic and interpretation of evidence. It rejects the notion of science as a process towards complete knowledge, but rather takes advantage of its falsifiable nature and the effect of social change on science as a discipline. Hence it can be used both to support the notion that disagreements do not always mean that one side is right and the other wrong, as it questions the infallibility of science and how subject it is to social change. Conceptual relativism deals with our perceptions of the world, which are altered and coloured by our experience, society, religion and other such factors, and thus is subjective. We perceive the world differently as a result, and organize our subsequent experiences in a manner unique to us. An analogy was drawn to a sculpture – the slab of marble that you are given in the world, defined by scientific concepts and empirical evidence, but the sculpting of the marble into a piece of art is done by our own reaction to it, which is itself dependent on cultural and social factors in keeping with relativism. The conceptual relativism disproves the notion that in disagreements one side is right and the other wrong advocates that perceptions of the world, an example being alethic beauty, subjective and equally valid, as one person could think a flower to be beautiful and the other not. The last type of relativism I shall discuss is probably the most popular one, that of moral relativism. It is based on the premise that there are no absolute truths but rather different viewpoints based on society and culture, and then applies it to the human morality. (This concept is seen as the idea of Sigmund Freud who claimed that the conscience evolves differently depending on society.) Cultural relativism argues that each society possesses its own moral compasses, while subjective relativism advocates that each individual forms their own sense of morality, and that they are all equally valid. Moral relativism is very strong, as it is based on a premise that can be empirically proven that morality is not consistent in every society in every point in history, e.g. slavery was OK in Britain 400 years ago but not now. Moreover, morality is not something tangible, and an absolute morality cannot be scientifically proven, although attempts have been made by Kant for instance to prove it through the use of reason. Any judgements that we make of other moral codes are done from a modern perspective, which one cannot divorce from an evaluation of something. Therefore, moral relativism does disprove the idea that one side is right and the other wrong.
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