"Relativism" Survives Because of Confusion
Martin Kusch, Knowledge By Agreement Edition

So I've revived my old, half-finished book project on relativism.

And let me just say again: just about the only reason relativism (or, rather, "relativism") survives is because of some very elementary confusions.

Here's basically what I do every time I get a new book alleging to defend relativism: I look in the table of contents and the index, find the author's formulation of the view he intends to defend, and turn to it immediately to see whether it's even distantly related to any of the views properly characterized as versions of relativism. A very large percentage of the time, the author is talking about something else entirely--skepticism or nihilism or some anthropological/sociological thesis about diversity of opinion or practice.

So I recently got Knowledge by Agreement by Martin Kusch (a sociologist, granted, but one who is aiming to discuss philosophical issues here).

So, I turned to the final chapter, titled "Relativism," and after half a page I find this:

I did not formulate my position as 'all beliefs or statements are only relatively true.' I prefer putting my own position thus: Which statements are labelled 'true' or 'false' in a given community depends on its prevailing exemplars, interests, and goals. (p. 269-70)

Allow me to roughly paraphrase:

My view is not a version of relativism at all. Hope you enjoyed the previous 268.5 pages! Actually, I have an unrelated and far less interesting sociological/linguistic thesis about how people use the words 'true' and 'false.'

Incidentally, the sociological/linguistic thesis is false, but that's a long and different story. My point there is just that this is typical of the literature and discussions surrounding relativism and related views: most of the time, even the books that purport to defend the view are actually talking about some other, tangentially-related position.

This is one of the central reasons why relativism (or, rather, "relativism") survives and even quasi-thrives: the term is used so loosely, to cover so many vastly different positions, that it can never be nailed down clearly, let alone clearly refuted.

If I had my way, philosophers would call some kind of conference, bring together some sensible scholars and standardize the terminology. Not, of course, try to make some kind of degree regarding substantive propositions like 'alethic relativism is false,' but, rather, just to endorse standardized terminology. It's ridiculous how much trouble a lack of standardized terminology does here.