Frank Kogan

I can tell, and not just from your tag, that you've read Thomas Kuhn. When you shift from moral relativism to scientific relativism, you're getting a tad out of my comfort zone (only because I've read a lot less philosophy of science than I should), but yeah, the principle is the same, and you can refer also to Derrida's claim -- feeding off of Kuhn's writing about paradigm shifts -- that what really happens in scientific study isn't the discovery of a new truth, but the development of a new language by which to describe observations, meaning that the whole thing is simultaneously becoming more "true" in a scientific way, and more "relative" in a linguistic way.

There's certainly nothing wrong with using something as a practical universal while at the same time admitting that it's based on something unverifiable or perspective-specific. The problem with some (not all) anti-relativists is that they get so hung up on the concept of there not being an ultimate absolute and discoverable truth that they ignore the fact that 'truth' isn't all that interesting or useful a concept. Richard Rorty is my guide here, and the philosopher has the most interesting things to say about the issue: he essentially argues that, since they disagree on so many basic premises, relativist and absolutists have nothing to say to each other, and so there's no point in them even having a conversation. Instead, they should focus on pragmatic issues, ignoring whether or not decisions should be made or programs should be pursued because they meet some 'truth' qualification and more whether or not they have an agreed-upon use value to which their absolute value isn't especially relevant.