ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the differentiation of two construals of relativism: the "metaphysical" construal, based on the idea that there is no single, absolute, universal morality, and the "semantic" construal, based on the idea that the truth value of moral claims is relative to a set of moral standards, or moral practices, or some other suitable parameter. It introduces the core relativist ideas in an informal way, and warns against possible misinterpretations. The chapter discusses the ways in which the truth value of a moral claim may be sensitive to various parameters. Parallel to its developments in metaethics, relativism has also made its way into the study of natural language, leading to more and more sophisticated semantic frameworks that are meant to model a wide range of constructions: epistemic modals, knowledge ascriptions, predicates of personal taste, and so on.
