### belief | doctrine | philosophical theory:

Pragmatism
* also rejects the problems of essential nature because they are transcendental.
* calls for the creative use of ANY tool which works.
* claim made by idle politici-ans.
* defines 'agreeing' to mean certain ways of 'working,' be they actual or potential.
* expresses one of the main inspirations of our culture.
* is based upon the philosophy of science
  - melioristic
  - perhaps most important in the area of standards and interoperability
  - presented as the philosophic counterpart of democracy
* is the defenestration of idealism
  - name of the game
  - offspring of maturity
  - wrong because it is centered on the present, the self, and material
* largely explains the spread of evangelical movements, analysts say.
* polite way of saying that there is no vision.
* posits that the truth is never final.

### belief | doctrine | philosophical theory:

Relativism
* affirms that moral right and wrong are only socially and individually determined.
* can become moral nihilism in the same way that divine command can become absolutism.
* contends that all conduct is relative to the circumstance.
* denies any unique privilege of one view over all others.
* holds that moral truth is subjective to the person who holds the truth.
* is also theologically incoherent, since neutrality is impossible concerning truth claims
  - an invitation to vice
  - based on the tenet that certain knowledge of any and all truth is impossible
* is often just another word for subjectivism
  - the first refuge of repressive governments
  - seen as required for a democracy of ideas and norms
* is the belief that everything matter of opinion
  - great disease of modernity to most conservatives
* is the idea that all things are relative
  - anything goes
  - standard for determining personhood
  - watchword of the liberal modernist theologian
* makes light of truth by claiming that contradictory beliefs can be just as true.
* means how something relates to another and the signifcance of it.
* problem for the faith today because it puts all religions on the same level.
* results in radical individualism.
* says that in the evolutionary and naturalistic universe nothing is fixed and definite.
* seems to destroy scientific claims to rationality.
* shows itself primarily in matters of truth and morality.
* stresses that the data can only be seen relative to a particular observer.
* takes on different forms depending on how radically right and wrong are thought to vary.

### belief | doctrine | philosophical theory | relativism:

Cultural relativism
* argues that all who say they have claim to the land, have such a claim.
* claims to be based on a scientific view of morals.
* is the attitude that other ways of doing things are different but equally valid.
* provides a possibility for achieving peace.
* says both truth and value are relative
  - that all human action is relative to the culture where the action happens
+ Ethnocentrism, Ethnocentrism and anthropology: Cultural geography :: Sociology
  * All people tend to use the values of the culture we were born in. One of the main goals of anthropology is to not use ethnocentric ideas. Anthropologists try to see other cultures from the point of view of a person from that culture. This is also known as 'cultural relativism'. Cultural relativism says that all human action is relative to the culture where the action happens. Anthropologists know that they have to not use the standards of their own culture if they want to understand another society correctly.

Ethical relativism
* eliminates the notion of a moral mistake.
* is the theory that holds that morality is relative to the norms of one's culture.