Cultural Relativism and Postmodernism, what a team.

"In the final session of the conference, Paul Shankman, associate professor of anthropology at UC Boulder, spoke about cultural relativism and its evolution from a powerful anthropological research tool, which asked researchers to temporarily suspend moral judgment in order to understand cultures on their own terms, to its "lapse into moral relativism and epistemological relativism." If each culture has its own way of knowing and its own completely unique set of values that others cannot understand, cross-cultural understanding is rendered impossible, said Shankman. Also, extreme relativism overly romanticizes culture and assumes that all cultural practices deserve respect simply because they are "out there."

"Used properly," concluded Shankman, "relativism can lead to better understanding and possibly greater objectivity. Misused, it can lead to moral paralysis and an end to a rational approach to cultural differences and similarities.""

The above is an excerpt from this aricle in the Skeptical Enquirer about cultural relativism.

I think you are quite right, Diane. Also, this helps make sense of why many of those demonstrating post modern thinking to justify adoption of pseudoscientific thinking demonstrate a peculiar phenomenon. No ideas are to be rejected because they are that particular person's "truth" while at the same time they will attack vigorously any who question the validity of the pseudoscience. If you assume that cultures cannot understand each other or make any objective observations of eachother then the person attempting to do so must be acting in an immoral manner.