Cultural And Individualistic Moral Relativism

There are two distinct forms of moral relativism, even if both reduce down to many of the same fallacies and errors.  One is based on collective societal trends and the other is based on personal preferences.  As asinine as it is to believe that either social forces or subjective, individual perception or whim shapes truth itself, the former is more irrational than the latter.  This is because sound epistemology is not even founded on societally common ideas or consensus.  All relativists have rejected alignment with reason, but not all rejections of reason deviate from reason to the same extent.

At least an individualistic relativist has more independent thought and self-awareness than a cultural relativist who truly thinks that their local community or broader culture can make something morally true simply by willing it, all while directly believing that there is no objective morality, from which it would follow that there is no obligation to submit to cultural whims anyway.  A cultural relativist must look to others, starting from a philosophically backwards position of working from that which is not self-evident or necessarily true instead of starting from logical axioms, and insist that one should submit to culture even though there is no objective obligation to do or not do anything at all.  Otherwise, they are not even a cultural relativist!

If nothing else, an individualistic relativist is slightly closer to objective truth by happenstance, as individualism is a correct philosophy centered on individual uniqueness, experiences, and desires, the very existence of which refutes collectivist stereotypes.  The logical fact that other minds cannot even be proven to exist, and therefore are not known to exist, already shatters the veracity of any appeal to social authority, leaving one with the self-verifying nature of logical truths and the existence of one's own mind as the only possible starting points of true knowledge.

This does not mean individualistic relativists have reason to think their worldview valid.  All forms of relativism are inherently false.  That subjective perceptions and preferences exist is at least somewhat obvious on some level to anyone who has ever engaged in even mild introspection and found that they wish one thing over another, but the only thing having preferences means is that one has preferences.  This much is objectively proven by merely having preferences.  Truth itself, including whatever moral obligations may exist, may or may not correspond to those preferences, meaning preferences prove nothing about the existence or nonexistence of moral obligations.  Either way, though, some degrees of relativism deviate further from the necessary truths of reason than others do.

There is no excuse for embracing an internally contradictory and therefore inherently false idea.  Relativism of all kinds is a prime example of that which is self-refuting and thus inherently false.  However, since individual distinctiveness and perception are objective facts of human existence and one's own existence is objectively, infallibly provable to oneself, at least an "individualistic relativist" has deviated from truth less than whoever thinks truth itself is a social construct.  It is logically true regardless of preference that agreement and perception do not make something a part of reality.  This applies by necessity even to perceptions that are not molded by submission to arbitrary, irrelevant societal forces.