Descriptive relativism is the observation that different cultures have different moral standards. Descriptive relativists do not necessarily affirm or deny the existence of a single correct normative appraisal, given the same set of circumstances. Likewise, they do not necessarily make any meta-ethical commitments to the semantics, ontology, or epistemology of moral judgements. That is to say, descriptive relativists are not necessarily normative or meta-ethical relativists, though they might be. Descriptive relativism is a widespread position in academic fields such as anthropology and sociology.

Meta-ethical relativists believe not only that people disagree about moral issues, but that terms such as "good", "bad", "right", and "wrong" do not stand subject to universal truth conditions at all, rather only to societal convention and personal preference. They believe not only that, given the same set of verifiable facts, some societies or individuals will have a fundamental disagreement about what one ought to do based on societal or individual norms; but further, that one cannot adjudicate these using some independent standard of evaluation — the standard will always be societal or personal.

Normative relativists in turn believe not only this meta-ethical thesis, but that it has normative implications on what we ought to do: that as there is no universal moral standard by which to judge others, we ought to tolerate the behavior of others even when it runs counter to our personal or cultural moral standards. Just as not all descriptive relativists adopt meta-ethical relativism, not all meta-ethical relativists adopt normative relativism. Richard Rorty (1931 - 2007), for example, argued that relativist philosophers believe "that the grounds for choosing between such opinions is less algorithmic than had been thought", but not that any belief is equally as valid as any other.