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Professional philosophers have often criticized Melville Herskovits and some other anthropologists for claiming or seeming to claim that the cultural relativity of values implied that we should be tolerant of other cultures. Paul Schmidt made one such criticism.

Schmidt began his critique by distinguishing the "fact" of cultural relativism from the "thesis" of cultural relativism. The fact was simply the diversity of value judgments in different cultures. The thesis was that "there can be no value judgments that are true, that is, objectively justifiable, independent of specific cultures." (Schmidt, p. 782)

Schmidt's criticism also stressed the distinction between facts and values. He pointed out that there is a difference in meaning between "X is the case" and "X ought to be the case." He claimed that because of this difference "one cannot derive what ought to be solely from what is the case." He then applied these distinctions to cultural relativism and tolerance.

We must now turn to a consideration of another claim made for the thesis of cultural relativism. Herskovits and others think that the thesis provides an objective justification for the value judgment that tolerance is good. I think this view is mistaken. Consider first the supposition that either the fact or the thesis as a descriptive assertion is true. From either of these one cannot derive the value judgment that tolerance is good, because it would involve the derivation of an "ought" from an "is." (Schmidt, p. 788)

He added again later that

Neither the fact nor the thesis implies anything whatsoever concerning what is right or good because we cannot derive an "ought" from what "is." (Schmidt, p. 788)

See Paul Schmidt "Criticisms of Cultural Relativism," The Journal of Philosophy, LII, No. 25, (December 8, 1956).