On the Objectivity of Facts, Beliefs, and Values

Objectivity is a well-belabored topic. The point of this paper can only be a modest one: to introduce some distinctions for conceptual clarity, to sketch the routes to objectivity which appear most plausible on the background of the current discussion, and to point to some errors which make present confusions larger than necessary. These points seem well worth pursuing also in the context of the present conference volume. The main distinction will be between a notion of objectivity accruing to facts and thus to objects and properties and building on ontological independence and a quite different notion of objectivity accruing to beliefs and idealizing intersubjective agreement. We shall see that the latter notion is in principle applicable to values as well. The difference is only that there are stronger specific reasons for hoping for objectivity in the case of beliefs and stronger specific reasons for restricting claims to objectivity in the case of values. This is, briefly, the agenda of this note. Let me start with the objectivity of facts and then proceed to that of beliefs and values.

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