Objectivism vs. subjectivism

Hans Julius Schneider
Table of contents

1. Objectivism is an epistemological position, according to which to claim truth for a sentence or theory is to claim its agreement with an underlying ‘objective’ reality. The word ‘objective’ is meant to express that the portion of reality in question (in order to be compared with the sentence or theory) can be grasped as it is ‘by itself’, independently of the activities of the speaking person or ‘subject’. In metaphysics the corresponding position is called realism. It claims that there is an objective reality which is independent of any particular characteristics of our efforts to grasp and describe it. And it claims that statements about relations between (parts of) this reality and sentences or theories (e.g. about correspondence or not-correspondence) can be meaningfully made.

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