Before attempting to overcome the apparent relativism of pragmatic justification, it should be noted that this sort of relativism does not claim that beliefs are justified because someone wants the beliefs to be true. The truth of a belief cannot be determined apart from the goals the belief might serve. In that sense beliefs are justified relative to goals. But their truth is quite independent of anyone’s desire that they be true.34 Beliefs are justified rather because they are needed as action guides in order to achieve goals. Suppose one wants to be creative; with the view on offer here, a justified belief would enable one to become creative. Perhaps, the belief that one must work hard to be creative is more effective at engendering creativity than any alternative belief. The belief that creativity requires hard work would then be justified, whether or not anyone wants to believe it. We might prefer to believe that hard work is not required to become creative, but our belief preferences do not justify our beliefs, our result preferences do. There is nothing of the “believing it makes it so” in this relativism, nor does it make mind-external reality irrelevant to justification. The effectiveness of a belief for a given end will be thoroughly dependent on the nature of reality. Reality marks our beliefs true because, given our goals, reality proves them good.
Nonetheless, however sensitive to reality this view of justification is, however demanding it is in evaluating beliefs, as it stands it still appears to make justification depend on features that vary across individuals. It looks as though your rationally held belief can be, at bottom, different from mine, your truth different from mine. It would appear that at best we might get a principal of action to provide “subjective truth,” and subjective truth is insufficient for the kind of morality we are hoping to defend. For that we need unqualified truth, objective truth.
Pragmatic justification does not deny objectivity. Although we can only recognize truth because it achieves goals well, and all goals are subjective, we are nonetheless not stuck with subjective justifications as our only ones. That is because pervasive subjectivity does not crowd out objectivity. Only small-mindedness does. Before we can discover the nature of objective justification, we must grapple with the idea of objectivity.
5. Objectivity
Objectivity is what subjectivity is not. Subjectivity is the nature of things in their relation to a particular subject. Conceptually, objectivity is born of subjectivity, and the idea of subjectivity begins with the idea that there are other minds.35 The minds are other because they differ in beliefs, perceptions, desires, powers, or judgments. When qualitative like-mindedness becomes qualitative identical-mindedness, otherness disappears. “Subjectivity” labels and explains other-mindedness. It is the notion that nature and history give each mind a different form and location, which together determine the particular matter and shape of its contents. Different minds, differently placed, have different “perspectives.” If your thoughts are not my thoughts, it is because your perspective is not my perspective.
To say that a thought is subjective is to say that it is a result of that mind’s, that subject’s, perspective. But, taken literally, that is a trivial claim. How could any thought not be a function of the properties of the mind thinking it? The idea of subjectivity takes on some interest when it is used to explain differences by positing that different perspectives account for different thoughts, and it takes on more interest when the thought-differences it is explaining are not restricted to sensory perceptions, but expand to judgments of facts and values.
Subjectivity is inescapable. Thoughts are activities of the mind, and have no more being without thinkers than do dances without dancers.36 And just as each dance must take on the features and location of the dancer, so must each thought of the thinker. But the ubiquity of subjectivity does not render objectivity illusory.
Objectivity is commonly, but incoherently, conceived of as thought scrubbed clean of the particularities of a particular thinker. Thomas Nagel, in the trope we alluded to before, has called this idea of objectivity “the view from nowhere.” It is a mind without a perspective. Perhaps a solipsist can make sense of this idea, but you and I cannot. Views are always from somewhere. But, some views see more, because they include other views. These more encompassing views include what is seen in other perspectives, and often why those other perspectives fail to see things seen in the more capacious view. Objectivity, then, is not a transcendence of subjectivity; it is an expansion of subjectivity.37
Although often heuristically useful, it is a mistake to cast objectivity as the neutral, undistorted perspective arbitrating between partisan, blurry-eyed subjectivities.38 “Undistorted” suggests observation uncontaminated by the observer. But the ideal of objectivity multiplies such “contaminations,” not in the vain hope that they will cancel out each other and reveal the thing in itself, but rather in an endeavor to enrich our understanding of all the effects of reality that register in any observer. What appears in only a few, or even a single perspective, is not noise that objectivity tunes out, it is a note that objectivity strives to bring into harmony with all the other subjective strains. The conductor is as subjective as any other member of the orchestra, but she is working with more material.
Perspectives may be ranked along a subjective-objective spectrum by how well they incorporate and account for other perspectives. Were there to be a mind that saw what all other actual and possible minds saw (and felt, and thought), its perspective would still be subjective. God’s-eye view is a particular eye view, even though it has achieved full objectivity, which is not the view from nowhere, but the view from everywhere.39 More limited perspectives have lesser degrees of objectivity. Absent omniscience, there is no absolute objectivity, but still objectivity is a real property. People can be kind even though there is no perfectly kind person, and similarly objective even if there is no perfectly objective person.
Although every particular perspective is had by a particular subject, and so is necessarily subjective, it can move toward objectivity. The objective perspective is an ideal one, which reconciles all of the information contained in every possible subjective perspective. No subject of course has, or could have (disallowing mystical claims) this view from everywhere. But any subject can attempt to register information from other perspectives and thereby become more objective.
Objectivity, however, is not some sort of compromise between the judgments of various subjects. Nor is it a negotiated movement to consensus among actual subjects. Rather, it is the information in all perspectives that objectivity takes into account, and this accounting requires no agreement. Although subjective judgments are not to be ignored, for that there are such judgments is important information that a perfectly objective set of beliefs should understand, the objective beliefs do not have to concede correctness to any of these limited subjective judgments, at least not on any particular judgment.40 Nor must objective practical judgments enjoin the actual pursuit of all goals. The view from everywhere is different from the collection of views from everywhere. It is the integration of the content of every perspective into a consistent, coherent perspective. It is the ideal perspective that every individual would achieve if she were perfectly objective. It is why, although consensus does not constitute truth, under conditions that permit the formation and expression of dissent, convergence of views is a sign of increased objectivity; we become objective by incorporating one another’s experience. Having done so—having seen, heard, and felt what the other has seen, heard, and felt, we will increasingly conclude what she concludes.
An assertion of objectivity is commonly misinterpreted as dogmatic commitment, or pretention of infallibility. But beyond the obvious point that defending objectivity is not a defense of one’s personal objectivity, the concept of objectivity is an, almost literally, open-minded ideal. It broadens the candidates for truth rather than dogmatically dismisses them, and, rightly conceived, unsettles certainty by enlarging the grounds for possible error. The ideal of absolute objectivity is not reached till all subjective judgments are considered and accounted for in a synoptic vision of reality. As long as there is a dissenter, or simply the possibility of a new, unaccounted for, subjectivity, confidence that one has attained objective truth must be restrained, and any belief, factual, moral, or aesthetic, must be held tentatively. Finally, although the believer in objectivity strives