Subjectivity

Lack of objectivity
Subjective assessment according to own group values

Nature

Recent developments in physics have abolished the predictability of matter and obliterated the distinction between observer and observed. Modern architecture and functional design have banished historical allusion or even temporal reference. Contemporary literature has forsaken extrinsic "things" and "events" for a subjective, self-reflexive reality. Sophisticated cybernetics raises fundamental issues concerning the meaning of intelligence.

Claim

The sense of objective reality, namely the comforting conviction that there is a natural world "out there", apart from ourselves and perceptible in the "middle distance", has diminished to total obsolescence.

Counter-claim

Although it is true that no one can claim to know the whole truth about anything, it by no means follows that all assertions are equally true or false, and that it is not possible to ground some statements on the basis of evidence, as better or truer than others. Indeed to hold that objectivity is a myth is tantamount to denying the distinction between fiction and history, guilt and innocence, in relation to the admitted evidence.