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OBJECTIVE RELATIVISM The term ‘‘objective relativism’’ was coined by Arthur E. Murphy in 1927 in reference to a ‘‘genuinely new philosophy’’ that rejects the traditional ‘‘bifurcation’’ of reality into two incommensurable kinds: the objective and the relative, independently existing facts and the relationships into which they enter. For example, since the perception of an object is relative to the perceiver’s standpoint, it cannot be objective. The perception is subjective, an idea in a mind, whereas the object itself is a physical part of the external world. Objective relativism, in contrast, holds that objective facts are directly disclosed in perception and are therefore always relative to perceivers’ perspectives. Murphy identifies Alfred North Whitehead and John Dewey as the primary exponents of this approach.