ABSTRACT
Some environmental philosophers have argued for metaphysical realism on the grounds that strengthening conception of the world's objectivity and independence helps ensure that the natural world can be viewed as valuable in itself, quite apart from evaluative or epistemic capacities. If for the Viennese positivists verifiability was the standard of meaningfulness for statements, for the postpositivist analytical philosopher explanatory coherence became the standard of justifiability for statements. Some philosophers wear on their sleeves their political commitment to relativism. Plainly there is something deeper in intellectual, ethical, and political cultures that make the relativist interpretations seem plausible. The charge that concepts like truth and objectivity conflict with certain political possibilities for self-determination" or are "tools of a domination that is fundamentally phallic" turns in part. The charge of immodesty can be a response to the absolute idealists conception of truth, according to which knowing one truth about a particular thing requires knowing all truths about everything.
