ABSTRACT
The objective justification of normative claims is a perennial philosophical problem. All objective claims rest on facts of reality, but such facts could be entirely relational. The health of living things is not subjective, but objective, determined by the objective conditions of its flourishing. A value judgment can be objective if it identifies a real relationship between something that can be benefited and something that is of benefit to it, without it being the case that the latter has some property of being good in itself, of having value all on its own. Ethical claims are often thought to be subjective because they pertain to how individual human beings ought to act and that, in turn, depends to a considerable extent on who these individuals are and their particular circumstances. Objectivity in the context resides in or is related to the means of demonstrating, proving, or grounding some claim, not in the range of its applicability.
