Objectivity and Perspectival Content

Abstract

What is objectivity? What would it take to have objective representations and do we (humans) have what it takes? This paper aims to contribute to answering these questions. To this end, it isolates one relevant sense of objectivity and proposes a generalization of standard frameworks of representational content in order to engage with the question in a way that is rhetorically fair. Armed with a general conception of perspectival content, taken from the literature on centred or de se content, the paper articulates one necessary condition for objective representation: the possession of objective concepts and therefore objective contents. Two ways of meeting (or approximately meeting) this condition are discussed in an exploratory way.