The first theorist on relevancy wrote that one of the 'distinctive advantages' of the term relevance lies in its bringing out its 'subjectivity'. By this 'e did not mean, however, that the relevant is an arbitrary creation of the individual subject, but that the relevance of something depends on 'its value for us and our attitude towards it'. Thus 'er subjective was merely meant to mean relational. Nevertheless, because of its 'selectiveness' one might select too little or too much, and --as the argument continued-- relevancy remains a risky affair. (Incidentally, this disputableness of the concept was assessed as an advantage.)

Now, A may be taller than B and shorter than C, yet this does not make being taller than and being shorter than merely subjective terms: that a notion is relational in no way forces us to adopt subjectivism with respect to that notion. Thus when an ethical theorist writes that whatever 'difference of kind between persons and situations any particular moral thinker sincerely takes to be relevant are so for him', 'e confuses the relational nature of relevancy with its being 'relative' or 'subjective' in the sense of not objective. There is nothing inconsistent tho in maintaining that a certain difference appears 'relevant from one interested point of view' and not from another while claiming at the same time that the difference is 'objectively morally relevant in a certain context' so long as the context is allowed to vary with someone's situation or conditions.

The doxastic view on relevancy is, of course, inherently subjective. This is not only the case in phenomenological thought, but also certain (more) analytical philosophers have argued that whether an attitude is relevant or not depends on 'the outlook and scales of value of different persons'. 'No amount of intimate acquaintance with the circumstances of the action can avail against the indeterminacy of boundaries of relevance' --it has been said. Altho one theorist argued for the 'objectivity' of relevancy (or rather the truth of beliefs which make considerations relevant), 'e derived this 'objectivity' not from the relevance relation itself but from the purported invariability of the focus. For 'im the kind of focus of relevancy was given by the very purpose for which people deliberate and weigh the pros and cons. People's so-called 'fundamental consideration-making belief' would simply be the maximization of satisfactions and the minimization of frustrations. But even if this goal were given, or not contested anymore, it would not prove relevancy itself to be an objective notion.

Also the objectivity of moral relevancy has been wholeheartedly supported. Thus it has been claimed that what is morally relevant is 'not an arbitrary matter, or a matter of choice or opinion'. Yet, the question of the choice of focus (a moral goal in this case) is confused here, too, with the question of the opinion someone may have about the relation itself. That relevancy is a matter of choice because of its relational nature does not imply that it must also be a matter of opinion. Given the focus of relevancy chosen, something is or is not relevant in respect of this focus, regardless of what a certain person or 'er opponent may opine. The objectivity of relevancy is no different from that of truth, if one accepts that there is an objective, nonpropositional reality which is entirely independent of one's talking or thinking about it. Given a particular goal, then, the relevance or irrelevance of an entity of the appropriate category with respect to that goal is fixed. The practical, real-life problem is, of course, to know what is relevant and what is irrelevant in respect of a certain goal. Those who do not go beyond the notion of what people believe to be relevant have a doxastic conception of relevancy. The equivalent with respect to truth would be that truth is all a matter of what one believes to be true, or of what the group or society in which one lives takes to be true, for example, because that's the most satisfactory (as in the pragmatist theory of truth).

The phenomenological 'relevances' we have been acquainted with are basically doxastic. Where the phenomenological theorist on relevancy speaks of 'knowledge' it includes all kinds of belief, thus being nothing else than belief. (And therefore it does not deserve the epithet epistemic.) The domains and systems of (doxastic) relevances are part of, or constitute, the 'relative natural conception of the world' prevailing in a particular group or society --it is said. This conception would determine or codetermine, for example, 'the competences and qualifications everyone eligible for a position has to possess'. But now, it is also argued that often 'elements are included in the definition which have no, or merely a remote, connection with the proper fulfillment of the particular position'. The matter discussed in this context is that people over thirty-five years of age are excluded from eligibility for certain jobs. Thus elements which are properly speaking irrelevant in respect of a certain requirement turn out to be frequently included in a particular group or society's conception nevertheless. One such qualification which can be irrelevant (altho not doxastically to judge by the phenomenologist's own assumptions) is being-35-years-of-age, if the focus of relevancy is merely the eligibility for a position. To notice this means, however, that the phenomenologist does take cognizance of the fact, albeit unwittingly, that doxastic relevancy is something else than relevancy proper after all. Especially when 'e also speaks of 'fictitious schemes of relevances' 'imself 'e cannot but admit that doxastic relevancy is one thing, and objective relevancy quite another. This example should underline again that (at least) the relevancy of discrimination is not a matter of belief but an entirely objective notion in the sense given here.