Abstract: Rejecting Walzer's project to provide a new foundation for intercultural social criticism via his theory of the social construction of meanings, Putnam modifies Walzer's account of objectivity and claims that a belief is objective relative to a conceptual framework if its truth or falsehood relative to that framework depends on how the world is rather than on what the knower thinks it is. From there, Putnam argues that the modified definition of objectivity is the only account of objectivity necessary and concludes that contrary to being adrift in the world, most human beings share a common understanding of the world and can come to cross-cultural agreement.

Keywords: cross-cultural agreement, objectivity, shared understandings,