  What are these claims that are open to criticism and justification? In opposition to the positivist fixation on fact-stating modes of discourse, Habermas does not limit intersubjectively valid, or justifiable, claims to the category of empirical truth, but instead recognizes a spectrum of “validity claims” that also includes, at the least, claims to moral rightness, ethical goodness or authenticity, personal sincerity, and aesthetic value (TCA 1: 8–23; 1993, chap. 1). Although Habermas does not consider such claims to represent a mind-independent world in the manner of empirical truth claims, they can be both publicly criticized as unjustifiable and defended by publicly convincing arguments. To this extent, validity involves a notion of correctness analogous to the idea of truth. In this context, the phrase “validity claim,” as a translation of the German term Geltungsanspruch, does not have the narrow logical sense (truth-preserving argument forms), but rather connotes a richer social idea—that a claim (statement) merits the addressee's acceptance because it is justified or true in some sense, which can vary according to the sphere of validity and dialogical context.