  These developments gave rise to two conflicting positions. The first position—which we shall call pluralism—maintains that the independence results largely undermine the enterprise of set theory as an objective enterprise. On this view, although there are practical reasons that one might give in favour of one set of axioms over another—say, that it is more useful for a given task—, there are no theoretical reasons that can be given; and, moreover, this either implies or is a consequence of the fact—depending on the variant of the view, in particular, whether it places realism before reason, or conversely—that there is no objective mathematical realm at this level. The second position—which we shall call non-pluralism—maintains that the independence results merely indicate the paucity of our standard resources for justifying mathematical statements. On this view, theoretical reasons can be given for new axioms and—again, depending on the variant of the view—this either implies or is a consequence of the fact that there is an objective mathematical realm at this level. 