7
Hilary Putnam: The Entanglement of Fact and Value
If one wanted to write a history of the most important and exciting philosophical debates of the past half-century, there would be no better place to begin than with the writings of Hilary Putnam. His philosophical range is enormous and deep. In the philosophy of science, logic, mathematics, language, mind, perception, epistemology, and metaphysics, Putnam’s challenging and controversial claims have been at the very center of discussion. He has critically engaged virtually every major contemporary Anglo-American and Continental philosopher. He frequently brings to his philosophical encounters a subtle knowledge of the history of philosophy that reaches back to classical Greek philosophy. The variety of theses that he has defended, revised, and sometimes abandoned can strike one as bewildering. But a careful reading of his works reveals an underlying coherence to the philosophical vision that he has been articulating – one that is genuinely dialectical in the sense that we can see why he has advocated certain theses as well as his reasons for revising, correcting, and even abandoning them. We can also detect what he seeks to preserve and integrate in his comprehensive vision. “Philosophers,” he tells us, “have a double task: to integrate our various views of the world and ourselves … and to help us find a meaningful orientation in life. Finding a meaningful orientation is not, I think, a matter of finding a set of doctrines to live by, although it certainly includes having views; it is much more a matter of developing a sensibility” (Putnam 1997, p. 52).1
In this chapter, I shall probe a theme that has become increasingly dominant for Putnam, especially during the past few decades when he has reflectively sought to take pragmatism seriously. Putnam finds in American pragmatism “a certain group of theses which can and indeed were argued differently by different philosophers with different concerns, and which became the basis of the philosophies of Peirce, and above all James and Dewey” (Putnam 1994, p. 152).
Cursorily summarized, those theses are (1) antiskepticism: pragmatists hold that doubt requires justification just as much as belief (recall Peirce’s famous distinction between “real” and “philosophical” doubt); (2) fallibilism: pragmatists hold that there is never a metaphysical guarantee to be had that such-and-such a belief will never need revision (that one can be both fallibilistic and antiskeptical is perhaps the unique insight of American pragmatism); (3) the thesis that there is no fundamental dichotomy between “facts” and “values”; and (4) the thesis that, in a certain sense, practice is primary in philosophy. (Ibid.)
Putnam defends each of these theses in a distinctive manner. In the preface to Realism with a Human Face, he writes: “All of these ideas – that the fact/value dichotomy is untenable, and that the fact/convention dichotomy is also untenable, that truth and justification of ideas are closely connected, that the alternative to metaphysical realism is not any form of skepticism, that philosophy is an attempt to achieve the good – are ideas that have been long associated with the American pragmatic tradition” (Putnam 1990, p. xi).
The Context of Putnam’s Thesis
I shall focus on the thesis that the fact/value dichotomy is untenable. Or, to put his point positively, that there is an entanglement of fact and value. We will see that this thesis has ramifications for a wide range of philosophical issues. To set the context for my discussion, I want to situate Putnam’s thinking – both philosophically and existentially. One cannot underestimate the influence of his early mentors, Hans Reichenbach and Rudolf Carnap. Putnam was never a slavish disciple. He began his career criticizing specific claims that these two philosophers advanced, but he certainly took the challenges they presented with the utmost seriousness – especially their claims about the fact/value and the fact/convention dichotomies. In the opening chapter of The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy, he offers a succinct statement of how these dichotomies were understood by the logical positivists.
The logical positivists famously introduced a tripartite classification of all putative judgments into those that are “synthetic” (and hence – according to the logical positivists – empirically verifiable or falsifiable), those that are “analytic” (and hence – according to the logical positivists, “true [or false] on the basis of the [logical] rules alone”). And those – and this, notoriously included all of our ethical, metaphysical, and aesthetic judgments – that are “cognitively meaningless.” (Putnam 2002a, p. 10)
He also declares:
But the confidence of the logical positivists that they could expel ethics from the domain of the rationally discussable was in part derived from the way in which the analytic–synthetic and the fact–value dualism reinforced one another in their hands. According to the positivists, in order to be knowledge, ethical “sentences” would have either to be analytic, which they manifestly are not, or else would have to be “factual.” And their confidence that they could not be factual … derived from their confidence that they knew exactly what a fact was. (Putnam 2002a, pp. 20–1)
Ever since Quine’s critique of the analytic–synthetic dichotomy in 1951, this dichotomy has been discredited. Putnam introduces an important caveat; he distinguishes between a distinction and a dichotomy. Following John Dewey, Putnam insists that making distinctions (even if changing and open-ended) is important for specific philosophical purposes, but can be disastrous when functional distinctions are reified into rigid dichotomies (as the logical positivists reified the analytic–synthetic distinction). For specific purposes in particular contexts, we may want to draw a distinction between analytic and synthetic sentences, but not a fixed dichotomy. Furthermore, it is a mistake to think that all meaningful sentences divide neatly into these two categories. Even though the analytic–synthetic and the fact–convention dichotomies (at least as drawn by the logical positivists) have collapsed, the idea that there really is an unbridgeable gap between fact and value stubbornly persists. This is closely related to an older dichotomy, the allegedly categorical gap between is and ought.2 According to Putnam – and I completely agree with him – the fact–value dichotomy has had a pervasive and pernicious influence on the social sciences, as well as on our everyday understanding of ethical and political judgments.3 Few philosophers today who endorse the fact–value dichotomy endorse “emotivism” – the doctrine that the primary function of ethical sentences is to express or evince emotions. But many would assert that value judgments are noncognitive: they are not the sort of judgments that can be true or false. At best, such judgments are nothing more than the expression of individual (or group) preferences or attitudes. They are “merely subjective.” Those who subscribe to the fact–value dichotomy may be open to a variety of ways of characterizing precisely what makes a fact a fact, but they still insist that factual claims must be sharply distinguished from value judgments. Facts are facts, and values are values; it is a “category mistake” to confuse the two – or so it is claimed. It is just this claim, however, that Putnam calls into question. We might even label this the “fourth dogma” of empiricism, except that it has also been held by many nonempiricists.
I mentioned that there is also an existential context for understanding why Putnam challenges the fact–value dichotomy. In his essay “The Place of Facts in the World of Values” (Putnam 1990), he gives a brief autobiographical account of his changing views. He tells us that his training as a philosopher of science came from the logical positivists. Although Putnam never advocated the emotive theory of ethical discourse, he did subscribe to a version of a sharp fact–value dichotomy. Concerning moral values, he thought “something was good in a specifically moral sense if it ‘answers to the interests associated with the institution of morality’.” This means that “the decision to try to be or do good is just a ‘choice of a way of life’, namely to subscribe or not to an ‘institution’.” But Putnam tells us that when he held this meta-ethical conviction “he found himself with a severe moral problem” and agonized over whether what he was doing “was right – really right” (Putnam 1990, pp. 144–5).
And I did not just mean whether it was in accord with the Utilitarian maxim to do what will lead to the greatest happiness of the greatest number … , but whether, if it was, then was that the right maxim for such a case? And I do not think I meant would some semantic analysis of the word “good,” or some analysis of “the institution of morality,” support what I was doing. But the most interesting thing is that it never occurred to me that there was any inconsistency between my meta-ethical view that it was all just a choice of a “way of life” and my agonized belief that what I was doing had to be either right or wrong. (Putnam 1990, p. 145)
Cognitive Values
What precisely does Putnam mean by the entanglement of fact and value, and how does he argue for this thesis? In a pragmatic spirit, he notes that there are different types of values – and that we must be philosophically sensitive to their differences. There is a class of values that Putnam calls “epistemological” or “cognitive.” Some of his strongest arguments concerning the entanglement of fact and value deal with these epistemological values. He declares that “value and normativity permeate all of experience,” and “normative judgments are essential to the practice of science itself” (Putnam 2002a, p. 30). “Judgments of ‘coherence,’ ‘plausibility,’ ‘reasonableness,’ ‘simplicity,’ and what Dirac famously called ‘beauty’ of a hypothesis are all normative judgments in Charles Peirce’s sense, judgments of ‘what ought to be’ in the case of reasoning” (Putnam 2002a, p. 31).
It is difficult to imagine any philosopher of science – including the most orthodox positivists – denying that such criteria as simplicity, coherence, and plausibility are relevant to the assessment of scientific hypotheses and theories, so one may wonder what the force of Putnam’s claim is. His point is that there is no way of making sense of these concepts unless we understand that they are values and involve normative judgments; they cannot be analyzed or reduced to what is “merely” factual.4 He appeals to what he calls “indispensability arguments.”5 Values and norms are indispensable for an analysis and assessment of knowledge claims.
To suppose that “coherence” and “simple” are themselves just emotive words – words that express a “pro attitude” toward a theory, but which do not ascribe any definite properties to the theory – would be to regard justification as an entirely subjective matter. On the other hand, to suppose that “coherent” and “simple” name neutral properties – properties toward which people may have a “pro attitude” but there is no objective rightness in doing so – runs into difficulties at once. Like the paradigm value terms (such as “courageous,” “kind,” “honest,” or “good”), “coherent” and “simple” are used as terms of praise. Indeed, they are action guiding terms: to describe a theory as “coherent, simple, explanatory” is, in the right setting, to say that acceptance of the theory is justified; and to say that acceptance of a statement is (completely) justified is to say that one ought to accept the statement or theory. (Putnam 1990, p. 138)
Putnam stresses that our views about the character of coherence and simplicity are themselves historically conditioned, just as our views on the nature of justice or goodness are. But this is not an argument for relativism. Rather, it indicates that “there is no neutral conception of rationality to which one can appeal when the nature of rationality is itself what is at issue” (Putnam 1990, p. 139). Putnam is right when he says that the classical pragmatists sought to support the claim that there is an entanglement of fact and value in this sense, that we cannot make sense of science and rationality without appeal to normative considerations. And he can also draw support from the development of this pragmatic theme in such thinkers as Sellars, McDowell, and Brandom, as well as from Apel and Habermas. All would agree with what Sellars says when he declares: “The essential point is that in characterizing an episode or state as that of knowing … we are placing it in the logical space of reasons, of justifying and being able to justify what one says” (Sellars 1997, p. 169). This is just as true of the facts that we claim to know. Without the indispensable commitment to values and norms, there is no world, and there are no facts.
Ethical and Political Values
Suppose we grant Putnam’s pragmatic claim about the entanglement of fact with epistemological values and norms. We still want to know its relevance for ethical and political values and norms.6 Here we encounter another characteristic theme in Putnam’s reflections on value – one that also resonates with the classical pragmatists and has recently been discussed by Iris Murdoch, John McDowell, and Bernard Williams. Putnam tells us that Murdoch perceptively notes that languages “have two very different sorts of ethical concepts: abstract ethical concepts (Williams calls them ‘thin’ ethical concepts), such as ‘good’ and ‘right,’ and more descriptive, less abstract concepts (Williams calls them ‘thick’ ethical concepts) such as, for example, cruel, pert, inconsiderate, chaste” (Putnam 1990, p. 166). The point is “that there is no way of saying what the ‘descriptive component’ of the meaning of a word like cruel or inconsiderate is without using a word of the same kind. … The attempt by non-cognitivists to split such words into a ‘descriptive meaning component’ and ‘a prescriptive meaning component’ founders on the impossibility of saying what the ‘descriptive meaning’ of, say, cruel is without using the word cruel itself, or a synonym” (ibid.).
Putnam, Murdoch, Williams, and McDowell are correct in noting the extreme artificiality of trying to sort out the “descriptive” and “prescriptive” components of thick ethical concepts. If we are already committed a priori to the thesis that there must be a dichotomy between description and prescription, then we will feel compelled to sort out these different components in ethical language. Here again we see how Putnam exhibits a pragmatic temper. It is, of course, true that there are some concepts and sentences that we normally classify as descriptive and some that we take to be clearly prescriptive or evaluative. Drawing such a distinction in specific contexts may be helpful. But we are on the very brink of misunderstanding if we think that there are and must be separable components in all ethical concepts and judgments. But what does this establish about ethical values? Putnam argues against ethical relativism. But the observation about the thickness of some ethical concepts is certainly not sufficient to defeat ethical or cultural relativism. On the contrary, the appeal to thick ethical concepts has been used to support cultural and ethical relativism. Consider such a thick ethical concept as pert or inconsiderate. There are communities in which such concepts do not play any role. And what one group or community may consider inconsiderate may be categorized as honest, blunt behavior in a different community. There is even a sense in which such concepts can be understood as “objective.” We sometimes disagree about whether some action really is or is not cruel – and will offer reasons to support our judgments. We may even rationally persuade a conversation partner that she is mistaken in her belief that an action was really cruel. There are objective criteria and standards in a given community (even if they are fuzzy) for correctly judging whether some action is cruel. No one in our society is going to judge (correctly) that helping a blind person to cross a dangerous intersection is cruel. Consequently, such judgments can be true or false. In short, claiming that thick ethical or political concepts exhibit the entanglement of fact and value does not in any way challenge cultural or ethical relativism.
Putnam is aware of the point that I have been making about the compatibility of this analysis of thick ethical concepts with relativism. He makes the same point in his critique of Bernard Williams. Williams endorses this distinction between thin and thick concepts, and he uses it to support a version of ethical relativism. And, according to Putnam, Williams’s dichotomy between science and ethics is a “sophisticated” version of an older form of noncognitivism.
[Bernard] Williams still defends a sharp “science/ethics” dichotomy; and he regards his science/ethics dichotomy as capturing something that was essentially right about the old “fact/value” dichotomy.
Something else has accompanied this change in the way the dichotomy is defended. The old position, in several versions – emotivism, voluntarism, prescriptivism – was usually referred to as “non-cognitivism.” … Today, philosophers like Williams do not deny that ethical sentences can be true or false; what they deny is that they can be true or false non-perspectivally. Thus, the position has been (appropriately) renamed: while the proprietary versions of the new approved drug still have various differences one from the other, they all accept the same relativism. Non-cognitivism has been rebaptized as relativism. (Putnam 1990, p. 165)
There is nothing quite so damning for Putnam as the label “relativism” except the twin label “metaphysical realism.” He is attracted to pragmatism because he believes that it shows the right way to avoid these extremes. Putnam’s main strategy in “going after” Williams is to criticize his claim that science is based on a notion of the world as it really is; that science depends on a nonperspectival concept of “absoluteness.” Putnam argues that the “dichotomy between what the world is like independent of any local perspective [the absolute conception of the world] and what is projected by us” is not just mistaken; it is incoherent (Putnam 1990, p. 170). This dichotomy is “utterly indefensible.” Putnam brings a whole battery of arguments to show this.7
Like John Dewey, one of his heroes, Putnam argues that philosophical dichotomies – whether metaphysical, ontological, or epistemological – are, at best, useful distinctions for limited purposes. His master strategy is to show that alleged hard-and-fast dichotomies (when closely scrutinized) turn out to be differences of degree. Contrary to what Williams claims, there is no absolute conception of the world; the idea of the world as it really is in itself, independent of any perspective, is illusory. The world does not have a structure that is independent of any of our conceptual schemes. This is a lesson that philosophers should have learned from Kant. All knowing is perspectival and involves conceptual choices. That is why knowledge always involves human interests. This is just as true of the formal sciences and the hard physical sciences as it is of ethics, history, and politics. Putnam writes: “Mathematics and physics, as well as ethics and history and politics, show our conceptual choices: the world is not going to impose a single language upon us, no matter what we choose to talk about” (Putnam 1990, p. 171).8 Because he realizes that some of his central claims sound “relativistic,” Putnam is at pains to stress his pragmatic realism – realism with a human face. There are facts of the matter, even though these facts are relative to the adoption of a conceptual scheme – and even though alternative conceptual schemes may be incompatible with each other.
Putnam’s pragmatic strategy is to soften rigid dichotomies by showing that they turn out to be flexible differences related to human interests. This strategy is closely related to his attack on metaphysical realism, his relentless critique of relativism, his rejection of scientism, his rejection of the God’s-eye point of view, his critique of absolutes, and his defense of pluralism. Putnam’s claims about the entanglement of fact and value stand at the heart of his philosophical vision.
Moral Objectivity
But how does Putnam’s argument that there is no intrinsic difference between science and ethics, and his claim that the range of rational argument is much broader than science, bear on the issue of moral objectivity? Let me begin by clarifying what Putnam means (and does not mean) by objectivity. Objectivity is not to be confused with metaphysical realism. There are philosophers who think that unless one endorses metaphysical realism, then there is no possibility of giving a proper account of objectivity. Presumably we achieve objectivity when our knowledge corresponds to a “real world” that is independent of us. This is the dogma that Putnam has been criticizing ever since he rejected metaphysical realism. His articulation of a “conceptual,” “internal,” and, more recently, “pragmatic realism” can be viewed as successive stages in showing how objectivity is compatible with different conceptual choices. Furthermore, objectivity is not to be confused or identified with algorithmic reasoning, wherein we assert that there is a univocal solution to a problem. There is a place for phron
sis and reasonable objective disagreement. This is a feature of objectivity that turns out to be highly relevant for ethical and political disputants, but it also has a place in the physical sciences. More generally, objectivity is compatible with pluralism (and pluralism is not to be confused with relativism). We see how deep his commitment to pluralism is, from his recent response to Habermas.
The following claim is at the heart of my own pluralism:
One cannot be a consistent pluralist and accept that at least some people who have other ways of life, religious traditions, and sexual orientations, etc., is “light” and the others are all “darkness.” But this claim defines only a “minimal pluralism.” A stronger form is defined by the claim, which I also accept, that at least some people who have other ways of life, religious traditions, sexual orientations, etc., than mine have insights that I do not have, or that I have not developed to anything like the same extent, precisely because they have those other ways of life, religious traditions, sexual orientations, etc.9
But even if we concede all of this, we may still feel some uneasiness with Putnam’s claims about moral objectivity. After all, even if we claim that there is no difference in kind between scientific objectivity and moral objectivity, a good pragmatist is still going to ask for an account of the apparent differences between scientific and ethical reasoning. Putnam is frequently far more effective in criticizing dichotomies than he is in doing justice to important differences. Stated in another way, I do not think that even Putnam would deny that normally there is much more agreement in the formal and natural sciences about the criteria of objectivity (even when there are sharp disagreements) than we find when we turn to serious ethical and political disputes. And, even more important, in scientific matters there is frequently (but not always) some overlapping agreement about the type of criteria and evidence that are relevant for resolving current disputes. How, then, are we to account for these differences?
Objectivity, Moral Realism, and Democratic Openness
Putnam is not claiming that moral and political philosophers have disregarded a type of moral objectivity that already exists. It is not as if there are moral facts “out there” that we are ignoring. He is not advocating the existence of queer facts. His case for moral objectivity is not about how matters now stand. It is rather self-consciously a normative argument about what ought to be – or, more accurately, for a state of affairs that we ought to strive to achieve. We ought to strive to cultivate those practices in which there will be greater moral objectivity, in which there will an open democratic community where reasonable argument flourishes about what is right and wrong and what is morally true or false.
It may be objected that even if there is not a difference in kind, there is nevertheless a major difference between science and ethics. In science we do not have to argue about the standards of objectivity; they exist. But in morality or politics they do not exist; they must be instituted. But this objection misfires. It fails to acknowledge that even in the “hard” sciences there is ongoing discussion and debate about what constitutes objectivity and objective standards. What counted as an objective fact for Copernicus, Kepler, or Galileo is not what counts as an objective fact today. There are not only ongoing disputes about scientific hypotheses and theories but also disputes about standards and criteria of objectivity. Objectivity is not a metaphysical or epistemological given; it is an ongoing conflictual achievement – one that must be constantly rethought. “Our norms and standards of anything – including warranted assertibility [and including the norms and standards of objectivity] are capable of reform. There are better and worse norms and standards” (Putnam 1990, p. 21).
Some advocates of moral realism and moral objectivity do argue as if there really are moral facts “out there” in the world, independent of us. They argue as if moral objectivity and metaphysical realism are inextricably linked. But Putnam argues that this linkage is mistaken. Objectivity, whether in science or in ethics, has nothing to do with metaphysical realism or “queer facts.” Metaphysical realism in any realm – epistemology, science, ethics, or politics – is mistaken. Putnam advocates a nonmetaphysical way of thinking about objectivity. He also argues for an “epistemological justification of democracy.” “The claim, then is this: Democracy is not just a form of social life among other workable forms of social life; it is the precondition for the full application of intelligence to the solution of problems” (Putnam 1991, p. 217). Putnam agrees with Dewey.
Nevertheless, Dewey believes (as we all do, when we are not playing the skeptic) that there are better and worse resolutions to human predicaments – to what he calls “problematical situations.” He believes that of all the methods for finding better resolutions, the “scientific method” has proved itself superior to Peirce’s methods of “tenacity,” “authority,” and “what is agreeable to reason.” For Dewey, the scientific method is simply the method of experimental inquiry combined with free and full discussion – which means, in the case of social problems, the maximum use of the capacities of citizens for proposing courses of action, for testing them, and for evaluating the results. And, in my view, that is all that Dewey really needs to assume. (Putnam 1991, p. 227)10
In a similar vein, Putnam argues that we ought to give up the metaphysical picture of objectivity and “accept the position we are fated to occupy in any case, the position of beings who cannot have a view of the world that does not reflect our interests and values, but who are, for all that, committed to regarding some views of the world – and, for that matter, some interests and values – as better than others” (Putnam 1990, p. 178).
This may mean giving up a certain metaphysical picture of objectivity, but it does not mean giving up the idea that there are what Dewey called “objective resolutions of problematical situations” – objective resolutions to problems which are situated in a place, at a time, as opposed to an “absolute” answer to “perspective-independent” questions. And that is objectivity enough. (Ibid.)
I want to go over Putnam’s claims a bit more carefully, because, from one perspective, his reasoning about objectivity in ethical and political disputes is circular. It is not a vicious circularity, however, but something that is analogous to the hermeneutical circle. Putnam is not claiming that – as things now stand – there is significant moral or political objectivity. He is arguing that we ought to cultivate and institute the social practices – practices that he associates with deliberative democracy – that will enhance objectivity and reasonable argumentation in confronting complex moral situations. This is the way in which an ethical community ought to organize itself. To the extent that we achieve the concrete realization of such a democratic community, to that extent moral objectivity becomes a real fact of the matter. “[A]n ethical community – a community which wants to know what is right and good – should organize itself in accordance with democratic standards and ideals, not only because they are good in themselves (and they are), but because they are the prerequisites for the application of intelligence to inquiry” (Putnam 1994, p. 175). He goes on to tell us:
It may look as if Dewey is “pulling himself up by his own bootstraps.” For even if we assume that inquiry into values should be democratized, that the participants should, qua seekers after the right and the good, respect free speech and the other norms of discourse ethics, not instrumentalize one another, and so on, what criteria should they use to tell that their inquiry has succeeded? (Ibid.)
But it looks as if Putnam is also “pulling himself up by his own bootstraps.” He argues that we ought to strive for a democratic open society in which there will be a broader and deeper moral objectivity. Making such a democratic community a living reality means making the type of objectivity that he favors a concrete reality. This is a type of “bootstrapping” because it is intended to bring about a moral objectivity that does not yet exist (and may never fully exist). But this bootstrapping is not necessarily objectionable. Putnam might have been more forthright if he made it clear that he is not describing the current state of affairs but rather what he claims is a desirable future world.
Another objection might be raised against Putnam. Isn’t he really seeking to impose or construct standards of moral objectivity rather than discover them? If this is his aim, then wouldn’t his goal be achieved more effectively by authoritarian regimes that enforce standards of right and wrong and the “objectively correct” view? But this objection also misfires, because it falsely assumes that Putnam fails to distinguish the type of moral realism and moral objectivity that he wants to defend from the view that he rejects.
But not every defense of moral objectivity is a good thing. We live in an “open society,” a society in which freedom to think for oneself about values, goals, and mores is one that most of us have come to cherish. Arguments for “moral realism” can, and sometimes unfortunately do, sound like arguments against the open society; and while I do wish to undermine moral skepticism, I have no intention of defending either authoritarianism or moral apriorism. It is precisely for this reason that in recent years I have found myself turning to the writings of the American pragmatists. (Putnam 1994, p. 152)
In Putnam’s declaration of his affinity with the American pragmatists, we see the basis for a difference that makes a difference. He advocates that the moral objectivity we should strive to achieve is through open discussion, debate, and reciprocal give-and-take. He is sympathetic to the spirit of Habermas’s discourse ethics. The democratic practices that Putnam favors are not simply “subjective” preferences. He argues that these practices provide the conditions for the norms and standards for achieving moral objectivity.
In his essay “Pragmatism and Moral Objectivity,” originally delivered at a conference dedicated to the issues of justice and equality in developing countries, Putnam concedes that his paper is more “abstract” than most of the others. He defends this abstractness when he declares: “If it ended up being more ‘abstract’ than most of the others, that is not because the author got ‘carried away’ by a particular line of abstract thought. Rather, it is because it was my conviction … that positions on the ‘abstract’ question of moral objectivity have real world effects.” And he adds: “To show that the justifications which are offered for ethical skepticism at a philosophical level will not stand up to examination, that the foundations of the idea that there is no rationality beyond purely instrumental rationality are in trouble, may help to combat that instrumentalization and that manipulation” (Putnam 1994, p. 151). This is a modest but important claim about “abstract” philosophical discussions and “real world effects.” I am sympathetic to Putnam’s arguments against ethical skepticism, his defense of an enlarged conception of rationality and a liberal sense of moral objectivity. I do think he is effective in showing the entanglement of fact and value. He has elucidated a way of thinking about moral objectivity that escapes the snares of moral metaphysical realism. He is also effective in challenging a rigid dichotomy between science and ethics, and in exposing the appeals to “absoluteness.” But I also think that his general line of argument is “abstract.” It is as if he is clearing the space for a deliberative democratic way of dealing with value judgments and decisions. But a good pragmatist will also want to know how this really works when we get down to the nitty-gritty, how we are to decide what is right and wrong, and how we are to figure out which value judgments are true and false in specific situations. It is not good enough to be told that this will always depend on context and the background assumptions of the participants in a dispute. This is true but unhelpful. The really hard moral and political issues concern just how we are to figure out what is to be done and how we are to judge competing claims. On the abstract level, Putnam has made a good case for nonmetaphysical ways of thinking about moral objectivity. But he has not shown us how we are to determine which of our value judgments are objectively true and false. He hasn’t shown us how we are to resolve the type of conflicts that constantly arise in a democratic society – especially when reasonable citizens sharply disagree over fundamental issues. I am not asking for clear and determinate criteria or demanding more exactness of ethical and political objectivity than the subject matter warrants. Aristotle taught us this lesson long ago. But an abstract argument for moral objectivity must at least be complemented by some guidance about how we decide what is right and wrong, true and false, when confronted with seriously competing claims. This is especially pressing in a world in which extremist positions are becoming dangerously fashionable and in which there is a violent clash of “absolutes” – where there seems to be very little agreement even in democratic societies about what really counts as an “objective” solution to an ethical or political problem. If we are to be fully persuaded by Putnam, then these are the sorts of questions that must be answered. Putnam leaves himself open to the objection that his version of “moral realism” is a misleading way of projecting an ideal democratic polity. What Putnam has shown is illuminating and helpful, but it is still only a very abstract sketch – one that on pragmatic grounds demands filling in with concrete details. Without working out these concrete details, a certain skepticism about moral objectivity and moral realism is still warranted.
Notes
1 See James Conant’s excellent introductions to Putnam 1990 and 1994 for an overview of Putnam’s philosophical development.
2 See Putnam’s discussion of the history of the is–ought and the fact–value distinctions (Putnam 2002a, ch. 1).
3 He shows this in detail and with specific reference to economics in Putnam 2002a.
4 Putnam frequently does not make a systematic distinction between values and norms, although he speaks of norms when he wants to emphasize standards of correctness and standards of what ought to be. Not all values are norms. One of his major disagreements with Habermas concerns what Putnam takes to be Habermas’s rigid dichotomy between values and norms. Putnam also does not accept the dichotomy that Habermas introduces between morality and ethics.
5 For an explanation of what he means by “indispensability arguments” see Putnam 1994, pp. 153–60.
6 Putnam claims that James is more helpful in thinking about ethical decisions and Dewey is more illuminating in dealing with political decisions. Nevertheless, Putnam rejects a dichotomy between ethics and politics. Ethics requires an ethical community, and the cultivation of the practices required for such a community is a political project.
7 For Putnam’s multifaceted critique of Williams’s dichotomy of science and ethics, see Putnam 1990, pp. 165–78, and Putnam 1994, pp. 188–92 and 217–18.
8 Despite the many disagreements between Rorty and Putnam, Rorty would completely endorse this central thesis.
9 This is a statement that Putnam made in his concluding remarks at a conference dedicated to his pragmatism that was held at the University of Münster in 2000.
10 Putnam rejects the idea that there is a single “scientific method.” But he also thinks that this is not what Dewey meant when he appeals to scientific method in solving ethical problems. Rather, Dewey is appealing to experimentation, imaginative construction of alternative hypotheses, open discussion, debate, and ongoing self-corrective communal criticism.