Putnam, Hilary (1926–2016)

8. Internal realism

Putnam has rarely discussed specific moral issues but he persistently sought to make room for the realm of value and non-scientific knowledge. With time, this goal has become prominent in his writings. He followed the American pragmatists in rejecting a number of traditional dichotomies such as those between mind and body, the analytic and the synthetic, fact and value (see Pragmatism). In 2002 he devoted a book to the collapse of the latter of these dichotomies, criticizing the subjectivity of values that is usually espoused by empiricists and positivists who endorse a sharp distinction between matters of fact and value judgements. Putnam argued that in expressions such as 'a cruel monarch' or 'a clear statement' the descriptive and the normative are inseparable. Moreover, value judgements abound in science. No scientific activity can proceed without judgements of triviality and profoundness, simplicity, complexity, elegance, explanatory force and so on, all of which involve both factual and normative aspects. Putnam opposes moral relativism as firmly as he opposes cognitive relativism. In Ethics Without Ontology (2004), he argued for the objectivity of value judgements and their amenability to rational negotiation. This, objectivity, he stressed does not commit him to an ontology of values. Indeed, ontology, in his view, is obsolete not only in ethics, but also in logic and mathematics.

Despite his early sympathy with Marxism, Putnam had never been a confirmed materialist. A critic of reductionism and scientism, he maintains that there are forms of nonscientific knowledge and that reason and morality, on account of their normative dimension, cannot be completely naturalized. He distanced himself from ’end of philosophy’ philosophies, that understand philosophy as a theoretical enterprise that could, in principle, be completed, and saw philosophy, instead as an ongoing quest for epistemic and moral progress. He sought to renew philosophy so as to reconnect it with human challenges and aspirations.