The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy and Other Essays [Paperback]

Hilary Putnam (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 30, 2004 | ISBN-10: 0674013808 | ISBN-13: 978-0674013803

If philosophy has any business in the world, it is the clarification of our thinking and the clearing away of ideas that cloud the mind. In this book, one of the world's preeminent philosophers takes issue with an idea that has found an all-too-prominent place in popular culture and philosophical thought: the idea that while factual claims can be rationally established or refuted, claims about value are wholly subjective, not capable of being rationally argued for or against. Although it is on occasion important and useful to distinguish between factual claims and value judgments, the distinction becomes, Hilary Putnam argues, positively harmful when identified with a dichotomy between the objective and the purely "subjective."

Putnam explores the arguments that led so much of the analytic philosophy of language, metaphysics, and epistemology to become openly hostile to the idea that talk of value and human flourishing can be right or wrong, rational or irrational; and by which, following philosophy, social sciences such as economics have fallen victim to the bankrupt metaphysics of Logical Positivism. Tracing the problem back to Hume's conception of a "matter of fact" as well as to Kant's distinction between "analytic" and "synthetic" judgments, Putnam identifies a path forward in the work of Amartya Sen. Lively, concise, and wise, his book prepares the way for a renewed mutual fruition of philosophy and the social sciences.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Hume's and much 20th-century moral philosophy contrasted moral with factual judgments and led people to conclude that the former, unlike the latter, are subjective in the sense of not being rationally supportable. Putnam (philosophy, emeritus, Harvard) believes that the contrast is ill conceived and that the conclusion is both unwarranted and false. He acknowledges the usefulness of the fact/value distinction but denies that anything metaphysical follows from it. Indeed, he goes so far as to assert that knowledge of facts presupposes knowledge of values. He grounds his argument in Amartya Sen's discussions of non-self interested human motives and of "capabilities" people rationally value and enjoy freely exercising. Putnam covers such matters as imperative logic, economics vis- -vis ethics, and preference theory and such thinkers as V. Walsh, L. Robbins, and R.M. Hare. A fine philosophical workout for attentive readers.
Robert Hoffman, York Coll. of CUNY
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

Hume's and much 20th-century moral philosophy contrasted moral with factual judgments and led people to conclude that the former, unlike the latter, are subjective in the sense of not being rationally supportable. Putnam...believes that the contrast is ill conceived and that the conclusion is both unwarranted and false. He acknowledges the usefulness of the fact/ value distinction but denies that anything metaphysical follows from it...Putnam covers such matters as imperative logic, economics vis-à-vis ethics, and preference theory and such thinkers as V. Walsh, L. Robbins, and R. M. Hare. A fine philosophical workout.
--Robert Hoffman (Library Journal 20021201)

In this bold, energetic, and extensive work, Putnam undertakes a revitalization of philosophy. He wants to put philosophy back in touch with the 'human issues which it has always been philosophy's highest goal to articulate'...This is exciting and engaging stuff, and anyone with an interest in philosophy, at whatever level, will enjoy it and learn from it.
--Martha Nussbaum, The University of Chicago

This is an excellent collection on a very important issue...These are also very useful contributions, because they guide the reader, particularly the general reader, who is not an expert in either philosophy or science or economics, around the issue, so that one sees its contours, what connects with what, how it ramifies out through different disciplines. The collection as a whole thus fulfils two rather different functions: (a) bringing new and original arguments to bear against the erroneous thesis that there is a dichotomy between fact and value, and (b) guiding the reader around the contours of the issue and pointing to interesting relevant arguments developed elsewhere by others.
--Charles Taylor, Professor of Philosophy at McGill University

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Harvard University Press (March 30, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674013808
• ISBN-13: 978-0674013803
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.8 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #219,239 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #30 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Philosophy > Movements > Pragmatism

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 34 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Possibly Putnam's most important book? September 30, 2003

By Andrew V. Jeffery

Format:Hardcover

The fact/value dichotomy remains a standing dogma of contemporary empiricism. One sees it assumed without question in numerous works intended both for students and professional philosophers. (It is taken for granted, for instance, in Peter Singer's recent A Darwinian Left.) Yet Putnam shows that the original dichotomy, usually attributed to David Hume, was based (1) on a metaphysics of fact that nobody has seriously entertained since the early days of Logical Positivism, and (2) on an argument formally identical to Hume's argument against causality, the latter being an argument virtually nobody now accepts as cogent. Putnam argues that we must now accept the embeddedness of values virtually all theoretical and even factual statements. This does not, however, drop us into a morass of post-modern relativism, but allows us to think more clearly about the value-assumptions we make in all forms of discourse.

31 of 34 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The Entanglement of the Fact/Value Distinction January 21, 2004

By A Customer

Format:Hardcover

If there is one point that sticks out in my mind after reading Hilary Putnam's "Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy," it is his suggestion that there is an "entanglement" of facts and values, which effectually preserves a distinction between the two without positing a metaphysically dichotomous relationship vis-a-vis facts and values. According to Putnam, logic itself presupposes certain values (e.g., coherence, validity, soundness) and so does science with its talk of "elegant" or "parsimonious" theories. Values permeate all aspects of academic study and human life. No human being reasons on "facts" without simultaneously having axiological concerns. Putnam demonstrates this point analytically, though most of the book is fairly accessible to continental philosophers and even those who are philosophically challenged (n.b., the two aforementioned classes of persons are not to be confused with one another or epistemically conflated). The only portion of the book that I found somewhat challenging was his discussion of economics and Amartya Sen. That chapter notwithstanding, I find myself forced to accept Putnam's pragmatist mantra with some reservations: "knowledge of facts presupposes knowledge of values."

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Deconstruction of A Philosophical Bugbear October 25, 2010

By A Certain Bibliophile

Format:Paperback

The first essay establishes that the fact/value distinction (a later incarnation of Hume's "you cannot derive an "is" from an "ought" thesis) rests on a dubious positivist definition of "fact" that derives from sense impression. In the second, Putnam explains that the values that science assumes aren't necessarily moral or ethical ones, but epistemic ones. Epistemic values like "coherence" and "simplicity" are assumed in the scientific pursuit, yet science continues to be thought of as wholly objective. John Mackie argued that words like "cruel" and "just" were simply words that described "natural facts," instead of realizing that they cannot be used intelligibly without employing some kind of evaluative judgment.

The third essay transposes this debate into the world of classical economic theory. This same debate found itself transposed into the field of economics ensconced within the framework of a Benthamist moral calculus, but were removed by the empiricist is/ought distinction (later, the work of the positivists.) Amartya Sen's project is to reintroduce ethical concepts and norms (once so lauded by Adam Smith, but since having been forgotten) back into the discourse on classical economics without losing any of its original rigor. Sen realizes that people are motivated by non-self-interested motives, as well. In its place, Sen posits a capabilities approach which emphasizes a plurality of human rights, freedoms, and goals, instead of the poverty of utilitarian ethical monism.

Throughout the three lectures, Putnam carefully picks apart one of the most enduring shibboleths of modern philosophy. Like Rorty, with whom he shares many intellectual affinities, he has an explicit, self-conscious relationship with the analytic tradition. Unlike Rorty, however, he has not wholly eschewed that tradition. While he disagrees with many of its conclusions, he is able to use some of its assumptions and to break outside of the box of morally bankrupt positivism.

The last part of the book contains five essays of in tangential relation to the three main lectures. "On the Rationality of Preferences," one of the essays included in the collection, but not one of the three original lectures, is Putnam's answer to an interlocutor who made a curious criticism of the paper that he presented. Putnam's presentation considered a person who had two choices before them, A and B, neither of which the chooser preferred. Would it matter, he asks, if, instead of the chooser making the decision simply tosses a coin or gets a random person to make the decision for him? After all, they don't have a preference, right? Most classically trained economists would assert that it didn't matter who made the decision. In fact, that's what the interlocutor pointed out. However, this essay, Putnam's response, is a brilliant response defending the idea that, even though one might not prefer A to B, the ability to choose one's own option engenders a kind of "dignity of the self" which economists have heretofore ignored.