Putnam. Hilary - The Fact/Value Dichotomy and Its Critics

07/06/2012

Philosophy in an Age of Science, Harvard University Press, 2012

Author begins this paper by revisiting an earlier book he wrote on the "fact/value distinction", where a notable economist (during the great depression) argued forcefully for reason to be relegated to means, and ends to be values that were in some sense subjective (pg283-5) This had similarities with the logical positivists, who claimed that value assertions lacked cognitive meaning.

Author introduces Charles Stevenson's Ethics and Language and Stanley Cavell's The Claim of Reason to show the emotivist and rationalist arguments about ethics. (pg285-88) Stevenson remarks about how all disagreement is either about beliefs or attitudes, but beliefs (as in science) can be revealed and tested, while attitudes cannot in anything like the same manner. Cavell points out that disagreement may still be rational even if there is no alignment of belief or attitude. (pg287) Cavell goes on to give 4 main disagreements with Stevenson (pg287).

Author asserts that Quine's demolition of the theory/description distinction also destroyed the fact/value dichotomy (pg288), though author starts with recounting the positivists account of the analytic/synthetic distinction for the sciences, and Quine's assault on it (pg289-90). Author points out that whatever failures the positivists had, it was at least after years of hard work. While Stevenson's belief/attitude distinction rested on no such hard work and is therefore even more questionable.

Author moves on to the "entanglement" of facts and values, in the two senses: (pg291)
1. factual judgments depend on epistemic values (like coherence, simplicity, elegance), and even possibly what predicates to use for induction is an epistemic value (see Goodman, new riddle)

2. Values tap into an "evaluative point of view" (pg292)
The idea here may be that there must be something that we're trying to get "right" when we discuss the difference between bravery and foolhardiness. McDowell affirms this by claiming that there is a current move by emotivists that there can be a "disentanglement" between the feature of the world that we're picking up on, and the 'special perspective' of evaluative judgment. The objection (pg 292-3) is that if this feature could be picked out, its application could be mastered independently of knowing what the evaluative judgment might mean. Author points out that for McDowell, all human life is conceptualized, since McDowell has Kantian roots. Author moves instead to Cavell and one of his quotes about morality, as being a kind-of reconciliation process that comes with disagreement (pg295).

Author ends with a conclusion about how the fact/value dichotomy is the top of a three-legged stool:
1) "the postulation of theory-free 'facts'" (fact/theory distinction)
2) the denial that evaluation is entangled in 'facts'/science
3) the claim that science proceeds roughly by a combination of induction and deduction
Each leg breaks for different reasons, from different areas of philosophy.