Hi All, While reading Hilary Putnam's "The Fact/Value Dictoyomy" I cam across the following which is relevant to our discussion of the is-ought problem:
"In judging the outcome of an inquiry, whether it be into what are conventionally considered to be "facts" or into what are conventionally considered to be "values," we always bring to bear a large stock of both valuations and descriptions that are not in question in that inquiry. We are never in the position imagined by the positivists, of having a large stock of factual beliefs and no value judgments, and having to decide whether our first value judgment is "warranted," of having to infer our very first "ought" from a whole lot of "ises."" While Descartes could perform the thought experiment of imagining that he knows nothing at all to see what truths he could derive based on "pure reason," we are never in this position in our inquiry as a practical matter when deciding whether a certain proposition in question is true or false. We always already have some beliefs, and our inquiry includes the sort of criticism where we put certain beliefs to the test in relation to our other existing beliefs which are held as true as we try to find better alternative beliefs to the ones being reconsidered. As a matter of criticism of criticism, how Dewey defined philosophy according to Putnam, we note that though we have no way to question all of our beliefs at the same time, there are no beliefs whatsoever that we currently hold that can not be made subject to criticism. We have no reason to think that the is-ought problem is any problem at all (or any more of a problem than is-is or ought-ought) since there is no way to test any belief without presupposing certain "oughts" and "ises" such as those "oughts" concerning how a belief ought to be evaluated and what it "is" that is being evaluated. Putnam's analysis of the is-ought problem is a good example of pragmatism's "combination of fallibilism and antiskepticism." We subscribe to fallibilism in that none of our beliefs are held to be immune to criticism and the possibility of needed correction in light of new evidence and arguments, but our fallibilism does make us extreme skeptics about the possibility for knowing anything at all. The fact that our standards of justification are not handed to us by nature and we can always be wrong doesn't mean that we can never be justified in thinking that we are right. Putnam, in these lectures and essays around 2000, identifies as a pragmatist though we saw in that youtube video Putnam denying being a pragmatist because of his trouble with "warranted assertibility" as a theory of truth. Here he gives a fairly recent account of his views on truth: "At one time, I myself belief that truth could be defined as warranted assertibility under "ideal" (that is to say, good enough) conditions, where what are good enough conditions is itself something that we are able to determine over the course of inquiry. I know longer think that this works, or indeed that one need define truth at all... But here I want to make just one point: even if one believes that truth sometimes transcends warranted assertibility..., it would be a great mistake to suppose that truth can always transcend warranted assertibility under "ideal" (or good enough) conditions." As an example of where a truth transcends warranted assertibility, he considers the assertion, "the are no intelligent extra-terrestrial anywhere." This statement is either true or false but cannot be, as DMB would say with James, "made true by experience" or as Putnam put it "there are no conditions under which we could verify that [this] is true." Other truths such as a statement about the number or chairs in a room do not transcend warranted assertibility under good enough conditions of inquiry. Best, Steve Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
