Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy and Other Essays by Hilary Putnam ISBN: 0-674-01380-8 Publisher: Harvard University Press Pub. Date: 30 March, 2004 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 5 (2 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: The Entanglement of the Fact/Value Distinction
Comment: 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."
Rating: 5
Summary: Possibly Putnam's most important book?
Comment: 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 all forms of discourse.
 |
Title: Ethics Without Ontology by Hilary Putnam ISBN: 0674013107 Publisher: Harvard University Press Pub. Date: 01 March, 2004 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
 |
Title: The Threefold Cord by Hilary Putnam ISBN: 0231102879 Publisher: Columbia University Press Pub. Date: 15 March, 2001 List Price(USD): $19.50 |
 |
Title: Rationality and Freedom by Amartya Kumar Sen, Amartya Sen ISBN: 0674009479 Publisher: Belknap Press Pub. Date: 01 November, 2002 List Price(USD): $39.95 |
 |
Title: Truth & Truthfulness: An Essay in Genealogy by Bernard Arthur Owen Williams ISBN: 0691102767 Publisher: Princeton University Press Pub. Date: 01 August, 2002 List Price(USD): $39.95 |
 |
Title: Knowledge and Its Limits by Timothy Williamson ISBN: 019925656X Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 01 December, 2002 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
