The collapse of the fact/value dichotomy and other essays

135 Pages·2002·10.32 MB·English

by  Hilary Putnam

THE COLLAPSE OF THE
FACT/VALUE DICHOTOMY
AND OTHER ESSAYS
HILARY PUTNAM
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS, AND LONDON, ENGLAND
Copyright 2002 by the Resident FOR VIVIAN WALSH
and Mows of Harvard CoUege
In gratitude, not justfor suggestions, niticism, and encouragement, butfir
All rights reserved
hinted in the United States of America fiendship and wondojkl conversations during almost half a century
Second printing, 2003
Library of C o n pC ataloging-in-PublicationD ata
PumPm,
Thc collapse of the factfvalue dichotomy and other usays/Wary Putnam.
p. an.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-67600905-3
1. Values. 2. Faas (Philosophy) 3. W e be conomics. 4. Sen, Amartya Kurnar.
I. Title
B945.PE73 C65 2002
121'.8-ddl 2002068617
Designed by Gwen Nefsky Fnnkfcldt
Copyright 2002 by the Resident FOR VIVIAN WALSH
and Mows of Harvard CoUege
In gratitude, not justfor suggestions, niticism, and encouragement, butfir
All rights reserved
hinted in the United States of America fiendship and wondojkl conversations during almost half a century
Second printing, 2003
Library of C o n pC ataloging-in-PublicationD ata
PumPm,
Thc collapse of the factfvalue dichotomy and other usays/Wary Putnam.
p. an.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-67600905-3
1. Values. 2. Faas (Philosophy) 3. W e be conomics. 4. Sen, Amartya Kurnar.
I. Title
B945.PE73 C65 2002
121'.8-ddl 2002068617
Designed by Gwen Nefsky Fnnkfcldt
PREFACE
I PART
I OF THIS VOLUME consists of the lectures I gave at
the invitation of the Rosenthal Foundation and the Northwestern
University School of Law in November 2000. These lecms spell
out the case against the factlvalue dichotomy as that dichotomy
has historically been developed and defended and explain the sigmf-
icance of the issue particularly for economics. I know but aware of
my own limitations did not try to document, that very similar is-
sues arise in the law.
During the ten years that Arnartya Sen was my colleague at Har-
vard University, I came to appreciate not only his brilliance (which
was to earn him the Nobel Prize in economics shortly after he left
Harvard for Trinity College, Cambridge) and his idealism, but also
the importance of what he calls the "capabilities" approach to wel-
fare economics to perhaps the greatest problem facing humanity in
our time, the problem of the immense disparities between richer
1 1
Vlll PREFACE PREFACE IX
and poorer parts of the globe. At the heart of that approach is the are now called "chapters" and not "lectures," I hope that the reader
realization that issues of development economics and issues of will still feel that she is hearing lectures as she reads them), I have
ethical theory simply cannot be kept apart. Sen, throughout his collected here also those of my recent essays that dlrectly bear on
career, has drawn on both the resources of mathematical econom- and help to flesh out the arguments of the Rosenthal Lectures.
ics and the resources of moral philosophy, includmg conceptions of As always, this book has been closely read by James Conant and
human flourishing. by Ruth Anna Putnam. Their critical questions and helpful sugges-
Yet most analytic philosophy of language and much analytic tions profoundly helped in the revision of the Rosenthal Lectures.
metaphysics and epistemology has been openly hostile to talk of Thus this book really has four godparents: Conant, Sen, Walsh, and
human flourishing, regardmg such talk as hopelessly "subjective"- Ruth Anna.
often relegating all of ethics, in fact, to that wastebasket category.
In addition, economics has frequently prided itself on avoiding Cambridge, Massachusetts
"metaphysical assumptions" while positively gobbling up logical Harvard University, 2002
positivist metaphysics-a state of affairs that has been brilliantly an-
alyzed and criticized by Vivian Walsh in Rationality, Allocation and
Reproduction.' Walsh and I have been close friends for nearly fifty
years, and this sorry state of affairs in economics is one that he long
ago called to my attention. When the invitation came from North-
western University School of Law to give the Rosenthal Lectures in
November 2000 it seemed to me-and Walsh powerfully encour-
aged me in this-that this was a perfect opportunity to present a
detailed rebuttal of the view that "fact is fact and value is value and
never the twain shall meet," a view that implies that the Senian en-
terprise of bringing economics closer to ethics is logically irnpossi-
ble. This was also an opportunity to present a philosophy of lan-
guage very different from the logical positivist one that made that
Senian enterprise seem so impossible. Of course it is clear that de-
veloping a less scientistic account of rationality, an account that
enables us to see how reasoning, far from being impossible in nor-
mative areas, is in fact indispensable to them, and conversely, un-
derstanding how normative judgments are presupposed in all rea-
soning, is important not only in economics, but-as Aristotle
saw-in all of life.
As explained in the Introduction, besides the Rosenthal Lectures,
which have been only lightly revised (in particular, although they
1 1
Vlll PREFACE PREFACE IX
and poorer parts of the globe. At the heart of that approach is the are now called "chapters" and not "lectures," I hope that the reader
realization that issues of development economics and issues of will still feel that she is hearing lectures as she reads them), I have
ethical theory simply cannot be kept apart. Sen, throughout his collected here also those of my recent essays that dlrectly bear on
career, has drawn on both the resources of mathematical econom- and help to flesh out the arguments of the Rosenthal Lectures.
ics and the resources of moral philosophy, includmg conceptions of As always, this book has been closely read by James Conant and
human flourishing. by Ruth Anna Putnam. Their critical questions and helpful sugges-
Yet most analytic philosophy of language and much analytic tions profoundly helped in the revision of the Rosenthal Lectures.
metaphysics and epistemology has been openly hostile to talk of Thus this book really has four godparents: Conant, Sen, Walsh, and
human flourishing, regardmg such talk as hopelessly "subjective"- Ruth Anna.
often relegating all of ethics, in fact, to that wastebasket category.
In addition, economics has frequently prided itself on avoiding Cambridge, Massachusetts
"metaphysical assumptions" while positively gobbling up logical Harvard University, 2002
positivist metaphysics-a state of affairs that has been brilliantly an-
alyzed and criticized by Vivian Walsh in Rationality, Allocation and
Reproduction.' Walsh and I have been close friends for nearly fifty
years, and this sorry state of affairs in economics is one that he long
ago called to my attention. When the invitation came from North-
western University School of Law to give the Rosenthal Lectures in
November 2000 it seemed to me-and Walsh powerfully encour-
aged me in this-that this was a perfect opportunity to present a
detailed rebuttal of the view that "fact is fact and value is value and
never the twain shall meet," a view that implies that the Senian en-
terprise of bringing economics closer to ethics is logically irnpossi-
ble. This was also an opportunity to present a philosophy of lan-
guage very different from the logical positivist one that made that
Senian enterprise seem so impossible. Of course it is clear that de-
veloping a less scientistic account of rationality, an account that
enables us to see how reasoning, far from being impossible in nor-
mative areas, is in fact indispensable to them, and conversely, un-
derstanding how normative judgments are presupposed in all rea-
soning, is important not only in economics, but-as Aristotle
saw-in all of life.
As explained in the Introduction, besides the Rosenthal Lectures,
which have been only lightly revised (in particular, although they
CONTENTS
Introduction
THE COLLAPSE OF THE FACT/VALUE DICHOTOMY
The Empiricist Background
The Entanglement of Fact and Value
Fact and Value in the World of Amartya Sen
RATIONALITY AND VALUE
Sen's "Prescriptivist" Beginnings
On the Rationality of Preferences
Are Values Made or Discovered?
Values and Norms
The Philosophers of Science's Evasion of Values
Notes
Index
THE COLLAPSE OF THE
FACT/VALUE DICHOTOMY
AND OTHER ESSAYS
INCLUDING THE ROSENTHAL LECTURES
INTRODUCTION
I
THE
IDEA THAT VALUE JUDGMENTSA RE SUEIJECTIVE~i 6 a
piece of philosophy that has gradually come to be accepted by
many people as if it were common sense. In the hands of sophisti-
cated thinkers this idea can be and has been developed in different
ways. The ones I shall be concerned with hold that "statements of
fact" are capable of being "objectively true" and capable, as well, of
being "objectively warranted," while value judgments, according to
these thinkers, are incapable of object truth and objective warrant.
Value judgments, according to the most extreme proponents of a
sharp "fact/value" dichotomy, are completely outside the sphere of
reason. This book tries to show that from the beginning these
views rested on untenable arguments and on over-inflated di-
chotomies. And these untenable arguments had, as we shall see,
important "real world consequences in the twentieth cennuy.
I 1
2 INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTION 3
Although I have criticized the factlvalue dichotomy in chapters married." The logical positivist claimed that mathematics consists of
of previous books, this is the &st time I have tried to examine the analytic truths. "Synthetic" was Kant's term for the non-analytic
history of the hchotomy from David Hume to the present day, and truths, and he took it for granted that synthetic truths state "facts."
to examine its concrete effects particularly in the science of eco- His surprising claim was that mathematics was both synthetic and a
nomics.' I chose economics because economics is a policy sci- priori. This book tries to show that these two hchotomies, "fact ver-
ence--economists hrectly advise governments and non-govern- sus value judgment" and "fact versus analytic truth," have corrupted
mental organizations-and precisely the question this book deals our thinking about both ethical reasoning and description of the
with, the question as to whether "ends," that is to say values, can or world, not least of all by preventing us from seeing how evaluation
cannot be rationally discussed or, to put it hfferently, whether there and description are interwoven and interdependent.
is a notion of rationality applicable to normative questions, has Part I1 begins with a chapter which is a natural afterword to the
been hotly debated in economics for many decades. Another reason Rosenthal lectures, describing, as it does, Sen's earliest wrestling
is that, although at one time the ruling view in economics was pre- with the factlvalue issue. The remainder of Part I1 (and the book)
cisely the view this book attacks, the view that, as Lionel Robbins collects a number of my recent essays and lectures that supplement
put it, "there is no room for argument" when values are in ques- the arguments of Part I in different directions. Chapter 5 contains a
tion, a powerful case on the other side, a case for the need for and criticism of one of the assumptions ("completeness") of the "ratio-
1
possibility of reasoned arguments about ethical questions in wel- nal choice theory" on which much of twentieth-century economics
!
fare economics, has been made and defended for many years by was based. As the reader who looks at the notes will see, the com-
I,~ one of the world's great economists, Amartya sen.' In our time, pleteness assumption is one that has also come under fire from
then, the question as to what the differences are between "factual" Amartya Sen (and a number of other economists and philosophers
, judgments and "value" judgments is no ivory-tower issue. Matters as well). In the second part of Chapter 5, however, I move from
of-literally-life and death may well be at stake. pure economics and try to show that the widely discussed distinc-
I The first three chapters of this volume, whlch consist of the tion between "internal reasons" and "external reasons" for a choice
Rosenthal Lectures I gave at Northwestern University School of introduced by Bernard Williams is another example of what I call a
Law in 2000, spell out the case against the factlvalue dichotomy as metaphysical "dichotomy" in Chapter 1, and that it too, albeit more
it has historically been developed and defended and explain the sig- subtly, founders on the entanglement of fact and value that I hs-
Iuficance for economics. In the first of these lectures (Chapter I), cuss in Chapter 2.
however, I discuss the phenomenon of the elevation of what look In Chapters 6 and 7, I discuss two questions dealing with the
I
like harmless distinctions into absolute dichotomies by philosophers foundations of ethics. Chapter 6 considers the question of how a
in a more general setting. In particular, I show how the idea of an belief in the objectivity of ethical judgment is to be defended if one
absolute dichotomy between "facts" and "values" was fiom the be- refuses (as I do) to postulate any special "Platonic" realm of "ethical
ginning dependant upon a second dichotomy, one unfamiliar to properties." I argue that a basis for a thoroughly non-Platonic ac-
most non-philosophers,t he dichotomy of "analytic" and "synthetic" count can be found in the writings of John Dewey. In Chapter 7, I
judgments. 'halytic" is a term introduced by Kant for what most consider the position of Jiirgen Habermas, who draws a sharp dis-
people call "definitional" truths, for example, 'Xll bachelors are un- tinction between universal ethical "norms" and non-universalizable