Fatos e valores: um estudo sobre a dicotomia fato/valor e o problema da objetividade da ética em Hilary Putnam.

Abstract

One of the biggest and most ingenious obstacles to the claim of objectivity in ethics is the idea we now know as fact/value dichotomy. While it is widely accepted that its origin goes back to Hume, its development has become significantly heavier in the theses of logical positivists. Those thinkers promoted, in a very sophisticated way, the idea that the evaluative notions of normative ethics do not correspond to any “facts” and, therefore, could in no way be subjected to objective correction. Thus, it seems clear that any pretense of objectivity in ethics needs to deal adequately with this problem and, in this work, we seek to provide a study on the position of a known supporter of the objectivity of moral judgments and critic of the fact/value dichotomy; Hilary Putnam. The general thesis which is the subject of this work is the one sustained by Putnam that the normative thinking has always been present in the very foundations of all rational activity. According to Putnam, the fact/value dichotomy simply “corrupted” our thinking about ethical issues and the description of the world, in such a way that it is necessary to show, in order to remove this obstacle to objectivity of ethics, how this dichotomy is a mistake supported by a limited conception of language and rationality influenced by the theses of logical positivists. The strategy for exposition here adopted is the analysis of the main topics that make up Putnam’s attack on the fact/value dichotomy that, according to our understanding, coverts, yet, into a coherent argumentation to the defense of the possibility of objective validity of ethics. Our strategy is divided into three parts: the first is aimed to characterize the way Putnam seems to understand the problem of the fact/value dichotomy as something dependent on another philosophical distinction, namely the separation between analytic judgments and synthetic judgments. From this development, we plan to analyze the argument put forward by Putnam that the logical positivists had enhanced the analytic/synthetic distinction to the condition of an omnipresent dichotomy, creating a version of the fact/value dichotomy and banishing the ethical issues of the rational discussion. In the second part, we deal with Putnam’s positive thesis on the fact/value issue: the idea that there is in practice a phenomenon of “entanglement of facts and values.” We begin by presenting a brief reconstruction of Quine's criticism of the analytic/synthetic distinction and relating it to Putnam's argument that such criticism removes the foundations of the very fact/value dichotomy, also paving the way for it to be disqualified in a similar way. We, then, proceeded to the analysis of Putnam's position on the so-called "thick ethical concepts” in which the author sees the expression of the thesis of fact/value entanglement, so that such concepts are counterexamples to the fact/value dichotomy itself. Still in the second part, we offer some considerations about the notion of “value” in Putnam, emphasizing how such a notion is not limited to ethics, but plays the role of assumption in any rational activity, including science itself. In the last part we try to examine what would be Putnam’s positive contribution for ethics. We argue, there, that despite not having something you can properly call a moral theory, Putnam proposes a moral conception deeply influenced by the American pragmatism tradition, in particular Dewey. Seeking in coherent connection with the attempt to overcome the fact/value dichotomy, present a sense of peculiar objectivity (something that involves what he calls objectivity without objects) which is intended as something that avoids the extremes of relativism and metaphysical realism. In general, we seek to emphasize the characterization offered by Putnam, not only as a critical of the fact/value dichotomy, but also as he advocates, in a positive sense, that ethical issues can be argued rationally.