Abstract
Putnam has given a different twist to the ethical issues in his philosophical writing on ethics. In his book on ‘Ethics Without Ontology,’ he has given the different interpretation to the ethical issues. Putnam states that there is no ‘ontology’ in ethics. For him, there is nothing wrong with ethics, rather there is something wrong with metaphysics. The ethics cannot be justified from a non-ethical standpoint of view. In this way, Putnam challenges both inflationary ontological ethics and deflationary ontological ethics and he bids goodbye to all varieties of ontologies. This idea of ethics goes against the possibility of Vedanta, Buddhism, Aristotelian metaphysics, Platonic forms, Islam, Kantian category, Levinas’s ‘being’, and Heidegger’s ontology. He replaced ‘ethical ontology’ with that of pragmatic pluralism: the recognition that we employ in our everyday lives different kinds of discourses, discourses subject to different standards and possessing different sorts of applications that all contribute to the description of reality. Putnam is right in many of his criticisms of metaphysical ethics, but it is not clear how he can avoid the idea of absolute values, which are transcendental as proposed by Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein accepts both aspects of ethical life, i.e., transcendental and empirical. I shall try to show that we have every reason to accept Wittgenstein’s view that there is ontology in ethics.
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Notes
Putnam, H. (Putnam 2005) Ethics Without Ontology, USA: Harvard University Press.
Putnam, H. (Putnam 2005) Ethics Without Ontology, USA: Harvard University Press, Pp. 16-22.
Ibid., p. 24.
Putnam, H. (Putnam 2005) Ethics Without Ontology, USA: Harvard University Press, p. 24.
Dewey, John (Dewey 1922) Human Nature and Conduct: An Introduction to Social Psychology, USA: New York Henry Holt and Company, p. 10.
Dewey, John (Dewey 1915) The Logic of Judgments of Practice, in Middle Works, Vol. 8, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, Pp. 23-27.
Putnam, H. (Putnam 2005) Ethics Without Ontology, USA: Harvard University Press, p. 28.
Ibid., Pp. 28-29.
Ibid., p. 73.
Rovie, Eric. M. (Rovie 2006) ‘Review of Ethics Without Ontology’, Essays in Philosophy, Volume 7.Issue2.Article11.(http://commons.pacificu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1244&context=eip, Accessed on December 3rd, 2016)
Putnam, H. (Putnam 2005) Ethics Without Ontology, USA: Harvard University Press, p. 73.
Ibid., p.75.
Philstrӧm, Sami (Philstrӧm 2005) Pragmatic Moral Realism: A Transcendental Defense, New York: Rodopi B. V., p. 41.
Putnam, H. (Putnam 1995) Pragmatism: An Open Questions, Oxford: Blackwell, p. 48.
Wittgenstein, L. (Wittgenstein 2009) Philosophical Investigations, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, Remarks No: 23.
Wittgenstein, L. (Wittgenstein 1965) A Lecture on Ethics, The Philosophical Review, Vol.74, No.1, p.5.
Wittgenstein, L. (Wittgenstein 2009) Philosophical Investigations, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, Remarks No: 43.
Putnam, H. (Putnam 1995) Pragmatism: An Open Questions, Oxford: Blackwell, p. 48
Wittgenstein, L. (Wittgenstein 1965) A Lecture on Ethics, The Philosophical Review, Vol.74, No.1, p. 7.
Ibid., Pp. 5-6.
Sattler, Janyne (Sattler 2013) Wittgenstein’s Lecture on Ethics: Personal Expressions and Moral Commitment,O que nosfazpensar, Vol. 22, No. 33, p. 191.
Wittgenstein, L. (Wittgenstein 1965) A Lecture on Ethics, The Philosophical Review, Vol.74, No.1, p. 5.
Ibid.
Wittgenstein L. (Wittgenstein 1961a) Tractatuslogico-philosophicus. Trans. McGuiness, B.F., Pears, D.F., London: Routledge, Remark No: 6.421.0.
Wittgenstein, L. (Wittgenstein 1961b) Notebooks 1914-16. Anscombe, G.E.M., von Wright, G.H. (Eds.). Trans. Anscombe, G.E.M. Oxford: Blackwell, Remark: 77.
Wittgenstein L. (Wittgenstein 1961a) Tractatuslogico-philosophicus. Trans. McGuiness, B.F., Pears, D.F., London: Routledge, Remark No: 6.421.0.
Pradhan, R. C. (Pradhan 2009) Language, Reality and Transcendence: An Essay on the Main Strands of Wittgenstein’s Later Philosophy, Boca Raton: Brown Walker Press, p. 186.
Wittgenstein uses ontology in TractatusLogico-Philosophicus in two categories of being. First one is: one can talk about, refer to, name objects; one can picture, describe, state facts. And the second is: one cannot picture, describe, or state objects and one cannot talk about, refer to, or name facts.
Wittgenstein, L. (Wittgenstein 1965) A Lecture on Ethics, The Philosophical Review, Vol.74, No.1, p. 6.
House, Ernest R. (House 2001) “Unfinished Business: Causes and Values.” American Journal of Evaluation 22:3, p. 313.
Putnam, H. (Putnam 2002) The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy and Other Essays, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, Pp. 43-44.
Ibid., p. 142.
Harris, Robert A. (Harris 2005) A Summary Critique of The Fact/Value Dichotomy. http://www.virtualsalt.com/int/factvalue.pdf (Accessed on December 3rd, 2016)
Pradhan, R. C. (Pradhan 2009) Language, Reality and Transcendence: An Essay on the Main Strands of Wittgenstein’s Later Philosophy, Boca Raton: Brown Walker Press, p. 187.
Freidland, Jullian (Freidland 2006) Wittgenstein and the Metaphysics of Ethical Values, Ethic@: an International Journal for Moral Philosophy , Vol.5, No.1, p.92.
Wittgenstein, L. (Wittgenstein 1965) A Lecture on Ethics, The Philosophical Review, Vol.74, No.1, p. 11.
Wittgenstein L. (Wittgenstein 1980) Culture and Value. Von Wright, G.H., Nyman, H. (Eds.). trans. Winch, P. Oxford: Blackwell, p. 3.
Pradhan, R. C. (Pradhan 2009) Language, Reality and Transcendence: An Essay on the Main Strands of Wittgenstein’s Later Philosophy, Boca Raton: Brown Walker Press, p. 188.
Wittgenstein L. (Wittgenstein 1980) Culture and Value. Von Wright, G.H., Nyman, H. (Eds.). trans. Winch, P. Oxford: Blackwell, p. 3.
Pradhan, R. C. (Pradhan 2009) Language, Reality and Transcendence: An Essay on the Main Strands of Wittgenstein’s Later Philosophy, Boca Raton: Brown Walker Press, p. 187.
Pradhan, R. C. (Pradhan 2002) The Great Mirror: An Essay on Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, New Delhi: KalkiPrakasha, Pp.. 293-330.
Chandra, Suresh (Chandra 2002) Wittgenstein: New Perspectives. New Delhi: Indian Council of Philosophical Research, p. 30.
Pradhan, R. C. (Pradhan 2002) The Great Mirror: An Essay on Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, New Delhi: KalkiPrakasha, Pp.331-332.
Wittgenstein L. (Wittgenstein 1961a) Tractatuslogico-philosophicus. Trans. McGuiness, B.F., Pears, D.F., London: Routledge, Remark No: 6.41.
See, Blackburn, Simon. (Blackburn 1993)Essays in Quasi-Realism, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wittgenstein, L. (Wittgenstein 1965) A Lecture on Ethics, The Philosophical Review, Vol.74, No.1, p. 12.
See, Rovie, Eric M. (Rovie 2006) Review of “Ethics Without Ontology, Essays in Philosophy, Vol: 2, Issue: 2.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to express my special thanks to Professor P. R. Bhat, Emeritus Fellow, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Bombay, India, for his valuable academic suggestions on my paper.
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Nath, R. Can Ethics Be Without Ontology? Wittgenstein and Putnam. Philosophia 47, 1215–1225 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-018-0035-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-018-0035-1