To force all the descriptive terms that we employ in our everyday discourse into one side or the other of the dichotomy observation term or theoretical term is to force them into a Procrustean bed. The logical positivist fact/value dichotomy was defended on the basis of a narrowly scientific picture of what a fact might be, just as the Humean ancestor of that distinction was defended upon the basis of a narrow empiricist psychology of ideas and impressions. The realization that so much of our descriptive language is a living counterexample to both (classical empiricist and logical positivist) pictures of the realm of fact ought to shake the confidence of anyone who supposes that there is a notion of fact that contrasts neatly and absolutely with the notion of value supposedly invoked in talk of the nature of all value judgments. The example of the predicate cruel also suggests that the problem is not just that the empiricists (and later the logical positivists) notion of a fact was much too narrow from the start. A deeper problem is that, from Hume on, empiricists -- and not only empiricists but many others as well, in and outside of philosophy -- failed to appreciate the ways in which factual description and valuation can and must be entangled. - Hilary Putnam
Posted on: Thu, 06 Nov 2014 15:20:28 +0000
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