Ethics without Ontology
About This Book
In this brief book one of the most distinguished living American philosophers takes up the question of whether ethical judgments can properly be considered objectiveâa question that has vexed philosophers over the past century. Looking at the efforts of philosophers from the Enlightenment through the twentieth century, Hilary Putnam traces the ways in which ethical problems arise in a historical context.Putnam's central concern is ontologyâindeed, the very idea of ontology as the division of philosophy concerned with what (ultimately) exists. Reviewing what he deems the disastrous consequences of ontology's influence on analytic philosophyâin particular, the contortions it imposes upon debates about the objective of ethical judgmentsâPutnam proposes abandoning the very idea of ontology. He argues persuasively that the attempt to provide an ontological explanation of the objectivity of either mathematics or ethics is, in fact, an attempt to provide justifications that are extraneous to mathematics and ethicsâand is thus deeply misguided.
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Table of contents
- Contents
- Introduction
- PART I Ethics without Ontology
- LECTURE 1 Ethics without Metaphysics
- LECTURE 2 A Defense of Conceptual Relativity
- LECTURE 3 Objectivity without Objects
- LECTURE 4 âOntologyâ: An Obituary
- PART II Enlightenment and Pragmatism
- LECTURE 1 The Three Enlightenments
- LECTURE 2 Skepticism about Enlightenment
- Notes
- Index