Philosophers and the moral life
Claudine Tiercelin
Université Paris XII et
Institut Jean-Nicod
(Transactions of the
C.S.Peirce Society, n°2, spring 2002, vol. XXXVIII,N°1/2, Essays in Honor
of Richard S. Robin, p. 307-326)
Part
of the obvious revival of pragmatism, at least in Europe, is linked with the
present success or even “boom” of moral philosophy[1]. Although it is still
“commonplace to think of pragmatism in terms of its two principal varieties,
one of which stems from Charles Peirce and the other from William James”[2], there is also an
increasing tendency to identify the classical pragmatists as a common group of
writers who, much better than any philosophers coming from other traditions—
knew how to define scientific inquiry as an inquiry submitted to norms and
principles, and realized that “what applies to investigation in general,
equally applies to ethical investigation”[3]. Indeed, for quite some
time now, pragmatism has no longer been viewed merely as “the most significant
tradition in American philosophy”[4], but (and not only in
America, in Europe too), as the right philosophical position to adopt, “a
middle-way” as H.Putnam put it, “between reactionary metaphysics and
irresponsible relativism”[5]. Indeed, one of the
reasons Putnam thinks Pragmatism is not so much “a movement that had its day at
the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centeury”, but “a
way of thinking …of lasting importance and an option (or at least an “open
question”) that should figure in present-day philosophical thought” [6] is that he is convinced
that the “pluralism” and “thoroughgoing holism” which are ubiquitous in
Pragmatist writing (POQ, xii) are able to continue to “value the tolerance and
pluralism” promoted by the Enlightment, while avoiding “the epistemological
scepticism that came with that tolerance and pluralism”, in other words,
avoiding “moral scepticism without tumbling back into moral
authoriarianism”(POQ,2). Contrary to the “reactionary metaphysics”, directly
generated, according to Putnam, from a certain tradition — mainly the
empiricist (and analytical) tradition — and at the same time, contrary to the
“irresponsible relativism” it gave rise to (TTC, 5), pragmatism seems the best available answer to our fear of
“the loss of the world”, the best way to “renew” (in the Deweyan sense of the
term) philosophy.
Common
to the pragmatists, according to Putnam — which allows to rank Wittgenstein and
Austin among them— is the view that notions indipensable for everydaylife
should be taken seriously. Putnam credits Peirce for emphasizing that practical
interest is inseparable from cognitive or theoretical interest: no one could
dream of “a discussion about testing
theories or hypotheses that would take place outside certain values or that
would assume, for example, the extortion of consensus” (CPNR, 76). Neverthless, Dewey was the first philosopher, not only to subscribe to the
view that “what applies to investigation in general applies to ethical
investigation”, but to have put it into practice: indeed, although the view was
originally formulated by Peirce, Peirce did not apply it to the moral domain,
because he “categorically refused to deal with ethics” (CPNR, 88).Is it so
sure, though? Or how should we understand such a refusal from someone who, at the
same time, as Richard Robin saw as early as 1964, was so convinced by the
importance of norms and values as to elaborate a doctrine of the normative
sciences, a doctrine which, to say the least, did not “come out of the blue”?[7] In what follows I shall
try to present some of Peirce’s arguments both against any form of moral
rationalism and in favor of a normative conception of rationality, which are closer to a conception of the possible
objectivity of ethics than may appear at first sight, and even closer too, as
he now seems more and more inclined to think, to Putnam’s own views on the
matter[8].
Against moral
rationalism.
Pragmatism has always been viewed as a fight
against false abstractions and against the clearcut division between the
intellect on the one hand and experience and action on the other. But, to a
certain extent, this can be also be traced back to the common opposition[9], present in W. James,
Peirce but also Wittgenstein to any form of moral rationalization, which has as
much to do with theoretical reasons or a strict ethical attitude as with
straightforward “conservatism or “sentimentalism”, as is often suggested[10]. For Wittgenstein[11], the essential part of
the philosophical effort one should be ready to consent on a topics such as,
for example, ethics, should precisely consist in freeing oneself of the
temptation of saying something about it. Indeed, things in ethics
are in a way so crystal-clear, so definite and brutal, that there is strictlly
nothing to say about it. In that sense, what philosophers can say or
write about moral conscience, about values, about the possible existence of
Good, is of little weight compared to what such writers as Tolstoï, Shahespeare
or Balzac managed to show through
their writings[12]. Indeed, in what
respect is a philosopher more qualified than
the common man to talk about ethics? Is
he essentially better, more experienced, or happier than the rest of mankind?
What kind of secret does he hold? What
might he know that the other people would not? Obviously nothing. Franck
Ramsey, who was very close to the pragmatists and to Wittgenstein also held
that as soon as one tries to indulge in such topics of “popular philosophy” as
“the relation of man to nature, and the meaning of morality”, “any attempt to
treat such topics seriously reduces them to questions either of science or of
technical philosophy, or results more immediately in perceiving them to be
nonsensical”; and he concluded that “Theology and Absolute Ethics are two
famous subjects which we have realised to have no real objects”[13]. Although he is not
direct, Wittgenstein also considers that anything that might resemble an
ethical “explanation” or “theory” is, by essence, incapable of providing us
with what we are looking for when we question ourselves about ethics. As a
matter of fact, if ethics cannot be expressed,
it is because ethical questions are not really questions, i.e, something one
might bring answers or solutions to. In Realism
with a Human Face, Putnam comes to a similar view, when he stresses the
fact that such terms as “solutions” or “problems” can “lead us astray” by
seeming to equate ethiocal problems or solutions with scientific problems or
solutions, which they clearly are not[14]. Thus ethics has no
pure or essential state: it is more like an anthropological phenomenon, having
more to do, as W. James pointed out, with “temperament” than “theory”[15]. In a similar vein,
Wittgenstein thought that any philosophy could be scarcely more than the
expression of a human experience, which had to be supported by the
human value of his or her author. And, according to him, it was because James
was a genuine human being that he could be a good philosopher[16].
The
Logician of Milford expresses the same kind of reluctance towards moral
rationalism. “In regard to the greatest affairs of life, the wise man follows
his heart and does not trust his head” (1.653). “If, walking in the garden on a
dark night, you were suddenly to hear the voice of your sister crying to you to
rescue her from a villain, would you stop to reason out the metaphysical
question of whether it were possible for one mind to cause material waves of
sound and for another mind to perceive them? (1.655). In such cases, even the
sacred maxim of Ockham’s razor, hawever sound it may be, as a matter of scientific procedure is, compared with living belief, nothing but a ghost
(5.60):
“If the
captain of a vessel on a lee shore in a terrific storm finds himself in a
critical position in which he must instantly either put his wheel to port
acting on one hypothesis, or put his wheel to starboard acting on the contrary
hypothesis, and his vessel will infallibly be dashed to pieces if he decides
the question wrongly, Ockham’s razor is not worth the stout belief of any
common seaman. For stout belief maus happen to save the ship, while Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter
necessitatem swould be only a stupid way of spelling Shipwreck.” (5.60).
In
the first Cambridge Lecture (1898) “Philosophy and the Conduct of Life”[17], Peirce holds that “in
the conduct of life, we have to dinstinguish everyday affairs and great
crises”. “In the great decisions”, it
is not “safe to trust to individual reason. In everyday business, reasoning is
tolerably successful”, but “it is done as well without the aid of a theory as
with it.” (RLT, 109). In all this,
“a good logica utens is enough”. It is often to satisfy our ego that
we exaggerate the role of ratiocination in matters of vital importance.
“Men many
times fancy that they act from reason when, in point of fact, the reasons they
attribute to themselves are nothing but excuses which unconscious instinct
invents to satisfy the teasing “whys” of the ego. The extents of this
self-delusion is such as to render philosophical rationalism a farce” (RLT,
111).
And yet, if we opened our eyes, we would
realize that the so-called “lower animals” reason very little, and “very rarely
commit a mistake, while we —!” (RLT,
110). What are indeed the “mental qualities we most admire in all human beings
except our several selves”: they are “the maiden’s delicacy, the mother’s
devotion, manly courage, and other inheritances that have come to us from the
biped who did not yet speak; while the characters that are the most
contemptible take their origin in reasoning” (ibid.). The very fact, Peirce adds in a very Rousseauistic vein,
that “everybody so ridiculously overrates his own reasoning, is sufficient to
show how superficial the faculty is”.
“It is the
instincts, the sentiments, that make the substance of the soul. Cognition is
only its surface, its locus of contact with what is external to it...Thus, pure
theoretical knowledge, or science, has nothing directly to say concerning
practical matters, and nothing even applicable at all to vital crises. Theory
is applicable to minor practical affairs; but matters of vital importance must
be left to sentiment, that is, to instinct” (RLT, 110-112).
Thus “reason, for all the frills [it]
customarily wears, in vital crises, comes down upon its marrow-bones to beg the
succour of instinct” (RLT, 111). But it is precisely because Peirce “allows the
supremacy of sentiment in human affairs”, and does it “at the dictation of
reason itself”, that he also refuses “ in theoretical matters, to allow
sentiment any weight whatsoever” (RLT, 112).
The necessary separation
between philosophy or science and ethics
Indeed,
if ethics as “the science of the end and aim of life” is excluded from
philosophy, it is because it seems to be exclusively “psychical” and therefore
confined to a special department of experience, while philosophy studies
experience in its universal characteristics”(RLT, 115-116). It ranks “with the
arts, or rather with the theories of the arts”, which “of all theoretical
sciences”, Peirce regards as “the most concrete”, while philosophy is “the most
abstract of all the real sciences”. Hence, if one should “not allow to
sentiment or instinct any weight whatsoever in theoretical matters, not the
sligthest” (RLT, 111), it is because to make knowledge an adjunction to ethics,
or to allow the intrusion of moral or vital factors in science always makes one
run the risk of judging the validity of reasonings according to the impressions
they make on oneself: for example, “when men begin to rationalize about their
conduct, the first effect is to deliver them over to their passions and produce
the most frightful demoralization, especially in sexual matters”. Men “continue
to tell themselves they regulate their conduct by reason; but they learn to
look forward and see what conclusions a given method will lead to before they
give their adhesion to it”. It is then the reign of “sham reasoning”, when “it
is no longer the reasoning which determines what the conclusion shall be, but
it is the conclusion which determines what the reasoning shall be” (1.57)[18]. “The effect of mixing
speculative inquiry with questions of conduct results finally in a sort of
make-believe reasoning which deceives itself in regard to its real
character”(1.56); even worse: “men come to look upon reasoning as mainly
decorative” (1.58).
But
why it is so fundamental to dissociate theoretical from vital matters? To a
certain extent also, because ethics requires beliefs, and mainly firm and fixed
ones: moral conscience, as Robert Musil insisted on demands a sort of
“construction on piles”. Now, the unavoidable dogmatism, conservatism,
—“morality is essentially conservative” (1.50)— urgency, required by this is
incompatible with the disinterest, humility, sense of doubt and probability,
uncertainty, refusal of manichean distinctions, respect of fine nuances that
are so characteristic of the theoretical (scientific) domain: experience,
scientifically conducted, can never reach absolute certainty, exactitude,
necessity or universality, whereas moral conscience requires uniformity,
regularity, repeatability. This is why, as
Peirce notes, “in more ways than one, an exaggerated regard for morality is
unfavorable to scientific progress”, and “as a means to good life, it is not
necessarily coextensive with good conduct”(1.50).
Now,
this is incompatible with the scientific attitude which Peirce defines less as
a corpus of established truths and pieces of knowledge than as a mode of life,
a pursuit of knowledge rather than knowledge. In order to be a real scientist,
philosopher, or more generally, inquirer, it is necessary to have “such virtues
as intellectual honesty and sincerity and a real love of truth” (2.82); the
first step towards finding out being to acknowledge that you do not
satisfactorily know already”(1.13). In that respect, a real scientist is not,
strictly speaking, a believer, since
belief is something upon which a man is willing to act (1.635). He has only
hypotheses, which are believed to the
only extent that the economy of research prescribes, for the time being, that
they should not be doubted, and that on them inquiry shall cease (5.589): but
they are revisable, hence provisional. For one should be ready to overthrow
one’s whole cartload of beliefs, as soon as experience requires it. Hence,
there is nothing common between the man of science, moved by “a hearty and
active desire to learn what is true” and “penetrated with a sense of the
unsatisfactoriness of his present condition of knowledge” (5.582), and the
theologian or professor who is only
moved by the desire to stick to his previous beliefs. Such antithetical
attitudes are illustrated by Peirce under the two anti-scientific attitudes of
fixing belief embodied by the methods of tenacity and authority, and under the
two figures of the theologian (or Hegelian seminarist) and the scientist(1.40).
Dogmatism and conservatism, such are the main dangers science has to be
protected from: unfortunately, the devotion required by knowledge (such as the
years long cataloguing of Peirce’s manuscripts!), makes it hard to have a mundane life, and “the acquisition of
books, instruments, laboratory, etc. depends upon qualifications in which the
man of science is usually rather wanting — as welth, diplomacy, popularity as a
teacher — so that he is less likely to be provided with them than are men less
qualified to use them for the advancement of science”( 1.236). For Peirce no
compromission is possible between science and society, morality or practice.
Once for all, one should get rid of that “Hellenistic tendency” to “mingle
Philosophy and Practice”.(RLT, 107). “True Science is distinctively the study
of useless things. For the useful things will get studied without the aid of
scientific men. To employ these rare minds on such work is like running a steam
engine by burning diamonds” (1.76).
It
does not mean that one should remain deaf to the practical effects of science:
in some cases indeed, its results have immediate applications to human life
(RLT, 107). But even then, “the true scientific investigator completely loses
sight of the utility of what he is about. It never enters his mind. Do you
think that the physiologist who cuts up a dog reflkects while doing so, that he
may be saving a human life? Nonsense. If he did, it would spoil him for a
scientific man, and then the
vivisection would become a crime” (ibid.).
If philosophy is, for Peirce, one of the domains in which the sense of utility
is particularly harmful, it is because “touching as it does upon matters which
are, and ought to be, sacred to us, the investigator who does not stand aloof
from all intent to make pratical applications, will not only obstruct the
advance or pure science, but what is infintely worse, he will endanger his own
moral integrity and that of his readers” (RLT, 117). Deploring “the present
infantile condition of philosophy”, mainly due to the fact that “during is
century it has chiefly been pursued by men who have not been nurtures in
dissecting-rooms and other laboratories, and who consequently have not been
animated by the true scientific Eros, but who have on the contrary come from
theological seminaries, and have consequently been inflamed with a desire to
amend the lives of themselves and others, a spirit no doubt more important than
the love of science, for men in average
situations, but radically unfitting them for the task of scientific
investigation”, Peirce regards “any practical applications of it to Religion
and Conduct as exceedingly dangerous”. And he adds: “I have not one word to say
against the Philosophy of Religion or of Ethics in general or in particular. I
only say that for the present, it is all far too dubious to warrant risking any
human life upon it. I do not say that Philosophical science should not
ultimately influence Religion and Morality. I only say that it should be
allowed to do so only with secular slowness and the most conservative caution”
(RLT, 107-108.).
The reality of norms
Now
it should be clear that if Peirce finds it indispensable to free knowledge from
moral, political or religious interests, or if, in a very close attitude,
Wittgenstein finds that ethics is finally too serious a subject for letting
anybody talk about it, it is because, for both philosophers, rationality itself
must obey very strict normative principles. As Jacques Bouveresse has written
about Wittgenstein, “one should not mistake his refusal of moral rationalism as
a “philosophical” response to a problem of foundation with the rejection of the
idea of some rational morals: for him the ideas of “reason”, “rationality” have
themselves a character which is so directly and so deeply ethical that it is
difficult to say a priori to what
extent ethics cand be grounded on reason rather than the opposite[19].
It
is the very spirit which, as Richard Robin showed, animated Peirce’s project of
a doctrine of the normative sciences, involving logic, ethics and esthetics,
all being defined as the purely theoretical sciences of purpose (1.282)[20]. What is of course of
particular interest is Peirce’s view of logic as a normative science, and even
more, as a particular problem of ethics, which is, in turn, dependent on
esthetics(2.197). For the essential problem of ethics is not right or wrong,
but “what I am deliberately ready to accept, as the statement of what I want to
do”(2.198)[21]. Ethics being a science
of ends, logic then depends on it,
since it has to do with thinking as a deliberate activity and with the
means to reach that end which is a valid well conducted reasoning. Hence, “it
is impossible to be completely and rationally logical except on an ethical
basis” (2.198). But in turn,, both logic and ethics depend on esthetics, which
is the analysis of the end itself, and of the ideal one would be willing to
accept and to conform to. For reasoning is “thinking in a controlleds and
deliberate way”(1.573). There are good and bad reasonings that may be submitted
to criticism, of which we are responsible, since they are deliberate and
controlled, and since, for a pragmatist the way one thinks cannot be
distinguished from the way one conducts oneself (5.534), thus from the way one
is guided by a purpose or an ideal (1. 573), namely that of the discovery of
reality. On the other hand, the pragmatist theory of research or theory of
belief,namely, of “being deliberately ready to adopt the believed formula as a
guide to action”(5.27) must lead less to a search for origin [22] than to the
determination of the norms and ideals
that are to be chosesn for the future conduct (5.35; 5.461). For Peirce,
if any conception, any belief must be understood in connection with its
practical consequences, practical should not be taken in a “materalistic” or
“philistine” sense, but in the Kantian sense of purposive rational action (or
“conduct”), submitted to our critical self-control : “For to say that we live
for the sake of action, as action, regardless of the thought it carries, would
be to say that there is no such thing as rational purport” (5.429).
Correlative
to some forms of relativistic pragmatism as those defended, for example, by R.
Rorty, is the view that norms are necessarily of two kinds: either
transcendent; namely transcultural, or the simple mirror of our present
cultural models. Rorty refuses the first ones, and considers that a correct
defense of the desired post-philosophical era should start from the (obvious)
fact that our norms and standards are contingent through and through, and mere
products of convention. The merit of Peirce’s analysis is to emphasize that we
are not condemned to such an alternative. If the phenomena of reasoning are, in
their general traits, “parallel” to those of moral conduct, it is because,
“reasoning is, essentially, just as a moral conduct, a thought submitted to
self-control”. (1.606), namely, it follows certain rules which we are able to
judge, which we can approve or disapprove. It is true that such norms are in a
sense “irresistible”or “self evident” (1.606), but this does not mean that they
are merely “derived” from our nature or reducible to psychological features of
a system of beliefs or cultural conventions. Nor are they merely transcendent
laws or prescriptions which we have to follow. Logical norms are normative
because they belong to norms of rationality, they are the rules that must be
followed by an ideally rational agent; hence it is not so much a feature that a
system of belief or an agent does in fact have, as a trait that governs our
interpretation of a system of rational beliefs and behaviour of individuals. As
a matter of fact, if we did not suppose that a subject or agent had some traits
of “optimal” rationality, we could not interpret him.: for example, we presuppose,
following the principle of charity, that he is likely to be, like us, rational,
that he has no contradictory beliefs; thus we compare his reasoning with the
ones that we know, and wonder whether it satifies the rules and norms of “just
reason”. And it is precisely what explains that Peirce distinguishes ethics
from mere morality: he is convinced
that human beings are, as S. Blackburn says, “ethical animals”, which means,
“not that we naturally behave particularly well, nor that we are endlessly telling
each other what to do”, but that “we grade and evaluate, and compare and
admire, and claim and justify”[23] . But “an ethical
climate” is indeed “a different thing from a moralistic one. Indeed one of the mark of an ethical climate
may be hostility to moralizing, which is somehow out of place or bad form”[24]. It is then easier to see why “if, as
pragmatism teaches us, what we think is to be interpreted in terms of what we
are prepared to do, then surely logic, or the doctrine of what we ought
to think, must be an application of the doctrine of what we deliberately choose
to do, which is Ethics” (5.35). This is a fundamental view, for it helps to
understand why the rejection by Peirce (and by James) of moral rationalism does
not prevent them from claiming the possibility of some objectivity in ethics.
Against the fact/value
dichotomy.
Putnam often says that what he finds
attractive in pragmatism is not “a systematic theory in the usual sense” but
rather “a certain group of theses, which can be and indeed were argued very
differently by different philosophers with different concerns, and which became
the basis of the philosophy or Peirce, and above
all of James and Dewey”[25]. Among those theses,
there are at least four views, which Putnam takes as decisive:
“(1) Antiskepticism: pragmatists hold that
doubt requires justification just as much as belief (recall Peirce’s famous
distinction between “real” and “philosophical” doubt); (2)fallibilism: pragmatists hold that there is never a metaphysical
guarantee to be had that such-and-such a belief will never need revision (that
one can be both fallibilistic and
antiskeptical is perhaps the unique
insight of American pragmatism); (3) the thesis that there is no fundamental dichotomy between “facts” and “values”; and (4) the thesis
that, in a certain sense, practice is
primary in philosophy. ”(WL, 152).
Before
examining how these theses are articulated, it is important to bear in mind why
the last two are deemed so important by Putnam. In Words and Life, in the chapter intitled “Pragmatism and Moral
Objectivity”, Putnam claims (rightly)
that the classical pragmatists, despite the differences or even disagreements
between them, held 1) that “positions on the “abstract” questions of moral
objectivity have real world effects”; 2) that “the justifications which are
offered for ethical skepticism at a philosophical level will not stand up
examination”; 3) that to show that “the
foundations of the idea that there is no rationality beyond purely instrumental
rationality are in trouble, may help
to combat that instrumentalization and that manipulation”(WL,151). In fact,
“pragmatists have anticipated an idea that has become a commonplace in
contemporary moral philosophy, the idea that disagreement in individual
conceptions of the good need not make it impossible to approximate (even if we
never finally arrive at) agreement on just procedures and even agreement on
such abstract and formal values as respect for another’s autonomy, non
instrumentalization of other persons, and such regulative ideas as the idea
that in all our institutions we should strive to replace relations of hierarchy
and dependance by relations of “symmetric reciprocity” (WL, 155). “Just “or “injust”, “good” and “evil”,
“better” and “worse” are terms that are as indispensable in science as in
social and private life, because, for one thing, there is no dichotomy between
fact and value, a point which, for Putnam, gets special emphasis in Reason, Truth and History[26], but which he had
already stressed in his papers on philosophy of science (especially “What
Theories are not”, in terms of his rejection of the theoretical/observational
distinction): indeed, far from being devoid of “cognitive value”, value
judgements (such as coherence and simplicity) are presupposed in all knowledge:
fact and value interpenetrate (POQ, 13-18): for example, the truths of science
are relevant, deep, non trivial truths (RTH, 137). But at the same time, terms supposed to have a function of ethical
evaluation (such as “scrupulous”) also
have a descriptive, explicative or predictive function. All scientific choices
are based on norms and values, which are not only cognitive, but ethical.
“Philosophical issues are mixed with ‘scientific’ ones, and cultural and even metaphysical preconceptions
play a role” (POQ, 15). Hence, one should 1) reject the positivistic opposition
between, on the one hand, facts, and “physcial “propositions, the reasons
guiding scientific choices, and on the other hand, value or ethical judgments;
2) cease to reduce rationality to mere “scientific” rationality and “broaden
the notion of standards of rational
acceptability “(RTH, 137); 3) reject ethical relativism[27].
As
a consequence, ethical opinions and choices can be submitted to criteria and,
just as epistemological opinions and choices are, justified by objective
reasons, the basic problem being then to avoid that such an ethical cognitivism
should not imply some form or other of ethical authoritarianism. Hence, it
should be possible to show how the choice of life of the “rational nazi” is
both bad and irrational (RTH, 211-214).
In
keeping too with other arguments Putnam develops against externalism (or
metaphyscial realism), according to which there is no “God’s eye point of view”
no “view from nowhere”, but only different points of view made by different
persons, reflecting the interests and objectives of their descriptions and of
their theories, it is necessary to admit that all judgements have a double,
descriptive and evaluative component. “One cannot choose a scheme which simply
“copies” the facts, because no
conceptual scheme is a mere “copy” of the world (RTH, 215)[28]. Thus, “the notion of
truth itself depends for its content on our standards of rational
acceptability, and these in turn rest on and presuppose our values”. Put
briefly, “theory of truth presupposes theory of rationality which in turn
presupposes our theory of the good” (RTH, 215).
The
main objective is then the follwing: how are we to justify that such rational
norms are, rather than others, the “acceptable” ones? As Putnam admits: “We can
only hope to produce a more rational
conception of rationality or a better
conception of morality iw we operate from within our tradition “(RTH, 216). But how can we be sure that
there exists “a true conception of
rationality, a true morality,
even if all we ever have are our conceptions of these?” (RTH, 216).
If
Putnam’s more recent works are more and more animated by the “spirit” in which
the classical pragmatists wrote, it is precisely because it seems to him that
they can offer some solutions to such questions[29].
Is objectivity in ethics
possible?
According to Putnam, the classical
pragmatists should be particularly praised for having refused to conclude from
their rejection of the idea of a “first philosophy” superior to pratice, of
some “Archimedian point” from which we could claim that what is indispenable in
lifegilt nicht in der Philosophie” (WL, 154), from their
rejection as well of a clearcut dichotomy between facts and values, that, as a
consequence, value judgements are nothing more than mere jugements of taste: on
the contrary, they emphasize that we do argue seriouly about them, try to make
them hold together in a coherent way, and appeal to the same logical laws, when
reasoning on an ethical question as when reasoning on a problem in, e.g., set
theory: “Pragmatists do not urge us to ignore sound arguments against what we
believe, when such arguments are advanced; they do urge us not to confuse the
“intuitions” of metaphysicians with genuine arguments”(WL,156). Among such
erroneous intuitions, to which James (and maybe even more, Dewey) never fell
into, that of “the (false) opposition between philosophy which is concerned
with how to live and philosophy which is concerned with hard technical questions”(POQ, 22), which is often
associated with the “fetichism of a method” following only algorithmic criteria
and canons, and with scepticism towards the possibility of objectivity of
ethical values. In showing that fact, theory, value, interpretation are all
interdependent (POQ, 19), the central
idea of the pragmatist “temperament” is, simply, to promote a “more realistic (vision) than the vision of
those who try to convince us that the familiar dualisms must be correct”(ibid.).
For Dewey, there is no foundation: “we can only start from where we are” WL,
201), which includes “both our sufferings and enjoyments (our valuings) and our
evaluations, the latter coming from our community and from ourselves” (WL,
201).
But
to abandon cultural imperialism and absolutism does not imply that relativism
remains the only possible choice. To be a “realist” means precisely to reject
the view that the value judgements we make in ethics have no cognitive status[30]. On the contrary,
pragmatists show that the belief in such a status “underlies an enormous amount
of our pratice (indirectly, perhaps, maybe the whole of our practice) and that
metaphysical arguments that say that notwithstanding
the indispensability of the “realist” stance that we adopt toward value
disputes in practice, realism with respect to values cannot possibly be right, are themselves
unsupported by anything more than a collection of metaphysical dogmas” (Wl,
160).
Refuting
the view B. Williams defends in Ethics
and the Limits of Philosophy, according to which “the idea of ethical
objectivity is metaphysically unacceptable” (RHF, 176), Putnam defends what
“Dewey and Peirce taught us”, namely that “real questions require a context and
a point”(RHF,177) and that “the problem is to keep moral disagreement within
the bounds of community and productive cooperatio”, the “challenge” being “to
make moral disagreement serve as a stimulus to the kind of criticism of
institutions and values that is needed for progress towards justice and
progress in enabling citizens to live in accordance with their various
conceptions of the good life” (WL, 155).
Therefore
we are not confined to choosing between scientism and scepticism. We should
only accept “the position we are fated to occupy in any case, the position of
beings who cannot have a view of the world that does not reflect our interests
and values, but who are, for all that, committed to regarding some views of the
world — and for that matter, some interests and values— as better than others.
This may mean giving up a certain
metphysical picture of objectivity, but it does not mean giving up the idea
that there are what Dewey called “objective resolutions of problematic
situations” — objective resolutions to problems which are situated in a place,
at a time, as opposed to an “absolute” answer to “perspective-independent”
questions. And that is objectivity enough” (RHF, 178).
But
it implies more than giving up the idea of “a single theory that explains
eveything” of “an absolute conception of the world”[31]: it implies that one adopts a method which is very far
from the inductivist (Carnapian) conception of inquiry (WL, 170-1). For Peirce
and Dewey “inquiry is a cooperative human ineraction with an environment, and
both aspects, the active intervention, the active manipulation of the
environmenet, and the cooperation with other human beings, are vital… Ideas
must be put under strain, if they are to prove their woth; and Dewey and James
both followed Peirce in this respect” (WL, 171; POQ, 70-71).
Yet,
if he credits Dewey of having applied Peirce’s original idea and in particular
of having shown how “what applies to
intelligently conducted inquiry in general applies to ethical inquiry in
particular” (RP, 186), and of having given “the epistemological
justification of democracy”, which meant showing that “Democracy is not just
one form of social life among other workable forms of social life; it is the
precondition for the full application of intelligence to the solution of social
problems” (RP, 180), Putnam also considers that Dewey was at times indulging
into a “metaphysics of value” (RP, 196-7), but, most importantly, too
quick in concluding from the “overlap”
between scientific values and ethical values to their complete identity (WL, 174):
in that respect, Peirce was more lucid when he denounced the relativistic or
sceptical risk there wass in not maintaining a distinction between the two, and
in completely giving up the idea of “pure knowledge” (WL, 204-5).
This
may explain why, although Putnam sees James as ”the greatest exponent” of
pragmatism (POQ, 6) he also praises Peirce for his acute perception of the depth of the problem of objectivity in
ethics: better than anyone, Peirce saw that ethical justifications cannot be
understood in a purely instrumental way, precisely because they rest on
certains norms of rationality. In at least two places,[32] Putnam analyzes the
arguments developed by Peirce in the Doctrine
of Chances[33], in which Peirce shows
that “instrumental rationality would be impossible if there were not
topic-neutral norms whose claim to rational acceptability is not derived simply from the fact that they help us
to achieve particular goals a cerain percentage of the time” (WL, 160). Without
pursuing the argument here[34], let us just say that
the practical choice made by the person confronted to the dilemma of choosing
in a package, the card that would bring him eternal felicity in one case, and
everlasting woe, in the other case, cannot be performed on a mere utilitarian
basis (W3, 282). Even if, in probabilistic (frequentist) terms, we have no
reason to choose either solution, in a single
case, we do reason in terms of what it would be more reasonablle to believe in
the long run, and in the interest of the community as a whole. What guides us
in our choice then, is, to a certain extent, indeed, the utilitarian norm (also
present in contemporay theories of decision or rational choice): always act so
as to maximize the estimated utility (WL, 161), but no appeal to that rule
could be understood in case one did not presuppose that what a rational person
pursues in any action is not his own benefit, but what might benefit mankind
(or the community of rational investigators) in the infinitley long run. To act otherwise would mean to be
“illogical in all one’s inferences”.
For Peirce, “one can only be rational
if one identifies himself psychologically
with a whole ongoing — in fact a potentially infinite — community of
investigators” (TMFR, 83). Even if Peirce admits he is a bit puzzled by
Peirce’s “metaphysically daring” solution (indeed, would such an attitude
command all our actions, when facing torture, for example?) (WL, 163), which is
in keeping with Peirce’s not only “altruistic” but even “Buddhistic” virtues of
self-abnegation[35], it remains the case
that Peirce “was the philosopher who called our attention to the importance od
the problem and to its depth” (WL,
164). Thus, “even when I seek to attain a goal (in a situation in which risk is
involved either way), the rational decision as to what I must do to attain my
pratical goal depends upon my acknowledging the binding force of norms which do
not possess a satisfactory instrumental justification in terms of my own goals”
(WL, 168). Hence, “norms like the estimated utility rule were discovered not by
mere trial and error, but by normative
reflection on our practice”. This is the reason why “to say that something is
rational is not merely to describe it as in accordance
with some algorithm or quasi-algorithm or other…If I say that believing
something or acting in a certain way is rational, then other things being
equal, I am recommanding that belief or that course of action” (WL, 167).
Conclusions:
Philosophers and the Moral Life.
As
the pragmatists show, there are various way in which one can consider the
relations between Philosophy and Ethics, and, consequently, the degree of
involvement Philosophers should have regarding what William James called “the
Moral Life”. Indeed, it is in James’s works that Putnam finally finds the more
appropriate attitude: for James was
really unique in stressing the double necessity of appealing, in our practical
choices, to “an underived, a primitive obligation of some kind to be
reasonable, not a “moral obligation” or an “ethical obligation, to be sure, but
nevertheless a very real obligation to be reasonable, which — contrary to
Peirce— is not reducible to my expectations about the long run and my interest in the welfare of others or in
my own welfare at other times”(TMFR, 84-5) and thus, of making the link between
obligations and concrete persons. If “the figure of William James…simply won’t
go” (POQ, 5), it is partly because he tried to “humanize” the notion of truth,
to view it as a human instrument, and not as an idea that dropped from the
sky(POQ, 21)[36], also because he
elaborated in terms of his radical empiricism an elaborate version of natural
reaalism in perception, but most of all, because, “early and late, James’s
motivation was ultimately ethical”[37]: “Even in epistemology and metaphysics, the
concern with human beings as interdependent members of a community guides
James’s every move” (RHF, 231). James shows “that there is no such thing
possible as an ethical philosophically made up in advance”[38] and reminds us that “there can be no final truth in ethics
any more than in physics, until the last man has had his experience and said
his say”(ibid.). Although there is no
“abstract moral ‘nature of things’ existing antecendetly to the concrete
thinkers themselves with their ideals “(MP&ML, 193), James nevers indulges
in pessimism: “James’s moral philosophy has a fundamental principle that is
quasi-a priori…facts about what will
not make human beings happy are important in determining what our detailed
obligations are” (RHF, 217-218), namely that “without a claim actually made by some concrete person there can be no
obligation, but there is some obligation wherever there is a claim”(MP&ML,
194)[39]. Yet, it is not through
some algorithm that we shall satisfy such demands. Rather, “in the casuistic
scale, those ideals must be written highest which prevail at the least cost, or whose realization the least possible
number of other ideals are destroyed” (MP & ML, 205). It means that we must
always submit our principles to correction, according to the new experiences we
make: “If a certain formula for expressing te nature of the world violates my
moral demand, I shall feel as free to throw it overboard, or at least to doubt
it, as if it disappointed my demand for uniformity of sequence for example” [40]. Whatever our choices
are, we must listen to “the cries of the wounded”, to our “moral impulse”. In
that respect, James’s individualistic nominalism (who insists more, contrary to
Peirce, on the accessibility than on the independance of truth) is more
“palatable” to Putnam in its “modesty” and “humanity” than Peirce’s position:
for James, truth, humanly speaking, is all we have. Not that James was less
convinced than Peirce that being attentive to the “community” could be
“enough”: The “truth” of a Khomeiniist sect is not worthy of the name,
according to the great pragmatists, because it is not responsive to anything
except the will of the leader. A commuity that subjects its beliefs to test is
the minimum requirement for the existence of truth” (RHF, 231). James’s
remarkable vision of a deep link between truth, reality and community, is expressed in his meliorist religion (RHF,
231): “Peirce was confident that science would go on progressing if only we
remain faithful to the spirit of fallibilism and continue to engage in
abduction …and in ethics, James is no less confident that social progress will
result from the same spirit of fallibilism and a continued engagement in the
construction and passionate advocacy of “ideals” (RHF, 224). But “in ethical
cases, compassion corresponds to corrective force of experiment in
science”(RHF, 224). In tha sense, James’s pragmatism is closer to
existentialism but also different: “Staking one’s life on one’s ideals while
recognizing that they are, in the nature of things, not final and may, (we
hope, will) be improved on in the progress of the species — this is a twist on
existentialism that is deeply American” (RHF,229).
One
may judge that it is decidedly too “romantic” (James’s own terms) a version of
pragmatism, or consider, with Putnam, that there is no deeper response to
scepticism than such a Jamesian perspective of human partaken experience: at any rate, it is pragmatism with a human
face.
In
Rationalité et Cynisme, Jacques
Bouveresse noted that “to believe in morals, despite all that we know, is
today, more than ever, the moral problem, par
excellence”[41]. How can one avoid the
irrationalist relativism or the
complete scepticism, to which the criticism of rationalism and moral
rationalism, in particular, seem to lead?
Putnam
saw that the pragmatists (and first of all, Peirce) had that vision that what
applies to investigation in general applies to ethical investigation too, and
that in order to progress, there is but one method: the scientific method, all
the others (tenacity, authority, a priori) being doomed to fail . Peirce, for
his part, always considered that Kant, whom he “more than admired” (5. 525) was but a “somewhat confused
pragmatist”(5.412); and he described his own development as that of “a pure
Kantian” who was simply forced “by successive steps “ into Pragmaticism. It is
also Kant, whom Putnam refers too, in several occasions, and for example, in
opposing the Schuhlbegriff or
scholastic concept of philosophy with its cosmological concept orWeltbegriff: “
But
“What should I do?” can be understood in two different ways: as asserting, as
Kant does, the primacy of pratical reason, or as asserting the primacy of the
question of “life” over the question of knowledge.
Here
are two possible readings of the possible relations between philosophy and
ethics, which, as,we hope, has appeared, are both present in what I take also,
following Richard Robin, “the two” major interpretations of pragmatism (James’s
and Peirce’s). For his part, Peirce was always instinctively suspicious of what
might turn into some form or other of idolatry of life, convinced as he was,
that if pragmatism was the spiritual heir of kantianism, it was because Kant,
better than anyone else,had been able to detect “the inseparable link which
exists between rational knowledge and rational finality”(5. 412) and that the
main end of inquiry remained the search of truth and the discovery of what is
real. Therefore he depicted his whole philosophical enterprise as growing “out
of a contrite fallibilism, combined with a high faith in the reality of knowledge,
and an intense desire to find things out”(1.14). His reluctance towards
“applying” epistemology to ethics is, indeed, the direct consequence (as is the
case with Kant), of his conviction of the primacy
of ethics. This is highlighted in his conception of philosophy and
rationality, in which one may find all such important epistemological virtues
as: betting on rationality rather than on cynicism, modesty, professionalism,
discussion, the values of argumentation, intellectual exchange, rather than visionary
outbursts, cult of individual or romantical unbound subjectivity, literary
conversation: on the contrary, one should always remain close to the laboratory
(which is the exact opposite of scientism and dogmatism, but the promotion of
the hypothetical, the fallible, the experimental, hence of the irreducible
indeterminacy which necessarily acompanies all thinking activity.
Maybe one may critize Peirce for having paid less attention (contrary to Dewey or Rorty, for example) to
the political consequences of pragmatism; or one may simply regret that the
exile to which he was condemned did not give him the occasion to prove the
contrary. Yet, As Robert Musil often pointed out, the wisdom and lucidity one
can get from intellecutal work can also lead to the incapacity to decide,
namely to the “Cacanian” principle according to which it is wiser not to decide
than to risk to take a decision which is at any rate too delicate to be really
necessary: Now, whatever may be his taste for false exaltations and hasty,
thoughtless and adventurous decisions, it is doubtful that a philosopher, no
more no less thantany other man should not have, some time or other, to meet
history, and to be obliged to take up a stand.
It is possible that Peirce’s disgust for
nominalistic individualism and false trancendencies drew him too far in that
direction of forgetting the necessary engagement of the philosopher within the polis. But this may also bee understood in another fashion,
namely, the conviction that the best way to promote democracy is and remains to
trust the search of truth and to count on the value of knowledge and
rationality: To propose to embrace irrationalism — as some neo-pragmatists do—
and to liquidate such old-fashioned
values as critical or communicative rationality, truth or humanity, is indeed a strange way of conceiving
progress, since it amounts to suppress,
without any real or efficient counterpart, the last protection that is left to
the weakest.
This
is why if some sense may be given to the idea of “philsophy and the moral
life”, it should rather be illustrated along such lines as the key idea,
present in pragmatism, and in Peirce in particular, that it is through
knowledge that philosophy contributes to the “melioration” of human condition,
and at the same time, that there is no difference in thinking that should not
imply a difference in action: hence there is always a link between epsitemology
and ethics, and together with this idea the view that one should indeed pass
from epistemology to ethics, which, in the end, is primary. But how should such
a passége be realized? It is doubtful that mere conversational practice would
suffice. James himself noted that it is not because one gives up the doctrine
of objective certainty that one should give up searching or hoping to find
truth itself. If that is the case, the best way to retain the pragmatist
heritage while avoiding some of its undesirable “consequences” would certainely
be to pratice the fallibilist attitude proned by the classical pragmatists, which
is miles away from dogmatic absolutism and sceptical relativism, to stick to an ideal of truth accessible
enough to be still inspired by reality, and not to rush into some hasty
adaptation of knowledge to morals, without a clearer understanding of the links
that may exist between nature and norms.
----------------
Notes
[References
to the Collected Papers of C. S. Peirce (1931-1958), Ch. Hartshorne, P. Weiss, &
A. Burks, eds., Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., (8 vols.) are given
in the text and footnotes as a decimal number, referring to volume and
paragraph.].
[1] Part of it only: among
the other reasons, one might mention at least: 1) a deeper knowledge of the
classical pragmatists, who were often more or less scorned (James, Dewey) or
simply ignored (Peirce), and a considerable amount of valuable scholarship from
the mere standpoint of history of
philosophy. 2. a certain disappointment, especially among those who had
welcomed the analytic trend in philosophy, regarding what they take as an
incapacity to adapt to human (ethical and political) ends its undeniable
achievements in the domain of philosophy of science, mind or language:
pragmatism would be the desirable “middle way”, able to reconcile the two main
trends in contemporary philosophy: the “continentals” more inclined to read
Heidegger, Foucault or Derrida, and the “analytics”, closer to such
philosophers as Quine, Davidson or Fodor.
[2] Richard S. Robin,
“Classical Pragmatism and Pragmatism’s Proof”, in The Rule of Reason, J. Brunning & P. Forster eds.), University
of Toronto Press, Tortonto, Buffalo London, 1997, 139-152, p. 139. Peirce
indeed, kept underlying the necessity of protecting pragmatism from a
“humanistic” or “moralistic” reading. This is why he finally decided to “kiss
his child good-bye and adopt a new word “pragmaticism”,“ugly enough” to be sage
from kidnappers” (5.143-144). Peirce
kept lamenting that the “philosophers of today” (he meant Schiller, but also
James) “should allow a philosophy so instinct with life to become infected with
seeds of death in such notions as that of “the mutability of truth.” (6.485).
[3] Hilary Putnam, in a
conversion with Christian Bouchindhomme, Peut-on
naturaliser la raison? suivi de Entretien avec C. Bouchindomme, (CPNR),
éditions de l’éclat, 1992, p.44sq.
[4] H. Putnam, Realism with a Human face (hereafter
cited as RHF), Harvard University Press, (J. Conant ed.), Cambridge, Mass.,
1990, preface, p.xi.
[5] H. Putnam, The Dewey
lectures, Journal of Philosophy, 91,
9, sept. 1994, 445-517, p. 447, reprinted in The Threefols Cord: Mind, Body and World (TTC), Columbia University Press, 2000, p. 5.
[6] Pragmatism, an Open Question, Blackwell, Oxford,
1995, p.xi.
[7] “Peirce’s Doctrine of
the Normative sciences”, in Studies in the Philosophy of C. S. Peirce, Second Series,
(Richard S Robin & Edaward C. Moore eds.), Amherst: University of
Massachusetts Press, 1964, 271-288.
[8] I have developed some
of the following views in other papers such as “Un pragmatisme conséquent?”,Critique, août-sept.1994, 642-660,
“Peirce on Norms, Evolution and Knowledge”,Transactions
of the C.S. Peirce Society, winter 1997, vol.XXXIII, n°1, 35-58., and in
the last chapter of La pensée-signe:
études sur Peirce, éditions J. Chambon, Nîmes, 1993, p.335-384.
[9] What follows may be
part of the explanation why, although Peirce often stressed the “theoretical
divergences” between his own version of pragmatism and James’s , who pushed it
“to such extremes as must tend to give us pause” (CP, 5.2), he also noticed
that the divergence “for the most part, became evanescent in practice”(5.466).
On parallels between Peirce’s and James’s respective attitudes, cf C. Hookway,
“Logical Principles and philosophical sentiments”, in The Cambridge Companion to William James, (CCWJ), R.A. Putnam
ed.,Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 145-165.
[10] for ex. C. Hookway as
far as Peirce, in particular, is concerned, CCWJ, p. 155. Even if Peirce
qualifies his attitude as such, it does not mean that such an attitude is not
grounded on strong reasons.
[11] see for ex. Jacques
Bouveresse, La rime et la raison,
Paris, Minuit, 1973, p.75sq.
[12] or some photographs
through their pictures. As Simon Blacburn reminds us in the first pages of Being Good: a short introduction to ethics,
Oxford University Press, 2001, where he says that “the “Accidental Napalm
Attack” photo may have done more to
halt the Vietnam war than all the writings of moral philosophers of the time
put together” (p.5-6).
[13] F. Ramsey,The Foundations of Mathematics (R. Braithwaite ed.), New York, Harcourt
Brace, 1931, p. 291-92.
[14] RHF, chap.12: “How not
to solve ethical problems”. As a consequence, Putnam suggests to leave the
problem/solution metaphor and to adopt, instead of a metaphor from science, a
metaphor of law, the metaphor of adjudication.,
p.181.
[15] “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life”,
in The Will to Believe and Other Essays
in Popular Philosophy, Longmans, Green & Co, 1897, 184-215. This is also emphasized by H Putnam & R.A. Putnam , RHF, chap.
16, p. 227-228.
[16] Compare with what F.
Ramsey writes about the duties of mathematicians, philosophers and
archeologists towards their fellow-men.“The Rights and Wrongs of Doing Nothing
to Improve the Lot of Fellow Men”, in
Notes on Philosophy, Probability and mathematics, (M. C. Gavalotti ed.),
Bibliopolis, Naples, 1991, 291-295.
[17]Reasoning and the Logic of Things (RLT), Harvard University Press, K. Ketner et
H. Putnam eds., 1992, p. 109.
[18] I have developed this in more details in La pensée-signe, p. 368sq.;
cf. also S. Haack, “The First Rule of Reason”, in The First Rule of Reason (op.cit.),
1997, 241-261.
[19] La rime et la raison, op.cit.,
p. 11.
[20] I have also developed
this in “Peirce on Norms, Evolution and Knowledge”, art.cit., p. 41 sq.
[21] R. Robin, art.cit.,
p.275-277.
[22] Although Peirce also
tries to understand the irresistible attraction of norms in terms of evolution.
On this, cf. “Peirce on norms, Evolution and Knowledge”, art.cit., p. 46sq.
[23] op.cit., p. 4
[24] S. Blackburn, op.cit., p. 3. see also R. Robin, art.
cit., p. 276. “the ought” is hypothetical, not categorical or moral (p. 277).
[25] Words and Life (WL), Harvard University Press, Cambridge,
Mass., 1994, p. 152. The italics are mine.
[26] Reason, Truth and History (RTH), Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, 1981.
[27] namely the idea that ethical judgments do
not mirror properties but are purely subjective or emotive attitudes, a direct
consequence of subjectivism (for.ex. J.
Mackie, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong,
Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1977), or emotivism (A.J. Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic, 1936, New York Dover).
[28] compare with Peirce:
“to be is to be represented”; “the real is what signifies something real”.
[29] I have analyzed the
relations between Putnam’s views on ethics and pragmatism in the third chapter
of a book (to appear in the coming months) Hilary
Putnam, l’héritage pragmatiste, Presses Universitaires de France,
collection “Philosophies”.
[30] cf. Putnam’s critique of J. Mackie’s
conception,WL, 156-160.
[31] Renewing Philosophy (RP), Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University
Press, 1992, p. 2.
[32] The Many Faces of Realism (TMFR), Open
Court, La Salle, Illinois, 1988, p. 80sq., and Words and Life,, op.cit.,
p. 160-169.
[33] W3, 276-289.Writings of C. S. Peirce, a chronological edition (W), 1982-, (6
vols.parus), Bloomington, Indiana University Press.
[34] which is also analyzed
by C. Hookway in Truth, Rationality and
Pragmatism, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 2000, p. 236-249: Hookway thinks, in
particular, (and rightly) that one should not underestimate the role played by
sentiment and instinct in Peirce’s account of pratical choice.
[35] I have myself showed
the importance of such themes in Peirce’s insistency on the prevalence of
“survival” over “personal identity”,
perfectly in keeping with his semiotic realism: not only thought, but man itself is a sign,
which means that one is more likely to
understand what his unity consists in, starting not from a first person point
of view (such as a substance or consciousness, or physiological unity) but from
a third person point of view, ie. from the unity of thought, which is nothing
else than a unity of symbolization (7.592-594), hence, not something individual
or private but “a special determination of the generic soul of the family, the
class, the nation, the race to which he belongs…”(7.592). In terms close to
Derek Parfit (Reasons and Persons,
Oxford University Press, 1984), Peirce thus considers that what is important is
not so much identity as survival (cf. (5.313), 4.448; 1.349). cf. C. Tiercelin,
op.cit., p. 254 sq.
[36] I have myself addressed that question and
Putnam’s argument for a somewhat
more “humanized” conception of truth in
“Peut-on donner un visage humain à la vérité sans la défigurer? sur le
pragmatisme de H. Putnam, Revue
Internationale de Philosophie, 1/1999, n°207 (Le pragmatisme), 37-60. This
apparaisal of James does not mean that Putnam accepts James’s theory of truth:
on the contrary, he shows that it leads to “fatal” conclusions. cf. “W. James’s
theory of truth”, CCWJ, 166-185.
[37] RHF, 231. Robert G. Meyers objected to that
interpretation, noting that James wrote
but a single text on ethical matters. cf
“Putnam and the Permanence of Pragmatism”, TCSPS, 1998, vol. XXXIV, n°2,
346-365, and H. Putnam and R. A. Putnam’s answer: “The Real William James: A
Response to Robert Meyers”, ibid.,
366-381.
[38] “The Moral Philosopher
and the Moral Life”, (MP & ML), p. 184.
[39] Hence, as Putnam
rightly observes, the Kantian themes are at least as important in James as the
utilitarian ones. RHF, 218.
[40] “The Dilemma of
Determinism”, p. 147.
[41] Paris, Minuit, 1984, p. 93.