Este artigo parte da afirmaçáo de Hilary Putnam feita no inicio do capItulo 6 -fato e valor do seu livro Razáo, verdade e historia, ou seja, a afirmaçáo de que tem do fato e valor, ao contraio de outras questões filosoficas como as relativas a a linguagem, a epistemologia ou mesmo a metafisica; e do interesse de todas a pessoas. Assim, objetivamos mostrar a posiçáo de Putnam frente a questáo fato e valor tambem conhecida por Sein (ser) e (...) Solen (Dever ser], procurando tecer algumas considerações a respeito do seu ponto de vista, pretendendo, por fim, mostrar que a ideia defendida por este filosofo é a de que náo existe uma separaçáo absoluta entre fato e valor. Para uma melhor compreensáo deste artigo, ele sera dividido em duas partes: Putnam e os defensores da dicotomia fato-valor; Etica, ciencia e os padrões de aceitabilidade racional.  . (shrink)

In several important works in ethics, Hillary Putnam criticizes the traditional fact/value dichotomy, which is based on the Humean question whether ought follows from is. More recently, Putnam even declared the collapse of this dichotomy calling once again for rethinking the last dogma of empiricism, namely the positivist creed that facts are objective and values are subjective. The aim of this work is to reassess Putnam’s main arguments to show the entanglement between facts and values. (...) class='Hi'>Putnam is right in many of his criticisms, but it is not clear also how he avoids reductionist monistic naturalism, which he considers an “inadequate philosophy”. Using his pragmatic pluralism inspired by Wittgenstein, I will try to show that we have reasons to make a distinction between facts and values. (shrink)

Hillary Putnam has famously argued that we can know that we are not brains in a vat because the hypothesis that we are is self-refuting. While Putnam's argument has generated interest primarily as a novel response to skepticism, his original use of the brain in a vat scenario was meant to illustrate a point about the "mind/world relationship." In particular, he intended it to be part of an argument against the coherence of metaphysical realism, and thus to (...) be part of a defense of his conception of truth as idealized rational acceptability. Putnam's conclusions about the scenario are, however, actually out of line with central and plausible aspects of his own account of the relationship between our minds and the world. Reflections on semantics give us no compelling reason to suppose that claims like "I am a brain in a vat" could not turn out to be true. (shrink)

It is a consensus to locate the origin of the reflexive foundations of modern semantics in Frege's work. Since Frege's distinction between two components of meaning (sense and reference), however, semantics has been forced to lead a double life. Among its first receptions, in Russell's famous article (1905), the first unresolved criticism of this solution was that: It is not possible to split semantics into a theory about two classes of objects without their yielding one and the same thing under (...) lower and higher conditions of instantiation (depending on the function used to identify it). But even Russell could not avoid a crisis. It is not possible to reconcile semantic coordination for a set of non-classical extension of instantiation and encoding (possible instances, counterfactual truth values, etc.) while preserving the classical properties of signification. This article covers these moments with a rough diagnosis: modern semantics has a reflexive ceiling. It is unable to model the contingent features of an "object" without oversizing itself to deal with various constraints on that object adapted to various strategies of intensional and modal specification. In order to model idealized conditions of assertability (Putnam), one must filter the sentences that pass Tarskian test using non-sematic parameters – like the parameter of coherence of a scientific paradigm. It cannot keep that model without stopping being semantic. We conclude with a response to attempts to give semantic status to complex scientific reasoning, and a suggestion as to how to locate the philosophical origin of this claim. (shrink)

This brief essay describes the significance of Hillary Putnam's "Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy" for Catholic thinkers who are inspired by Thomas Aquinas.

We highlight the deep ecology movement, inspired on ecological knowledge but mainly on the life-style of the ecological and biological field-worker. Its creator, the Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess, stresses that human and no human beings have, at least, one kind of right in common: namely the ‘right’ to express its own nature, to live and blossom. This idea shows the inspiration from perseverare in suo esse, from Baruch Spinoza’s Ethics. But beyond this Spinozan influence, the striving for expression of one’s (...) own nature is interpreted from the perspective of present evolutionism and endosymbiosis. Even though, scientific knowledge, if necessary, is considered limited. Thus, this movement should be regarded as ecophilosophical rather than ecological, as a kind of sophia orwisdom. In turn, many supporters of conservation biology (following Michael Soulé) associate their science with ecosophy, not encouraging the dichotomy fact/value. Conservation biology axioms such as: evolution in valuable, organism’s diversity is good, premature extinction of species populations is negative, etc., have been inspired on the deep ecology movement. The consideration of the terms biodiversity, evolution or biosphere as thick ethical concepts (following Hillary Putnam), shows this integration of the descriptive and the normative. (shrink)

Emmanuel Levinas was one of the foremost thinkers of the twentieth century. His work has influenced a wide range of intellectuals, from French thinkers such as Maurice Blanchot, Jacques Derrida, Luce Irigaray and Jean-Luc Marion, to American philosophers Stanley Cavell and Hillary Putnam. This set will be a useful resource for scholars working in the fields of literary theory, philosophy, Jewish studies, religion, political science and rhetoric. Titles also available in this series include, _Karl Popper_, and the forthcoming (...) titles _Edmund Husserl_ and _Gottlob Frege_. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:388 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Beyond the Edge of Certainty: Essays in Contemporary Science and Philosophy. Edited with an Introduction by Robert G. Colodny. (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1965.) This is the second volume of lectures on various current topics in the philosophy of the physical, biological, and social sciences which has been published under the auspices of the Center for Philosophy of Science at the University of (...) Pittsburg. Volume I, Frontiers o] Science and Philosophy, also edited by Professor Colodny, appeared in 1962. Five of the seven lectures contained in this volume treat topics which fall within the philosophy of physics. The persistent student who is without a technical background in either logic or physics will find these for the most part quite readable. Considering this, it is worthy of note that, while the lectures are not of uniform quality in this respect, several problems are treated with sufficient freshness of insight to justify the interest of the philosopher of science as such. Since I cannot discuss all of the lectures, I will restrict my comments, for the most part, to those the significance of which I think I understand best and which deal significantly with some aspect of the history of philosophy. In "Newton's First Law: A Philosopher's Door into Natural Philosophy," Norwood Russell Hanson exhibits what has become a widely accepted analysis of Newton's First Law as a model to be applied to theories in science which must be regarded as, in some sense, true, but which, in principle, are not empirically demonstrable. Briant Ellis, in "The Origin and Nature of Newton's Laws of Motion," deals in a somewhat parallel way with all three of Newton's laws of motion. It is argued that these laws are primarily conceptual in origin. Evidence is marshalled that they were derived from Cartesian physics. That no amount of empirical work could establish or provide support for a principle of natural motion is held by Ellis to be due to the fact that "force" is conceived as something that exists only in order to explain effects. "Since we are at liberty to choose to regard whatever changes or states we please as natural (i.e., as not being effects) it follows that the forces which we should say are operative in nature depend upon the choices we actually make" (65). It would, I think be difficult to show that any one of the points Ellis makes, with the exception of his interesting historical note on the probable origin of Newton's laws of motion, has not previously been made. All, or nearly all, of these points were set forth, at least in outline, for example, by William Werkmeister in A Philosophy o] Science. The approach Ellis makes to his development of the concept of "force," however, is both fresh and incisive and worthy of careful study. In "A Philosopher looks at Quantum Mechanics," Hillary Putnam exhibits the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics of Bohr and Heisenberg, viewed in historical perspective, as the most adequate of several unsatisfactory theories. He finds the locus of the problem to lie in a suitable definition of "measurement." Noting that Heisenberg's definition (improperly) appeals to the macrocosm conceived in terms of classical mechanics, he seeks to clarify some of the issues that must follow the attempt to define measurement within the context of quantum mechanics. Putnam holds the relative sharpness of macroobservables for Bohr and Heisenberg to be an underived assumption of their theory. Since the quantities of which macro-observables are supposed to be averages are not (in quantum mechanics) required always to exist, this assumption cannot be derived from a plausible definition of macro-observables together with a suitable formulation of the laws of quantum mechanics. Moving from Bohr and Heisenberg's conclusion that measurement requires interaction of a system (or part of a system) measured with respect to an outside system, and that macroobservables do not exist unless measured, measurement for quantum mechanics is defined as "an interaction in which a system A (the 'measured' system), which was previously isolated, interacts with a system B (the 'measuring' system) in such a way as to cause a... (shrink)

An attempt was made to show how we can plausibly commit to mathematical realism. For the purpose of illustration, a defence of natural realism for arithmetic was developed that draws upon the American pragmatist’s, Hillary Putnam’s, early and later writings. Natural realism is the idea that truth is recognition-transcendent and knowable. It was suggested that the natural realist should embrace, globally, what N. Tennant has identified as M-realism (Tennant 1997, 160). M-realism is the idea that one rejects bivalence (...) and assents to the recognition-transcendent requirement. It was argued that over-all—for all domains—the natural realist should be a M-realist, with the aim of clarifying the realist debate for arithmetic. (shrink)

The pessimistic induction plays an important role in the contemporary realism/anti-realism debate in philosophy of science. But there is some disagreement about the structure and aim of the argument. And a number of scholars have noted that there is more than one type of PI in the philosophical literature. I review four different versions of the PI. I aim to show that PIs have been appealed to by philosophers of science for a variety of reasons. Even some realists have appealed (...) to a PI. My goal is to advance our understanding of what the various PIs can teach us about science and the threat posed by PIs to scientific realism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:388 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Beyond the Edge of Certainty: Essays in Contemporary Science and Philosophy. Edited with an Introduction by Robert G. Colodny. (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1965.) This is the second volume of lectures on various current topics in the philosophy of the physical, biological, and social sciences which has been published under the auspices of the Center for Philosophy of Science at the University of (...) Pittsburg. Volume I, Frontiers o] Science and Philosophy, also edited by Professor Colodny, appeared in 1962. Five of the seven lectures contained in this volume treat topics which fall within the philosophy of physics. The persistent student who is without a technical background in either logic or physics will find these for the most part quite readable. Considering this, it is worthy of note that, while the lectures are not of uniform quality in this respect, several problems are treated with sufficient freshness of insight to justify the interest of the philosopher of science as such. Since I cannot discuss all of the lectures, I will restrict my comments, for the most part, to those the significance of which I think I understand best and which deal significantly with some aspect of the history of philosophy. In "Newton's First Law: A Philosopher's Door into Natural Philosophy," Norwood Russell Hanson exhibits what has become a widely accepted analysis of Newton's First Law as a model to be applied to theories in science which must be regarded as, in some sense, true, but which, in principle, are not empirically demonstrable. Briant Ellis, in "The Origin and Nature of Newton's Laws of Motion," deals in a somewhat parallel way with all three of Newton's laws of motion. It is argued that these laws are primarily conceptual in origin. Evidence is marshalled that they were derived from Cartesian physics. That no amount of empirical work could establish or provide support for a principle of natural motion is held by Ellis to be due to the fact that "force" is conceived as something that exists only in order to explain effects. "Since we are at liberty to choose to regard whatever changes or states we please as natural (i.e., as not being effects) it follows that the forces which we should say are operative in nature depend upon the choices we actually make" (65). It would, I think be difficult to show that any one of the points Ellis makes, with the exception of his interesting historical note on the probable origin of Newton's laws of motion, has not previously been made. All, or nearly all, of these points were set forth, at least in outline, for example, by William Werkmeister in A Philosophy o] Science. The approach Ellis makes to his development of the concept of "force," however, is both fresh and incisive and worthy of careful study. In "A Philosopher looks at Quantum Mechanics," Hillary Putnam exhibits the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics of Bohr and Heisenberg, viewed in historical perspective, as the most adequate of several unsatisfactory theories. He finds the locus of the problem to lie in a suitable definition of "measurement." Noting that Heisenberg's definition (improperly) appeals to the macrocosm conceived in terms of classical mechanics, he seeks to clarify some of the issues that must follow the attempt to define measurement within the context of quantum mechanics. Putnam holds the relative sharpness of macroobservables for Bohr and Heisenberg to be an underived assumption of their theory. Since the quantities of which macro-observables are supposed to be averages are not (in quantum mechanics) required always to exist, this assumption cannot be derived from a plausible definition of macro-observables together with a suitable formulation of the laws of quantum mechanics. Moving from Bohr and Heisenberg's conclusion that measurement requires interaction of a system (or part of a system) measured with respect to an outside system, and that macroobservables do not exist unless measured, measurement for quantum mechanics is defined as "an interaction in which a system A (the 'measured' system), which was previously isolated, interacts with a system B (the 'measuring' system) in such a way as to cause a... (shrink)

Internalism about mental content is the view that microphysical duplicates must be mental duplicates as well. This dissertation develops and defends the idea that only a strong version of internalism is compatible with our commonsense commitment to mental causation. ;Chapter one defends a novel necessary condition on a property's being causally efficacious---viz., that any property F that is efficacious with respect to event E cannot be instantiated in virtue of any property G that is itself ceteris paribus sufficient for E---and (...) shows that that necessary condition vindicates the idea that externalism is incompatible with our commonsense commitment to mental causation. ;The internalist's core intuition is that only intrinsic properties can be causally efficacious. Chapter two defends that intuition from the common externalist response that extrinsic properties abound. ;A popular "Middle Way" between externalism and internalism holds that although ordinary, "folk-psychological" contents of prepositional attitudes are extrinsic, there exists some other non-folk-psychological kind of content that is intrinsic. Chapter three argues that Jerry Fodor's influential argument for the Middle Way is incoherent. ;Chapter four identifies a weak but popular grade of internalism, endorsed by John Searle among others, and argues that it is untenable. ;The preceding defense of internalism can be believed only if there is something wrong with the canonical arguments for externalism developed by Hillary Putnam, Tyler Burge, and Saul Kripke. My postscript says what I think is wrong with the canonical externalist arguments: they assume the nonexistence of propositions that are truth-evaluable only relative to particular persons, places, or times; while I argue that our commonsense commitment to mental causation requires at least some such "indexical propositions". (shrink)

At present, ‘naturalism’ is arguably the dominant trend in both Anglo-American and European philosophy. Owing to the influence of the works of W.V.O. Quine, Wilfred Sellars, and Hillary Putnam, among others, naturalism both as a methodological and ontological position has become one of the mainstays of contemporary analytic approaches to knowledge, mind and ethics. From the early 1990s onward, European philosophy in the English-speaking world has been witnessing a turn from the philosophies of the subjects of phenomenology, hermeneutics (...) and existentialism and a revival of a certain kind of vitalism, whether Bergsonian or Nietzschean, and also of a certain kind of materialism that is close in spirit to Spinoza’s _Ethics_ and to the naturalism and monism of the early Ionian thinkers. This book comprises essays written by experts in both the European and the Anglo-American traditions such as John Sallis, David Papineau, David Cerbone, Dan Zahavi, Paul Patton, Bernhard Weiss, Jack Reynolds and Benedict Smith, who explore the limit of naturalism and the debate between naturalism and phenomenology. This book also considers the relation between Deleuze’s philosophy and naturalism as well as the critique of phenomenology by speculative realism. This book was originally published as a special issue of the _International Journal of Philosophical Studies. _. (shrink)

Where has the Western attraction to the study and practice of shamanic techniques brought us? Where might it take us? In what ways have our Western biases and philosophical underpinnings influenced and changed how shamanism is practiced, both in the West and in the traditional cultures out of which they emerged? Is it time to stop using the umbrella term “shamanism” to refer to such diverse cross-cultural practices? What are our responsibilities, both as researchers and as spiritual seekers? In this (...) conversation, researcher-authors Stephan Beyer, Stanley Krippner, and Hillary S. Webb discuss their work in field and consider some of the ramifications of the Western world's intellectual and spiritual fascination with shamanic practices. Special attention is paid to the language used to describe these techniques and their practitioners, the developing relationship between researchers and cultural participants, and the ethical implications of merging what are often very distinct worldviews. (shrink)

Michela Bella & Anna Boncompagni – This conversation will focus on your role and your position with respect to pragmatism; those who you consider allies and enemies in the field; and then finally your ideas about the future of philosophy and the future of pragmatism. You worked with famous philosophers like Carnap, Reichenbach and many others. But let us start from the beginning. Hilary Putnam – My alma mater was the University of Pennsylvania. The first teacher who really influenced (...) me there... (shrink)

The following interview took place between Jacques Bouveresse and Hilary Putnam on May 11, 2001 in Paris at the Collège de France. Sandra Laugier was present, preserved the transcription, and proposed that we publish the text here. It was translated into English by Marie Kerguelen Feldblyum LeBlevennec and lightly edited by Jacques Bouveresse, Juliet Floyd, and Sandra Laugier. Themes covered in the interview include the question of Wittgenstein’s importance in contemporary philosophy, Putnam’s development with respect to realism, especially (...) in philosophy of mathematics, and the differences and motivations for realism in mathematics, physics, and ethics. The editors thank Marie Kerguelen Feldblyum LeBlevennec for her translation, and Jacques Bouveresse, Mario De Caro, and Sandra Laugier for permission to publish this transcription. (shrink)

In 1922 Skolem delivered an address before the Fifth Congress of Scandinavian Mathematicians in which he pointed out what he called a "relativity of set-theoretic notions". This "relativity" has frequently been regarded as paradoxical; but today, although one hears the expression "the Lowenheim-Skolem Paradox", it seems to be thought of as only an apparent paradox, something the cognoscenti enjoy but are not seriously troubled by. Thus van Heijenoort writes, "The existence of such a 'relativity' is sometimes referred to as the (...) Lowenheim-Skolem Paradox. (shrink)

In this festschrift for the eminent philosopher Hilary Putnam, a team of distinguished philosophers write on a broad range of topics and thus reflect the remarkably fertile and provocative research of Putnam himself. The volume is not merely a celebration of a man, but also a report on the state of philosophy in a number of significant areas. The essays fall naturally into three groups: a central core on the theme of conventionality and content in the philosophy of (...) mind, language, and science, and two smaller sections on the relationship of ethics and language, and on the philosophy of logic and aesthetics.In this festschrift for the eminent philosopher Hilary Putnam, a team of distinguished philosophers write on a broad range of topics and thus reflect the remarkably fertile and provocative research of Putnam himself. The volume is not merely a celebration of a man, but also a report on the state of philosophy in a number of significant areas. The essays fall naturally into three groups: a central core on the theme of conventionality and content in the philosophy of mind, language, and science, and two smaller sections on the relationship of ethics and language, and on the philosophy of logic and aesthetics. (shrink)

Judith Butler’s influential work in feminist theory is significant for its insight that sexist discourse in popular culture affects the agency and consciousness of individuals, but offers an inadequate account of how such discourse might be said to touch, shape, or affect selves. Supplementing Butler’s account of signification with a Deweyan pragmatic account of meaning-making and selective emphasis enables a consistent account of the relationship between discourse and subjectivity with a robust conception of the bodily organism. An analysis of the (...) popular discourse surrounding Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Presidential campaign demonstrates why this hybrid pragmatic/poststructuralist account is necessary. (shrink)

This article focuses on a theoretical account integrating classic and recent findings on the communication of emotions across cultures: a dialect theory of emotion. Dialect theory uses a linguistic metaphor to argue emotion is a universal language with subtly different dialects. As in verbal language, it is more challenging to understand someone speaking a different dialect—which fits with empirical support for an in-group advantage, whereby individuals are more accurate judging emotional expressions from their own cultural group versus foreign groups. Dialect (...) theory has sparked controversy with its implications for dominant theories about cross-cultural differences in emotion. This article reviews the theory, its mounting body of evidence, evidence for alternative accounts, and practical implications for multicultural societies. (shrink)

O artigo visa analisar, em linhas gerais, a arqueologia do sujeito operada por Alain de Libera, o que será feito pela concentração no estudo de duas teses fundamentais: Descartes chegou ao sujeito menos por reflexão e mais por refração, em seu debate com Hobbes e Regius, ao tentar escapar da redução do indivíduo à vida corporal e, portanto, à passividade; Tomás de Aquino e Pedro de João Olivi teriam sido os responsáveis por dar certo acabamento a uma temática elaborada desde (...) a Patrística, eminentemente por Agostinho de Hipona, que teria formulado um esquema compreensivo do eu como suporte e como agente. This article aims to analyze the fundamentals of Alain de Libera’s archeology of the subject. Two central thesis will be investigated here: Descartes arrived at his theory of the subject in a controversy with Hobbes and Regius, in order to avoid the reduction of the individual to bodily life and passivity; Thomas Aquinas and Peter John Olivi were responsible for a mature approach to the theme of the subject, which had been elaborated by Patristic authors, eminently by Augustine of Hippo, who formulated a comprehensive scheme of the self as support and agent. (shrink)

ai Diminished gaze fixation is one of the core features of autism and has been proposed to be associated with abnormalities in the neural circuitry of affect. We tested this hypothesis in two separate studies using eye tracking while measuring functional brain activity during facial discrimination tasks in individuals with autism and in typically developing individuals. Activation in the fusiform gyrus and amygdala was strongly and positively correlated with the time spent fixating the eyes in the autistic group in both (...) studies, suggesting that diminished gaze fixation may account for the fusiform hypoactivation to faces commonly reported in autism. In addition, variation in eye fixation within autistic individuals was strongly and positively associated with amygdala activation across both studies, suggesting a heightened emotional response associated with gaze fixation in autism. (shrink)

Todo ahora es diferente, la vida ha cambiado de manera inminente y casi sin que nos demos cuenta de ello. Se ha dejado de lado la importancia de tantas cosas, al parecer vivimos en una clase de “modo automático”, ya no surgen preguntas filosóficas, ya no hay interés en el porqué de las cosas, no hay curiosidad dentro de nosotros; ¿Qué está pasándole a la sociedad?, acaso es que hemos perdido una parte de ser humano que jamás volverá, la sensibilidad, (...) el deseo de vivir, la felicidad, la importancia del cuerpo, del arte, la cultura, el amor, el conocimiento, la vocación, ¿todo esto ya ha sido reemplazado? creemos que sí.Avanzamos a zancadas enormes, la vida está corriendo muy aprisa, la ciencia y la tecnología parecen encerrarnos en una burbuja invisible, de la cual es imposible escapar, todos y cada uno de nosotros estamos dentro de ella.Las nuevas tecnologías nos han transformado en lo que Guy Deboard llama ‘La sociedad del espectáculo’ y que más adelante Mario Vargas Llosa vuelve a retomar en ‘la civilización del espectáculo’; las redes sociales han generado en nosotros actitudes de desinterés, pérdida de identidad, nos hemos convertido, claramente, en una sociedad en la que se premia a los mejores civiles en base al éxito que tienen en sus redes, la influencia que tienen ante los demás; hemos perdido la importancia de la intelectualidad, los saberes contenidos en nosotros, ya no almacenamos nada, todo se ha vuelto desechable, y tal parece que vivimos en una sociedad desechable también, que no se preocupa por valorar, cuidar, recompensar las buena acciones; se premia a un futbolista de la misma manera que se premia a un intelectual del premio nobel, y esto claramente es indignante. En el presente trabajo pretendemos dar a conocer, ampliar y relacionar la ‘civilización’ del espectáculo y la ‘sociedad’ del espectáculo en las redes sociales, y cómo esto, sin duda, genera en nosotros conflictos, tanto individuales como colectivos. (shrink)

Ethnographic interviews were conducted with 28 pit bull "owners" to explore the sociological experience of having a dog with a negative image. Results indicate that the vast majority of respondents felt that these dogs were stigmatized because of their breed. Respondents made this conclusion because friends, family, and strangers were apprehensive in the presence of their dogs and because they made accusations about the breed's viciousness and lack of predictability. In the face of this stigma, respondents resorted to using a (...) variety of interactional strategies to lessen the impact of this perception or prevent it from occurring. These strategies included passing their dogs as breeds other than pit bulls, denying that their behavior is biologically determined, debunking adverse media coverage, using humor, emphasizing counter-stereotypical behavior, avoiding stereotypical equipment or accessories, taking preventive measures, or becoming breed ambassadors. (shrink)

Teaching for social justice requires an ability to address sensitive issues such as racism and sexism so that students can gain critical consciousness of these pervasive social realities. However, the empirical literature thus far provides minimal exploration of the factors teachers consider in deciding how to address these issues. This study explores this question through ethnographic case studies of two urban, 11th grade U.S. History classrooms. Differing classroom racial demographics and teacher instructional goals resulted in two distinct pedagogical approaches to (...) social justice teaching. Despite differences in class makeup and teaching approach, students in both classrooms developed intellectual confidence and critical citizenship skills related to their growing sociopolitical awareness. (shrink)

Many of Dworkin’s interlocutors saw his ‘one-system view’, according to which law is a branch of morality, as a radical shift. I argue that it is better seen as a different way of expressing his longstanding view that legal theory is an inherently normative endeavor. Dworkin emphasizes that fact and value are separate domains, and one cannot ground claims of one sort in the other domain. On this view, legal philosophy can only answer questions from within either domain. We cannot (...) ask metaphysical questions about which domain law ‘properly’ belongs in; these would be archimedean, and Dworkin has long argued against archimedeanism. The one-system view, then, is best understood as an invitation to join Dworkin in asking moral questions from within the domain of value. Finally, I argue that Dworkin’s view can be understood as a version of ‘eliminativism’, a growing trend in legal philosophy. (shrink)

About this book Hilary Whitehall Putnam was one of the leading philosophers of the second half of the 20th century. As student of Rudolph Carnap's and Hans Reichenbach's, he went on to become not only a major figure in North American analytic philosophy, who made significant contributions to the philosophy of mind, language, mathematics, and physics but also to the disciplines of logic, number theory, and computer science. He passed away on March 13, 2016. The present volume is a (...) memorial to his extraordinary intellectual contributions, honoring his contributions as a philosopher, a thinker, and a public intellectual. It features essays by an international team of leading philosophers, covering all aspects of Hilary Putnam's philosophy from his work in ethics and the history of philosophy to his contributions to the philosophy of science, logic, and mathematics. Each essay is an original contribution. -/- Author information James Conant, Univ. of Chicago/Univ. of Leipzig, USA/Germany; Sanjit Chakraborty, IISER Kolkata/VIT-AP University, India. (shrink)