A. Metaphysical realism and conceptual relativity

Hilary Putnam does not think that metaphysical realism is false. Rather, he thinks it is unintelligible,Footnote ¹⁶ and he thinks this is so because he believes that it makes no sense to claim to know reality as it is “in itself.”Footnote ¹⁷ The reason this makes no sense is that “we have no access to unconceptualized reality.”Footnote ¹⁸ Furthermore, attempts to get a precise or clear formulation of metaphysical realism do not succeed, for when we try to do so, such formulations “become compatible with strong forms of ‘antirealism.’ ”Footnote ¹⁹ Thus, they do not succeed “because there is no real content there to be captured.”Footnote ²⁰

Putnam's overall strategy in dealing with metaphysical realism is one of trying to provide a reductio ad absurdum by showing that when applied to various issues metaphysical realism leads to antinomies. Indeed, his bottom-line position is a version of conceptual relativism that is a mitigated form of Kantianism. Putnam writes:

Putnam's picture of truth as nothing more than idealized rational acceptability—as well as his adjustmentsFootnote ²² to this picture—will be considered later, but for now, we need to concentrate on his conceptual relativism. Putnam ultimately holds that referring to something is only accomplished internally through a system of practices—that is, a conceptual scheme. It is only within a system of practices that a reference is fixed or an object described.Footnote ²³ The ability to use signs in the right ways in the right circumstances consists in following the practices of a community of users. For example, using “horse” but not “cat” to refer to horses, or saying “There is a brown bear” but not “There is a bearish brown,” is only possible and situationally appropriate within a conceptual scheme. Further, to employ an exampleFootnote ²⁴ Putnam often uses to illustrate his conceptual relativity,Footnote ²⁵ consider a world with these objects: x₁; x₂; and x₃. Do three objects exist in this world or do seven (x₁; x₂; x₃; x₁ + x₂; x₁ + x₃; x₂ + x₃; x₁ + x₂ + x₃) exist? For Putnam, such a question is, apart from a system of practices regarding the use of the word “exist,” silly. He writes:

Reality itself does not fix the reference to any term, even terms such as “reality” and “exist.” There are no metaphysically privileged references or descriptions. All references and descriptions are context-sensitive and interest-relative. They occur only in a given human situation and relative to our aims or goals. As Putnam states in his Carus Lectures, “the trail of the human serpent is over all.”Footnote ²⁷

Accordingly, the problem of how mind or language “hooks on to the world,” which is how Putnam describes the problem of intentionality, only makes sense for him within a system of practices.Footnote ²⁸ It is not that one appeals to the intentional character of our signs or concepts to explain how it is that our practices are able to refer to or describe some independently existing reality. Indeed, Putnam thinks such a view is part of what he calls the “magical theory of reference,” where “noetic rays” connect signs to referents.Footnote ²⁹ Rather, our practices are fundamental.Footnote ³⁰ They are what make talk about such things as “reference” and “reality” intelligible in the first place. Thus, the question of how thought or language hooks on to the world, if understood as some underlying and transcendent metaphysical problem, is not genuine and is simply something we should get over.

Despite some of his own formulations of his position, Putnam does not hold that references, descriptions, and quantifications are all merely different ways of providing form or structure to an independently existing reality. Putnam rejects the cookie-cutter metaphor in which our conceptual contribution gives form or structure to the “dough,” the independently existing reality. The cookie-cutter metaphor assumes that, apart from our conceptual schemes, we can speak of the dough that “exists,” but this is the very thing that Putnam's conceptual relativity denies. “One person's ‘existence’ claim may be another person's something else.”Footnote ³¹ We not only cannot say what exists or what the facts are independent of our conceptual choices, we cannot even speak of a reality to which we give form or structure. As I have noted, for Putnam our conceptual choices or practices are fundamental.

Perhaps the best statement, then, of what Putnam takes to be the central and basic problem with metaphysical realism is as follows:

There is no way to understand reference as pertaining to “reality” if that term means something that is transtheoretic/transconceptual/translinguistic.Footnote ³³

Putnam does not hold, however, that one cannot be a realist; indeed, he differentiates himself from what he calls Richard Rorty's “extreme linguistic idealism which teeters on the edge of solipsism.”Footnote ³⁴ But on Putnam's view, one must be a realist who understands that referring to realities that are what they are independent of the practices that constitute our conceptual schemes simply makes no sense.Footnote ³⁵ Ultimately, it is Putnam's aim to show how it is possible to develop a “deliberate naïveté” or return to what William James called “natural realism.”Footnote ³⁶ Putnam understands this view as common-sense realismFootnote ³⁷ and as being part of Ludwig Wittgenstein's view that ordinary language provides a safe-haven from the raging conflicts over scientific and ontological commitments. As a result, Putnam thinks, contrary to Rorty, that there is a metaphysically innocent way of saying that our words represent things outside themselves.Footnote ³⁸ Yet, for Putnam, the journey from “the familiar to the familiar,”Footnote ³⁹ which he regards as the true path of philosophy, still involves conceptual relativity, and it requires that we understand the meaning of “truth” in a manner that in no way involves a commitment to metaphysical realism.

B. Conceptual relativity and getting it right

Putnam forthrightly states that “conceptual relativity … holds that the question as to which … ways of using ‘exist’ (and ‘individual,’ ‘object,’ etc.) is right is one that the meanings of the words in natural language, that is the language that we all speak and cannot avoid speaking every day, simply leave open.”Footnote ⁴⁰ Such conceptual relativity does indeed mean that the right way of using terms is a matter of convention. Yet this is not mere convention. When it comes to characterizing our knowledge of what is the situationally appropriate use of a term, it would be a mistake to see Putnam as claiming that we can analytically discern the factual from the conventional. Rather, what is factual is relative to certain alternatives, and what is conventional is relative to certain others—and these alternatives change. There are no unadulterated factual or conventional components of our knowledge.Footnote ⁴¹ Putnam also understands “convention” to be a set of practices that are a response to problems that require a solution. The alternatives arise because of the problems. Just as the problems we face can vary—and thus the alternatives as well—the contrast in our account of what is factual and what is conventional in our knowledge can vary. But the aim of our conventions remains one of meeting some difficulty or fulfilling some goal. Just as the convention to drive on the right-hand side of the road in the United States and the convention to drive on the left in the United Kingdom are solutions to a coordination problem, so are the conventions that determine what is the appropriate use of terms. Nevertheless, this does not mean for Putnam that it is necessary to deny “that truth genuinely depends on the behavior of things distant from the speaker…. [Still, it is necessary to acknowledge that] the nature of the dependence changes as the kinds of language games we invent change.”Footnote ⁴² Indeed, he claims that

For Putnam there is, then, a notion of truth, or, as he prefers, of “getting it right,” that can be used to protect knowledge from the threats of extreme skepticism and relativism.

Putnam holds that just as Quine showed that the whole idea of classifying every statement as either “factual” or “conventional” is a hopeless confusion,Footnote ⁴⁴ the same holds true for the fact/value dichotomy. Values are as much a part of the fabric of “facts” as conventions are, and they are just as ineradicable. It is impossible to determine what the facts are apart from an appeal to epistemic values. There is no way of telling what the facts are or what is true apart from such values as coherence, simplicity, predictive efficacy, preservation of past doctrines, beauty, naturalness, and so on.Footnote ⁴⁵ Our sense-experience does not provide us with some immediate access to reality but rather only becomes informative through our employment of conceptual schemes, and since these schemes are themselves practices that we adopt in order to find solutions to problems, they already carry these values with them. These values are presupposed by the very possibility of our learning from experience and acting in the ways in which we do. As Putnam states:

Thus, the fundamental question is not “How do we find values in a world of facts?” Rather, it is “How do we find facts in a world of values?”Footnote ⁴⁷

It is important to understand, however, that Putnam is not claiming to offer merely an instrumental justification of these epistemic values. Instead, the very contention that we will, on the whole, come closer to truth about the world by choosing theories that exhibit these epistemic values than we would by simply relying, for example, on the authority of some tradition is itself guided by these values. Putnam admits that this is circular justification, but he thinks that we should make the most of it. To say that these epistemic values enable us to more correctly describe the world than any alternative set of epistemic values “is something we see through the lenses of those very values. It does not mean that those values admit an ‘external’ justification.”Footnote ⁴⁸ Those values are part of the practices by which we determine what is rational or warranted, and this is where the search for justification ends.

Of course, Putnam is arguing that we need to free ourselves from our fixation with a powerful belief—namely, the idea that objectivity rests fundamentally on a correspondence with some metaphysical reality. To counter this picture of objectivity and to help us overcome our craving for some sort of ontological resting point, he notes Quine's argument that mathematics would be no less successful if we did not interact with the abstract entities some philosophers posit to account for its success.Footnote ⁴⁹ Putnam claims that the justification for accepting the truth of set theory rests not on its correspondence with some metaphysical reality but in its indispensability to mathematics, and since mathematics is one of the paradigms of knowledge, metaphysical worries about the existence of sets do not carry much weight. Thus, Putnam wants us to see that when the chips are down, what we need in order to continue our practices trumps the ontological concerns of “first philosophy.” Justification fundamentally amounts to continuing the practices that allow us to solve our problems.

If we can only come to see that practice is primary in philosophy,Footnote ⁵⁰ then this realization will in turn help us to understand objectivity. As Putnam clearly states,

Once we free ourselves from our craving for an objectivity that requires correspondence to metaphysical objects, then we can come to see the indispensable role that epistemic values play in our pursuit of the truth.

Putnam does differentiate ethical values from epistemic ones, but both types of values are part of the set of practices by which we determine what is “objective.” According to what Putnam calls “the pragmatist enlightenment,”Footnote ⁵² ethical values are part of the ways in which humans deal with problematic situations. These values are not concerned with some special problem that exists in splendid isolation apart from the rest of life's problems. Rather,

Thus, ethical values are for Putnam part of the process of inquiry, but he means “inquiry” in the widest sense of the term—namely, human dealings with problematical situations. Therefore, it is in the practices that constitute inquiry in this broad sense that we find ethical as well as epistemic values.

The mutual interpenetration of facts and ethical values is shown, Putnam notes, in how many of our experiences are entangled with thick ethical concepts. For example, such concepts as “cruel,” “brave,” “generous,” “elegant,” “skillful,” “weak,” “vulgar,” and so on are counterexamples to the fact/value dichotomy. He argues that we cannot successfully divide their meaning into descriptive and prescriptive components. If we try, for example, to provide the “descriptive meaning component” of “cruel” without using “cruel” or a synonym, we find that we cannot do so.Footnote ⁵⁴ Alternatively, if we think that “brave” simply means “not afraid to risk life and limb,” then we would not be able to understand the distinction between foolhardiness and bravery.Footnote ⁵⁵ If we will but look to our actual experiences and not the world of sense data we inherited from the British empiricists, then we will find that value and normativity permeate our experiences.

In answer to the question of whether we make or discover values, Putnam also follows what he understands as John Dewey's view. Putnam states, “We make ways of dealing with problematical situations and we discover which ones are better and which worse.”Footnote ⁵⁶ Understanding which ways are better and which ways are worse is not, however, a matter of simply consulting our experience for Putnam. Though our experience is not “neutral” and comes to us “screaming with values,”Footnote ⁵⁷ it would be an error to suppose “that merely being valued, as a matter of experiential fact, suffices to make something valuable.”Footnote ⁵⁸ Putnam writes:

Putnam is aware, however, that with this response, he must now answer the further question: What are the criteria by which we decide that some valuations are warranted and some are unwarranted? Moreover, he is aware that he must do so in ways that do not require him to reintroduce metaphysical realism.

C. Idealized rational acceptability and the democratization of inquiry

Putnam continues to follow what he understands as Dewey's view and distinguishes three parts of Dewey's answer to the question of what warrants our valuations.Footnote ⁶⁰

First, it should be realized that we are never in a position of having to justify how we reason from an “is” to a most basic “ought,” because in judging the outcome of an inquiry we never come to it simply having a stock of factual judgments and no value judgments. We always bring many valuations that are not the specific object of dispute to bear on our judgment of the outcome of the inquiry. Warranting our valuations is like rebuilding a wooden ship at sea one plank at a time.Footnote ⁶¹ We warrant our valuations by showing their ability to withstand criticism that arises from problems encountered, not by comparing them (either singly or wholly) to some metaphysical reality.Footnote ⁶² The process of warranting is not free from the values that are inherent in the practices by which we have learned to solve our problems.

Second, the authority of philosophy to judge the process of warranting valuations (that is, the authority of “criticism of criticism”) does not come from some store of philosophical knowledge or methods that provide a criterion or set of criteria. There is no appeal to metaphysical realities that provide standards for judging our valuations, no special access to what does and does not warrant our valuations. The authority philosophy does have, however, is the authority of intelligence.

Third, what the authority of intelligence amounts to is what we have learnedFootnote ⁶³ about inquiry from the conduct of inquiry in general, and this applies to value inquiry in particular.Footnote ⁶⁴ What we have learned is to make full use of human intelligence, and this in turn establishes the makeup that inquiry must have if it is to determine what valuations are warranted. Thus, one warrants valuations by engaging in inquiry that meets the set of criteria that are the precondition for the full application of human intelligence.

According to Putnam, to meet the criteria for the full employment of human intelligence, inquiry

1. (1) must be a cooperative activity and not done in isolation. It must involve working together to actively intervene with and manipulate the environment in order to form and test ideas. This in turn involves trying different solutions to problems or at least considering ways of solving problems others have tried and reflecting on the consequences;

2. (2) must treat its judgments as fallible—as open to being revised or falsified;

3. (3) must respect autonomy, symmetric reciprocity, and follow principles that are much akin to those that characterize Jürgen Habermas's “discourse ethics.” These principles are:

   1. (a) communicating honestly and authentically, trying to win by the force of the better argument and not by manipulation or involvement in relations of hierarchies of dependence;

   2. (b) not excluding persons affected by any proposed action from participating in the discussion;

   3. (c) not preventing the consideration of any proposal or the expression of any person's attitudes, wishes, or needs;

   4. (d) neither assuming there will be no disputes over which valuations are warranted nor trying to eliminate all such disputes;

   5. (e) keeping the communication going by not allowing coercion or violence or total refusal to discuss; and

4. (4) must insist on applying the criteria noted in (1)–(3) to more and more institutions and relationships.Footnote ⁶⁵

For Putnam, as well as for Habermas, these criteria provide an account of idealized inquiry or rational acceptability that we have learned from the development of science, and thus they constitute the modern conception of rationality. Since facts and values are interdependent and interpenetrating, these criteria show us how to proceed in determining whether our judgments, be they of “fact” or of “value,” are warranted. Nonetheless, the criteria do so without any appeal to metaphysical realities. They are, rather, the norms that we have learned from our practices. Our ability to apply intelligence fully to solving human problems presupposes these norms.

It should be emphasized that Putnam's understanding of idealized rational acceptability differs from that of Habermas in two significant ways. First, Putnam does not, as he once did, regard truth as being defined as warranted assertibility under ideal conditions. He thinks that it is possible for the truth about some subject matter not to be verifiable even under such conditions.Footnote ⁶⁶ Putnam comes to this realization, however, not from any acceptance of some metaphysical definition of truth (in fact, he does not think a definition of truth is necessary) but rather from an understanding of the practices of science and common sense. He finds such a contingent relationship between truth and warranted assertibility “deeply imbedded in the world views of both science and common sense.”Footnote ⁶⁷ Yet Putnam is also anxious to combat the idea “that truth can always transcend warranted assertibility under ideal (or good enough) conditions.”Footnote ⁶⁸ He holds that idea to be as illicitly metaphysical as the ideas of metaphysical realism and insists, “Truth cannot be so radically non-epistemic.”Footnote ⁶⁹ Thus, he does not accept the idea that the norms that characterize idealized rational acceptability are sufficient to determine the truth in every case, but he does think that these norms suffice when talking of familiar objects such as furniture in a room or when dealing with the subject matter of ethics and law. He writes:

For Putnam, truth in ethics and law does not transcend warranted assertibility under ideal (or “good enough”) conditions.

Still, if the norms that characterize these ideal conditions are to work in ethics and law in determining (as well as we as fallible and limited human beings can expect) what is true, then another perspective is needed. This involves the second way in which Putnam's understanding of idealized rational acceptability differs from Habermas's understanding—namely, in Putnam's employment of an Aristotelian perspective when it comes to understanding these norms. Putnam states that “in ethics we need both Aristotelian and Kantian insights.”Footnote ⁷¹ As a result, there is for Putnam neither a norm/value nor a reason/inclination dichotomy. He argues that it is impossible to understand the norms of idealized inquiry apart from valuations. The “‘maxims’ and ‘laws’ that we impose upon ourselves by universalizing them, themselves contain value terms, in particular the so-called ‘thick ethical words’ … such as ‘kind,’ ‘cruel,’ ‘impertinent,’ ‘sensitive,’ ‘insensitive,’ and so on.”Footnote ⁷² These terms are not neutral descriptions of mere natural psychological impulses but are a part of our attempts to achieve—and have our lives express—the goods, virtues, and intellectual skills that we take to be constitutive of human flourishing. These terms are the lenses of value concepts that give idealized inquiry a point. Accordingly, we need to see the entire process of inquiry as functioning within the context of the development of human capabilities.

Thus, Putnam holds, contrary to Habermas, that our value judgments regarding goods and virtues are capable of being warranted. They must not be treated in a noncognitive manner if the norms of idealized inquiry are not to be empty. We need to employ the value concepts that are generated from our practices that make up the human activities of meeting opportunities and solving problems:

When it comes to making value judgments regarding the issues and problems that arise when one seeks an admirable and worthwhile life, if there is no such thing as a correct answer, then to what does the effort of trying to determine better reasons through idealized inquiry amount? Putnam's answer to this question is ultimately “nothing,” for this effort would not belong to our practices of living. We would have neither reason nor motivation to be involved.Footnote ⁷⁴

Putnam does not assume that there is a single conception of human flourishing or that there might not be disputes about what ought to be done. Moreover, he does not see it as philosophy's task to produce a “final” system of ethics or set of rules of conduct. He does think, however, that moral philosophy can participate in an examination and evaluation of what first-order rules should govern our conduct by subjecting our valuations to criticism. This requires, as I noted before, engaging in a process of inquiry that meets the norms that express what it is to make full use of human intelligence. That is to say, we need to examine our valuations according to the norms of idealized inquiry or rational acceptability.

Such a process of inquiry also constitutes for Putnam “the democratization of inquiry.” The norms of such inquiry not only tell us what is necessary for warranting our valuations; they tell us what form of social life is necessary for the full application of human intelligence. Thus, if we understand “democracy” as social life that is organized in accordance with the norms of idealized inquiry, then “democracy is … the precondition for the full application of intelligence to the solution of human problems.”Footnote ⁷⁵ Moreover, Putnam makes it quite clear that this sense of “democracy” is to be understood as both “deliberative” and “social.” Taking what he understands as Dewey's position, Putnam holds that the citizens should do more than vote every so many years for legislators and other government officials. They should participate in the actual decision-making process.Footnote ⁷⁶ Further, Putnam holds that this process should issue in a social democracy:

Finally, Putnam also makes it clear that a “liberal democracy” that provides the framework for the protection of “negative liberty” will not suffice, because it does not allow for “serious consideration” of the interests and needs of those with lesser wealth and power. He quotes Dewey at length to drive this point home. Here is the salient part of Dewey's statement:

Trying to provide people with a political/legal order that merely protects their so-called negative liberty is not enough. Only a political/legal order that seeks to provide them with “positive liberty” is fundamentally consistent with a social system based on the demands of democratized inquiry.

A. Whose freedom? Which way of expressing human intelligence?

Putnam makes no bones about the political implications of his account of idealized inquiry; it requires a social-democratic political/legal order. Yet how does Putnam deal with the view that the process of democratic inquiry must itself be subject to strict limitation? How does he respond to the view that holds that since individuals are ends and not merely means, there is a moral side-constraint on the political/legal order which prohibits it from sacrificing or using individuals in order to achieve ends not of their own choosing?Footnote ⁸⁰ Particularly, how does Putnam respond to Robert Nozick's claim that

Putnam accepts, of course, the notion that democratized inquiry should treat people as ends and not merely as means.Footnote ⁸² Yet he considers Nozick's use of that principle to be an example of a priori ethical argumentation that “prove[s] too much,”Footnote ⁸³ because this argument requires that there be no welfare spending—that, for example, taxation cannot even be used to fund orphanages. Putnam states that Nozick's position “contradicts the moral outlook of the whole Western tradition…. The idea that there are trade-offs between rights to property, protection of the poor and helpless, and other interests of the community has long been central to our moral practice.”Footnote ⁸⁴ Thus, what is wrong with an argument such as Nozick's is that it assumes that we can have moral knowledge of what ought to be done apart from the system of practices that have developed in response to the issues of living—be they individual or social issues. Further, such an argument assumes that instances of ethical decision-making call for final solutions to moral problems, as opposed to adjudications or readings of what needs to be done that are part of an ongoing process of a community of inquirers.

Putnam thinks that ethical decision-making according to the norms of idealized democratic inquiry should be understood in terms of two metaphors—adjudication, which is taken from law, and reading, which is taken from interpreting a text—and he thinks that this communitarian process requires the rejection of an “absolute perspective” in ethics and an acceptance of openness and nonfinality.Footnote ⁸⁵ The problem with the arguments of such analytic philosophers as Nozick is that they are “curiously evasive or superficial about the relation of the premises of these arguments to the ideals and practices of any actual moral community.”Footnote ⁸⁶ Thus, whether individuals have the right not to have their lives, resources, and actions used for or directed to purposes for which they have not consented is to be determined by the norms of the idealized inquiry process. The freedom to partake in this process is paramount for Putnam and overrides any claim (be it to negative liberty or anything else) that is not first subjected to this process; and since the freedom to partake in this process requires the positive liberty that a social democracy promotes, the fundamental right not to have one's life, liberty, or property directed or used without one's consent is ruled out from the beginning.

Nonetheless, Putnam does not think that all issues remain problematic. Human slavery, racism, and male chauvinism are now “just plain wrong.”Footnote ⁸⁷ Thus, it is possible for judgments, even ethical ones, to become settled and no longer subject to democratic deliberation. Yet, if this is so, then the question can be asked: What prevents the process of idealized inquiry from coming to accept what Nozick suggests—namely, that the use of taxation for the achievement of distributive justice is itself a form of human slavery and thus just plain wrong? Maybe this process of inquiry has not yet reached an adequate understanding of all that is involved in treating human beings as ends and not merely as means. Indeed, maybe the right to private property will come to be seen as the fundamental expression of this very idea. Moreover, what prevents this process from concluding that respect for the principle that people are ends and not merely means requires that strict limits be placed on what valuations are to be adjudicated and interpreted?

Putnam might reply: “Nothing prevents this, but that does not change the initial judgment that Nozick's position is too extreme and out of step with the Western moral tradition and practices of actual moral communities.” However, it now appears that such a reply begs the question. It assumes that having the ability to partake in the inquiry process—that is, having a social democracy which aims to achieve positive liberty—is the fundamental expression of the idea that people are ends and not merely means. Yet this is the very point that is at issue. Nozick's position is, in fact, a challenge to the idea that participation in this inquiry process is the paramount value. Is such participation really the fundamental expression of human intelligence?

The questions do not stop here. Nozick's position can be interpreted as an even more fundamental challenge—namely, are the criteria of idealized inquiry something fixed once and for all? Are we clear about their meaning? Do we know, for example, what it means to respect autonomy or not engage in coercion? Given Putnam's account of the criteria, Nozick's position loses. However, might it not be necessary to modify or reinterpret these criteria in order to test Nozick's position? In other words, could not the openness of the idealized inquiry process and its willingness to consider any proposal require that it change some of its own criteria? If the process of validating our values is like rebuilding a wooden ship at sea one plank at a time, then there seems to be no reason not to consider such a change when it comes to examining the very criteria of idealized inquiry. Thus, there seems to be no reason to assume that idealized inquiry must continue to uphold social democracy and not embrace a liberal democracy in which individuals have a moral space or territory that strictly limits the scope of democratic deliberation. And finally, since we are asking fundamental questions, what prevents the inquiry process from realizing that there are standards beyond the inquiry process itself to which inquiry must appeal, and that practice is not always or necessarily primary?

Putnam's reply to this sort of questioning is to wave the bloody-shirt of metaphysical realism and to accuse anyone who asks such questions of assuming what is not the case—namely, “that there is a workable philosophical notion of ‘objective fact’”Footnote ⁸⁸ and that there is some standard beyond human practices to which to appeal. This reply will be considered in the final section of this essay, but it is worthwhile now to note what was referenced above. Putnam does not hold that practice always trumps over philosophical reflection. The emphasis on practice does not mean that we should get rid of metaphysics finally or that revisionary metaphysics is always bad. “We owe many insights, in science and morals and in politics, to various kinds of revisionary metaphysics.”Footnote ⁸⁹ But if some metaphysical revision of our practices is okay, and some is not, the obvious question is: How do we determine which is which? Of course, Putnam's answer is to stay within the circle: the process of idealized inquiry itself must work out this question.

I will have more to say about this reply later, but what are we to conclude regarding Putnam's claim that a social democracy must be a result of the commitment to idealized inquiry? Has he shown this? Has he shown that a liberal democracy that makes negative liberty the paramount value of the political/legal order is morally inferior to a social democracy that makes the promotion of positive liberty the chief aim? Has he shown that the sort of freedom espoused by the classical-liberal tradition and its practices could not be the expression, or at least an expression, of what the criteria of idealized inquiry demand? It certainly does not seem so. Indeed, it even seems that Putnam's account of the criteria of idealized inquiry begs the question against a position such as Nozick's. Much remains to be determined. The only thing we may safely conclude is this: we do not know whose account of freedom or which way of expressing human intelligence is to be preferred or why.

B. Ayn Rand and universalizability, or Asking questions you were always afraid to ask

In holding that idealized inquiry could not conclude that negative liberty should be the paramount value for the political/legal order, Putnam seems as guilty of a priorism as Nozick. If idealized inquiry is inspired by what it takes to make full use of human intelligence, then should not the possibility be considered that a classical-liberal political order (and not social democracy) is the precondition for the use of human intelligence? Particularly, how does Putnam know that free and open markets might not be, as F. A. Hayek argued,Footnote ⁹⁰ the basic social mechanism by which to use human knowledge in coordinating and determining the best and most useful ways to use resources, direct human effort, and solve problems? Could not free and open markets themselves be a vital expression of human intelligence? Indeed, it seems that Putnam's account of the criteria that determine the full use of human intelligence stacks the deck. It discounts the view that much of the most important knowledge that we use in seeking human flourishing is not found in a community of knowers examining a common issue, but is instead diversified in many individuals and concerned with only particular and contingent matters. Despite Putnam's claim that there must be a role for human flourishing in idealized inquiry, he offers little or no discussion of how such diversified knowledge is brought to bear on determining what is best and most useful. In short, what is singularly lacking in Putnam's work is any discussion of the virtue of practical wisdom.Footnote ⁹¹

When it comes to understanding the nature of ethics, Putnam's account of the criteria of idealized inquiry stacks the deck in even more fundamental ways. His remarks about the relationship of the views of Ayn Rand to those of Habermas reveal this clearly. He states: “Habermas certainly believes that one must act so as to treat the other always as an end, and not as a mere means. This is what the rational egotist violates. (Ayn Rand's rejection of altruism is precisely a rejection of this formulation of the categorical imperative.)”Footnote ⁹² Putting aside such questions as whether Rand might be more accurately identified as an egoist (rather than an egotist) or whether rejecting altruism is indeed equivalent to rejecting concern for others, what is important to see is that Putnam considers Rand's views as beyond the ethical pale. Her views fail to meet what Putnam regards as the minimum prerequisite for the ethical life—that is, having a community of human beings who consider the ends of others to be as important as their own. Footnote ⁹³ Indeed, it is clear that Putnam not only thinks this, but also feels it, because he resorts to personal attack. He says of Rand that she is an “influential if amateurish philosophizer—I cannot call her a philosopher.”Footnote ⁹⁴ Rand's views are not part of the practices that constitute ethical thinking, talking, and acting as far as Putnam is concerned.

It is important to note here that Rand does indeed hold that each human being is an end in her- or himself and not a means to the ends of others.Footnote ⁹⁵ Moreover, she holds that one should not treat others as mere means, but the point is that she also holds that someone else's human flourishing should not be as important for a person as that person's own. The development of one's own life and character is each person's primary ethical obligation. There is thus a distinction drawn between recognizing that each human being is an end in her- or himself and requiring that one value the lives of others as much as one values one's own. Thus, it may be that her views are not as easily dismissed as Putnam seems to believe. My purpose here is not to engage in an evaluation of Rand's ethical views. Rather, my purpose is to show that Putnam is actually assuming something that is quite controversial in his account of the criteria of idealized inquiry, and that he is stacking the deck against all ethical theories that see ethics as resulting from an individual's basic concern with her or his own flourishing or self-perfection.Footnote ⁹⁶

Specifically, Putnam is assuming that the Categorical Imperative or the principle of universalizabilityFootnote ⁹⁷ requires that one should approach all moral judgments in an impersonal fashion. This means that all morally salient values, reasons, and rankings are construed as “agent-neutral,” and what makes them so is that they do not involve as part of their description an essential reference to the person for whom the value or reason exists or the ranking is correct. As Douglas J. Den Uyl notes, “For any value, reason or ranking V, if a person P₁ is justified in holding V, then so are P₂–P_n under appropriately similar conditions…. On an agent-neutral conception it is impossible to weight more heavily, or indeed to weight at all, V, simply because it is one's own value.”Footnote ⁹⁸ On an agent-neutral view, when it comes to describing a value, reason, or ranking, it does not ethically matter whose value, reason, or ranking it is. In other words, it does not matter ethically speaking whose human flourishing it is.

In contrast to this view of morality, there is the agent-centered view that treats morally salient values, reasons, and rankings as fundamentally personal. What makes them so is that they are ultimately “agent-relative,” and they are agent-relative if and only if their distinctive presence in world W₁ is a basis for some person P's ranking W₁ over world W₂, even though they may not be the basis for any other person's ranking W₁ over W₂. Simply put, there are no morally salient values, reasons, or rankings full stop. Rather, they are always and necessarily values, reasons, and rankings for some person or other. Human flourishing is always and necessarily human flourishing for some person or other.

Universalizability as a logical matter does not mean or require impersonalism. Let us say that values, reasons, and rankings V₁, for a person P₁, are agent-relative, and further let us say the same holds true, respectively, for values, reasons, and rankings V₂–V_n for persons P₂–P_n. Conduct based on such agent-relative values, reasons, and rankings can be universalized as follows: if V₁ provides a basis for P₁ to act, so does V₂ provide a basis for P₂ to act, as well as V_n for P_n. One cannot claim that V₁ provides P₁ with a legitimate reason to act without acknowledging that V₂ provides P₂ with a legitimate reason to act, and so on. What is universalized here is the knowledge that something's being a value, reason, or ranking for some person is what provides a basis for that person's conduct. Yet nothing about universalization requires that what is a value, reason, or ranking for one person must be so for another.Footnote ⁹⁹

It might be objected, however, that the account of universalizability being used here is exceedingly thin and that Putnam might respond that the conception of universalizability used by idealized inquiry is thicker—namely, universalizability involves rules of conduct that all rational individuals would agree upon. If we understand universalizability in this way, then we might be able to see that the ethical life cannot be understood in a personal and agent-relative manner. Of course, the response here is simply: What is the basis or standard that rational individuals use in determining which rules to agree upon? If there is no basis or standard, then what is it about these individuals that justifies the adjective “rational”? If there is a basis or standard (let us say some value, reason, or ranking V), then we still have the question of whether V should be considered in an agent-neutral or an agent-relative manner. We are back to where we started. Clearly, this gambit will not work without much deeper premises.

There is also the question of just what makes V desirable or choice-worthy for someone, but Putnam cannot answer that question apart from the idealized inquiry process. There can be no appeal to the nature of human beings to understand human flourishing, for that would involve us in metaphysical realism. Human flourishing must itself be understood in terms of the criteria of idealized inquiry, and thus, given Putnam's approach, there is no way to warrant valuations of personal flourishing. There is no way to see ethics as a practice that is concerned primarily with one's own human flourishing or self-perfection.

Indeed, Putnam is quite explicit about this. He holds that one must be educated into the ethical life and believes that this involves a transformation of one's understanding of one's good such that one thinks in terms of “we” and not simply “me” and does not look outside the practices that constitute “ethical living” for reasons to be ethical.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ If this is so, however, this impersonalist rendering of universalizability creates a problem for Putnam's claim that practice is primary. Why should one ever agree to follow these so-called ethical practices? Beyond name-calling, what can Putnam say in reply to those who ask why one ought to be moral in an impersonal sense? Since the very intelligibility of speaking of ethical matters in this impersonal way requires the personal to which it is contrasted, it is perfectly coherent to ask why it would be good, worthy, or appropriate for me to adopt these “ethical” practices. So, what can Putnam say?

Of course, Putnam can say that following certain practices is not merely a matter of choosing to do something. Rather, the practices are actually part of our understanding of ourselves as well as how we think and act, and as such are not so easily overcome. However, this only shows just how radical someone may need to be in order to get us to reconsider or revise certain practices. Why isn't someone like Rand, who asks questions about the very legitimacy of certain practices, an example of someone who is offering a revisionary metaphysics or, more precisely, a revisionary way of thinking about ethics? Putnam's account of ethical knowledge really has no way to deal with someone like Rand. Alternatively, his approach to ethics seems particularly blind to those ethical traditions and practices that see the ethical life as primarily a project of personal development, and, as such, his approach seems to imply that ethical practices are unconnected to the lives of real people.

C. The human capabilities approach, or Legislating for human flourishing

It might seem unfair or simply inaccurate to accuse Putnam of having a blind spot to an ethics of personal development. In fact, part of his motivation for attacking ethical noncognitivismFootnote ¹⁰¹ is to express his solidarity with Martha Nussbaum's and Amartya Sen's attempts to make universal development of human capabilities the aim of both political theory and welfare economics.Footnote ¹⁰² In other words, Putnam wants to make a case for moral knowledge so that he can make the development of human capabilities the standard by which to legitimate political projects and economic institutions. In turn, he sees this as furthering his social-democratic ideals and advancing a version of egalitarian liberalism. And while there is certainly nothing wrong in desiring to assist or help as many people as possible with the development of their human capacities, there is an issue that Putnam's approach to ethical knowledge passes over in silence—specifically, why should one assume that developing human capabilities is the aim of the political/legal order? More generally, what is it that justifies moving from the ethical order to the political/legal order?

Simply put, no great issue seems to be at stake for Putnam in determining what it is that justifies making an ethical concern a political/legal one. Following Dewey, as well as Hegel, he holds that “we are communal beings from the start,” and even the idea, as a thought experiment, that we are beings who belong to no community is “utterly fantastic.”Footnote ¹⁰³ Accordingly, as I have indicated, Putnam sees the ethical process as largely a communitarian affair, and thus the discussion is already in terms of what “we” ought to do. The ethical and the political, if they are not identical for Putnam, are certainly coextensive. There is certainly no principled difference between them.

Clearly, this is a major gap in Putnam's thinking. If we were ancient Greeks living in a polis, it might be reasonable to see no difference between one's community or society and the political/legal order, but this is certainly not the case for humankind now. It is one thing to belong to a community or society and quite another thing to be subject to the laws of a political/legal order. Thus, just what is it, if anything, that legitimates a political/legal order? Furthermore, assuming there is some connection between the ethical order and the political/legal order, what is the nature of the connection between the two? That is to say, what is it that justifies moving from the judgment that X-ing is right (or wrong) and ought (or ought not) to be done to the judgment that X-ing ought to be politically/legally required (or prohibited)? These two judgments are not semantically equivalent, and a political philosopher needs to know what justifies connecting the two and thus how political and legal institutions might be legitimated.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ Indeed, this is the datum explanandum of political philosophy.

However, it may be that Putnam agrees with Alasdair MacIntyre that we should not think in terms of political/legal orders or in terms of nation-states but rather in terms of much smaller political units where the search for human flourishing is supposedly a much more cooperative affair and where everyone aims at the same goal.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ But even if this were so, there would still be a gap in Putnam's thinking. Attempting to develop human capabilities through laws that are supposed to apply to everyone in a community raises the problem of preferring one form of flourishing to others. How can Putnam seek to develop human capabilities through universal laws and not ultimately end up creating a system that, as a matter of principle, requires the sacrifice of one form of flourishing to another—that is to say, a system that treats people as mere means?

This is, of course, the well-known problem of “liberal neutrality.” However, it is important to see this issue clearly, or the difficulty it presents for Putnam will not be fully appreciated. This issue does not concern whether, as a result of the everyday conduct of individuals in various communities and societies, certain forms of human flourishing are easier to achieve than others are, or even whether some are in fact impossible to achieve. Indeed, if that were the issue, then the attempt to have a society that is “neutral” to all the various forms of flourishing would be an illusory goal, because there are always more factors involved in the actual practice of achieving flourishing than can be legislated or planned. Such a goal would be a case of hubris born of an ethical rationalism that fails to see the complexity and particularity of individual moral lives.

However, trying to achieve “liberal neutrality,” in the foregoing sense, is not the issue. The issue is one of trying to determine what political/legal principles, if any, will provide parameters for conduct in society that, as a matter of principle, will not require that any form of flourishing be preferred structurally to another. It is thus an issue of structural neutrality. Can one even find a basis for such political/legal principles, and what might they be? Douglas J. Den Uyl and I have expressed this issue in a set of questions, which we have called “liberalism's problem”:Footnote ¹⁰⁶

To what, if anything, in an account of human flourishing can one appeal to solve this problem? To the extent that Putnam seeks to advocate a political/legal order that applies to everyone in order to develop capabilities for human flourishing, he needs to answer this question.

Putnam is, of course, correct to hold that political and ethical problems cannot be solved without there being some moral knowledge, and thus the “justificatory neutralism” of much contemporary liberal theory is simply a nonstarter. There must be moral knowledge. Putnam is also correct to hold that many of the underlying metaphysical and epistemological views of analytic philosophy are insufficient to provide a basis for this knowledge. Moreover, he realizes that neither the capabilities for flourishing nor human flourishing itself are Platonic Forms. They come in many variations. However, he does not seem to realize fully that even if so-called generic goods and virtues, or, more precisely, the capabilities for pursuing these goods and virtues, must in fact be present in every form of flourishing, their exact character and role in each person's life will vary from individual to individual. Individuals are more than mere repositories for these capabilities or generic goods and virtues. The circumstances, interests, histories, endowments, and, most importantly, choices of individuals give shape, form, and value to these goods and virtues. Individuals do more than simply locate these goods and virtues or capabilities in space and time. Thus, attempting in the name of human flourishing to find an ethical basis for political/legal principles that will apply to all equally and achieve structural neutrality requires that Putnam deal with the individuality of the practices that constitute human flourishing. So-called generic goods and virtues or human capabilities do not provide a solution. The point here is not only that human flourishing is agent-relative in its fundamental character but that it is individualized as well.Footnote ¹⁰⁸ Finding a solution to liberalism's problem thus cannot be achieved at the price of adopting an impersonalist reading of human flourishing.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ Regrettably, Putnam never addresses this problem. Not only do Putnam's criteria of idealized inquiry make no principled distinction between an ethical concern and a political/legal one, they also take little or no notice of the agent-relative and individualized character of human flourishing. Thus, my earlier charge that Putnam's approach to ethics seems unconnected to the lives of real people seems both fair and accurate.Footnote ¹¹⁰

D. Questioning the criteria of idealized inquiry

Despite Putnam's admission that practice does not always trump other concerns and that there is a place for revisionary metaphysics, it is quite clear that he is going to insist that any ethical or political dispute be adjudicated or interpreted by an appeal to the criteria of idealized inquiry. After all, one cannot appeal to the nature of things. It is only through our idealized inquiry procedure that we may determine what beliefs and valuations are warranted. This much is clear. However, are the criteria themselves so clear? Are they helpful in addressing basic ethical issues? We have already seen that the criterion of freedom or noncoercion that Putnam employs is very much a matter of dispute, as is the claim that every valuation must be subject to examination. Indeed, do we really want to hold that every relationship must be evaluated in terms of these criteria? Further, we have seen that the Categorical Imperative or principle of universalizability does not necessarily carry with it an impersonalist ethical perspective, and thus cannot be used as a basis for rejecting a personal or agent-relative view of the ethical life. It offers no way to choose between personalism and impersonalism. More importantly, the view of ethics that idealized inquiry generates also ignores the long-standing traditions of ethics that make the development of one's own self-perfection or flourishing the central aim of the ethical life, and thus this view separates ethical practices from actual human life.

The problems with the criteria of idealized inquiry do not end here. There is also the question of whether the criteria are themselves adequate for attaining ethical knowledge or whether they stand in need of something more. What follows is a series of interrelated questions. Each of these questions could be developed in detail, though I do not develop them here. The questions should be sufficient, however, to indicate some of the grave difficulties that idealized inquiry faces.

1. 1. What if the process of idealized inquiry had not concluded that slavery and racism were “just plain wrong”? Wouldn't these ways of treating human beings nonetheless still be wrong? If truth is not defined by warranted assertibility under ideal conditions, as Putnam now admits, why must the criteria for warranted assertibility under ideal conditions be the last word in determining ethical truths? If such criteria might not suffice in the scientific arena, then might they not also be insufficient in the ethical arena? Despite his intention to the contrary, is it possible that Putnam is maintaining a fact/value dichotomy, or at least some version of it? Is there a polarity between scientific fact and ethical value after all?

2. 2. Since the strategy behind the rejection of metaphysical realism was to show, as Nussbaum put it, “that ethics is no worse off than any science,”Footnote ¹¹¹ it certainly seems that Putnam does not want to maintain that the standards for truth in science are different from those in ethics. But if so, then what is the basis for ethically dismissing the practices of slavery and racism? Are the practices of slavery and racism just plain wrong because the process of idealized inquiry judges them to be, or does the process of idealized inquiry judge the practices of slavery and racism to be just plain wrong because of what these practices are?Footnote ¹¹²

3. 3. Putnam regards metaphysical realism as unintelligible; thus, he cannot appeal to the nature of slavery and racism as they are apart from the conceptual scheme employed by a community of knowers. Yet, if there is no metaphysical difference between what these practices are and how a community of knowers conceptualizes them, then what these practices are (which includes how they are valued) will vary with different communities of knowers. What, then, can Putnam say to a community that does not employ the same conceptual scheme or share the same valuations as Putnam's? Are slavery and racism just plain wrong only for us in our community?

4. 4. Putnam wants to insist that without a sense of community we cannot begin to adjudicate ethical problems successfully.Footnote ¹¹³ Nevertheless, upon what is this sense of community supposed to be based? This question is not grounded on any atomistic conception of human beings but rather on the recognition that human sociality comes in various forms and at numerous levels. So, among the many social practices that make up the human form of life, what determines which practices are relevant for having a community that has the requisite sense of “ethical” practices? What entitles us to expect that the communities that develop will be based on ethical values that “we” find legitimate?Footnote ¹¹⁴

5. 5. If Putnam is to remain consistent, he cannot appeal to some set of human practices that express values that are valuable apart from idealized inquiry. This he regards as Platonism. He might avail himself of a transcendental argument that attempts to show that certain epistemic values are necessary for the very possibility of our speaking of what is “true” or “objective,” but even if we suppose that such a gambit works, there remains an ultimate difficulty: Putnam never actually shows that these epistemic values carry with them any substantive ethical values. What he shows is that human experience is shot through with valuations, but he does not show that the valuations are valuable in the sense that they are worthy of being chosen or followed. In other words, Putnam may indeed show that there is no ontological chasm between facts and values, but he does not show that values are valuable in the sense that they themselves ought to be valued.

6. 6. The ultimate value for Putnam seems to be human intelligence, and he is concerned that we make full use of it. Particularly, he is concerned that we make full use of what we have learned from the process of inquiry, especially what we have learned from scientific methods and procedures. This is what is supposed to guide us, and this is what makes the criteria of idealized inquiry so important. They are the second-order principles that we use to judge our first-order rules as well as conduct. Nonetheless, for what purpose is the full use of intelligence to be employed? If we answer simply “employing intelligence even more,” we have only widened the circle and explained nothing. We can quite intelligibly ask, “What is intelligence for?” Is it for anything that we choose? Are any choices better than others are? And if so, why? Does it matter? Intelligence is a valuable tool, but we do not know its function. The criteria of idealized inquiry provide no answer.

7. 7. It might be said, however, that intelligence is for knowledge. The pursuit of knowledge is certainly a fundamental human practice. However, does this show that knowledge, even scientific knowledge, is the standard by which human conduct and institutions are to be judged? Does this even show that we ought to pursue knowledge?

8. 8. Can we not also ask, “What is knowledge for?” Knowledge is, as Putnam admits, part of a holistic conception of human flourishing, and he further admits that human flourishing is an activity that is not uniformly the same. Yet, if this is so, then where are we to rank knowledge when it comes to other human practices such as pursuing leisure, beauty, pleasure, or friendship? And even if the pursuit of knowledge is more basic than these other pursuits, does it follow that pursing knowledge ought in every case to be valued more than these pursuits? Certainly, it is possible for there to be forms of flourishing, as well as communities and societies, in which knowledge is not given as much importance as the values of leisure, beauty, friendship, or pleasure. Therefore, there might be persons and societies whose practices do not value the criteria of idealized inquiry as much as we do, and thus the criteria of idealized inquiry may not have as privileged a place as Putnam supposes.

This section has sought to engage in a “criticism of criticism” that shows that something more than the criteria of idealized inquiry is needed if there is to be ethical knowledge. If this criticism has succeeded, then a question asked earlier is more pertinent than ever. What, if anything, prevents the idealized inquiry process from concluding that there are standards beyond itself to which it must appeal? The answer is simply “nothing.” Nothing prevents there being a transcendent standard. To say that human practices are necessary for and inclusive of all explanations of ethical knowledge does not show that these practices are a complete and sufficient explanation of ethical knowledge. Moreover, the criteria of idealized inquiry do not themselves prevent the recognition of standards beyond the idealized inquiry process. There is nothing about the importance of cooperative activity, the admission of fallibility, making one's beliefs open to revision, universalizability, honesty, sincerity, and noncoercion that is incompatible with there being some standard beyond inquiry itself to which it can appeal. Thus, it is time to consider what else is necessary for ethical knowledge. This is, of course, a tall order and is not something that can be completed here, but now that the adequacy of the criteria of idealized inquiry as a basis for moral knowledge has been called into question, the first step can be taken—namely, a return to realism.

A. Getting clear on metaphysical realism and Aquinas's distinction

It should be recalled that metaphysical realism involves both an ontological thesis and an epistemological thesis. The ontological thesis is that there are beings that exist and are what they are independent of and apart from anyone's cognition. The epistemological thesis is that these beings can be known, more or less adequately, often with great difficulty, but still known as they really are. A number of things need to be said about each of these theses as well as Putnam's approach to them.

To hold that there are beings that exist and are what they are independent of and apart from anyone's cognition of them does not require that the natures of these beings are universals existing either ante rem or in rebus. In other words, there is no need to assume that ontological realism requires the existence of universal natures either in some supersensible reality or as metaphysical parts or elements of individual beings. It is perfectly possible that while all individuals are natured, all natures are individualized, and it is therefore possible to reject the idea that reality comes already conceptually divided for us without rejecting the idea that beings are what they are apart from our conceptual processes.Footnote ¹¹⁵

The debate regarding the status of universals has a long and important philosophical history, and much of Putnam's aversion toward metaphysical realism seems to be born of his desire to avoid “Platonism” with regard to mathematical entities. Much depends here, of course, on one's view of abstraction,Footnote ¹¹⁶ but it is strictly speaking not necessary to affirm such Platonism in order to affirm ontological realism. Nonetheless, this brings us to the vexing issue of epistemological realism.

To affirm that we can know the natures of things requires that we recognize at the start a distinction made by Aquinas. He states:

This distinction allows us to acknowledge many of the important points often advanced against epistemological realism by its critics, without having to give up the claim that we can nonetheless come to know things more or less adequately.

The general point made by critics of epistemological realism is, of course, that human cognition has a nature. Yet Aquinas's distinction holds that cognition need not be without a nature in order for it to be able to be of or about the natures of things. Cognition is not something miraculous; it has a certain modality and proceeds in a certain manner. Thus, one should not suppose, without argument, that if cognition has a specific nature, it impossible to know the natures of things. There is no need to suppose, at least initially, that epistemological realism requires that we get “outside our skins” or adopt “a view from nowhere.”

I turn now to various points often made by critics of epistemological realism. Given our understanding of Aquinas's distinction, we can show that these criticisms are not so devastating as they might initially appear to be.

1. 1. In nearly every case, we must employ some conceptual scheme or language, use some set of words, or engage in some set of social practices in order to know anything. Nevertheless, that does not show that conceptual schemes, languages, or social practices determine the natures of things.Footnote ¹¹⁷ Jumping to such a conclusion would trade on the same ambiguity found in Berkeley's well-known claim that since beings cannot be thought of as existing apart from a thinking mind, their existence and nature are impossible without a thinking mind. Of course, one cannot think of beings without thinking (for us, the relevant terms are “conceiving” or “saying”), but that is some distance from claiming that the existence and nature of beings are dependent on or determined by our thinking. Likewise, it is some distance from claiming that the natures of things are determined by our conceptual scheme, language, or system of social practices. That we must use concepts and words or engage in social practices in knowing something does not show that they determine the ultimate character of what we know.

2. 2. That we employ conceptual schemes, languages, or social practices in cognition is undeniable, but it is unnecessary to treat these as “third things” that we must somehow know first before we gain access to reality. Such a view of cognition, the so-called “way of ideas” that Descartes and Locke are often charged with introducing into modern philosophy, had some currency in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but even then, thinkers such as John Poinsot and Thomas Reid challenged it. The view quickly degenerated into skepticism. It is only one model of the cognitive relation, and not a very good one. Indeed, according to at least one version of Wittgenstein's private language argument, it is a nonstarter.Footnote ¹¹⁸

3. 3. We do not know all of reality at once in all its detail. We are not God, and so we must start somewhere. Our needs, interests, and concerns, as well as our historical, social, and cultural circumstances, at least initially determine the breadth and the depth of our examinations of reality. Yet these admissions do not preclude epistemological realism. Our knowledge of reality just is partial, incomplete, and capable of being revised. It does not, cannot, and need not operate from some absolute perspective.

4. 4. Human beings are measurers of things. Indeed, cognition is for the most part not something that happens to us but something that we do. Concepts, classifications, theories, hypotheses, judgments, evaluations, and so on do not exist independently of or apart from human cognitive effort. They are our cognitive tools, and we are responsible for their existence. However, this does not mean or show that what they are about, or what they classify, explain, or assert as true or good, is simply a matter of convention.Footnote ¹¹⁹ Some of our claims are still better than others are. Nonetheless, it is not necessary to hold that the structure of logic is the same as the ontological structure of existence in order to defend this claim. Logic can be understood as an organon or tool of knowledge and need not be seen as an ontology.

5. 5. We are fallible, and while this does not mean, as J. L. Austin once noted,Footnote ¹²⁰ that we should infer from this alone regarding any particular claim that we might be mistaken, we must understand that the entire epistemological enterprise only exists because we are fallible beings. Infallible beings would have no need to consider the standards, methods, procedures, and criteria that are involved in knowing. Discovering that we are not God does not invalidate epistemological realism.

Obviously, each of these points could be made the subject of a book-length examination, but they are at least sufficient to show that many of the arguments that Putnam (and Nussbaum) use against metaphysical realism (which I noted in earlier sections of this essay) are subject to serious challenge and indeed are quite dubious.

However, it might be objected that in the foregoing remarks I have actually adopted much of Putnam's pragmatism; for I have acknowledged the role of human interests and needs in human cognition, and I have admitted that human knowing is fallible and subject to revision. I could respond that these observations, and others like them, have long been part of the epistemological realist's repertoire.Footnote ¹²¹ Indeed, Putnam seems to have recognized this recently.Footnote ¹²² Yet such a debate would be neither very fundamental nor very interesting. Let us instead cut to the chase and ask, “What is it that makes metaphysical realism, at least as described in this section, superior to the so-called ‘common sense’ or ‘pragmatic’ realism endorsed by Putnam?”

B. “Early” and “later” Putnam and rejecting the primacy of practice

The answer to this question requires that we deal with both an “early” and a “later” Putnam, for his views on these matters have apparently not stood still. The essential thing about the “early” Putnam is that he endorses the primacy of practice, and the essential thing about the “later” Putnam is that he at least appears at times to have some doubts about its primacy. Let us begin by considering the “early” Putnam.

The “early” Putnam's appeal to the primacy of practice as an account of human knowledge does not succeed, because it cannot differentiate between the explanandum, what it seeks to explain (that is, human knowledge) and the explanans, the explanation (namely, practice). It fails to explain the very phenomenon of cognition. Here is why. For any explanation E, it only counts as an explanation if it can be distinguished from the thing explained, T. But E is distinct from T only if one can see that E is distinct from T. Therefore, it is fallacious to derive E from T. So, if our explanation of human knowledge holds that the objects of knowledge are simply constructs of practice, while at the same time we hold that knowing is also a practice, then we have fundamentally failed to differentiate between our explanandum and our explanans. We have explained nothing.Footnote ¹²³

Putting this point in a linguistic vein and using it against a certain reading of Wittgenstein that Putnam so often employs in defending the primacy of practice, we can ask the following question, “What is it about our practices that allows us to make a mark, sound, or movement into something that conveys linguistic significance?” To respond that it is simply our form of life, our conventions and rules—that is, our practices—only repeats what we want explained and adds nothing fundamental to our understanding of the phenomenon. There is a difference between a mark, sound, or movement as such and as conveying linguistic significance. What is it about the human form of life and its practices that makes it possible for us to turn marks and sounds into words? Saying that we just do amounts to nothing more than spinning our intellectual wheels. Language has indeed gone on holiday here, but what has left the job is not the question being asked but the proposed answer. Practice simply does not suffice.Footnote ¹²⁴

It is, of course, true that not all words have the same function, and it is a mistake to suppose that for every word there must be a thing to which it corresponds. Further, and as I noted earlier, we must be careful when it comes to arguments that seek to populate reality with “abstract entities.” There is always the threat of Platonism, and this is important not only for ontology but for ethics as well. When it comes to understanding human flourishing, one need not understand it as some good that exists in isolation from the needs and interests of individual human beings. As I argued earlier, human flourishing can be understood in a personalist or agent-relative fashion. However, none of this shows that we must be content with “explaining” our knowledge, our world, our good, or ourselves ultimately in terms of practices. It is still the case that we need something for our thoughts and words to be about and something for our practices to be for. Ultimately, we need an overall context in which to operate, and this is why metaphysical realism continues to exert its legitimate and powerful pull.

It is here, however, that the careful reader of Putnam might well say, “Well done! You have really made Putnam's basic point! It may be a point that he has been struggling to make for many years, but it is nonetheless what he holds.” So let us now consider the “later” Putnam. We can begin by noting this lengthy observation:

Putnam follows this statement with the remark, “I do not, myself, side completely with James, nor do I side completely with the traditional realist critic. I agree with the critic that the world is as it is independently of the interests of the describers. James's suggestion that the world that we know is to an indeterminate extent the product of our own minds is one I deplore.”Footnote ¹²⁶

What are we to make of this remark? Has Putnam totally reversed himself?Footnote ¹²⁷ Does the “later” Putnam now hold that it is intelligible to talk of a world that exists and is what it is independent of and apart from our interests and practices? Moreover, how does this admission affect his arguments against the fact/value dichotomy and on behalf of moral cognitivism? After all, these arguments depended in many ways on rejecting the idea that we are supposed to find a basis for our valuations in the natures of things. For Putnam, it is not human nature that grounds ethical knowledge, but our practices—our ways of thinking and talking.

This is indeed a complicated matter. However, the statement about William James cited above comes from a work that was published before Putnam's recent ethical works, The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy and Other Essays (2002) and Ethics without Ontology (2004). Thus, it is doubtful that Putnam regards his apparent endorsement of traditional realism as affecting the plausibility of his ethical views. Further, Putnam insists that metaphysical realism is committed to a view that he regards as a sheer flight of imagination:

Thus, he still wants to distinguish his position from metaphysical realism. How does Putnam do this?

Putnam's major concern here seems to be that there are properties “fixed once and for all.” This concern can be understood in a number of ways. First, it may simply mean a rejection of the existence of what was earlier called “universal natures”—that is, the idea that reality comes already conceptually divided for us. But it is certainly possible to be a metaphysical realist and not accept universals as part of one's basic ontology. Second, Putnam's concern may be to avoid the idea that the forms of our knowledge claims and the ways in which they can be adequate to reality have already been determined. He seems clearly to want to reject that view, because he states:

This is a most ironic statement, because despite what Putnam says about “the traditional realist,” this is not something that is generally denied by traditional realists. Indeed, Putnam's point here is but a version of the distinction made by Aquinas that I discussed earlier.Footnote ¹³⁰ Third, Putnam may be objecting to the claim that all the properties are known or that they all exist. Yet a metaphysical realist need not deny that knowledge progresses or that new things come to be. Fourth, Putnam may want to reject the idea that there actually are a totality of properties that have existed in the past, exist in the present, and will exist in the future, and that these are what we have been, are, and will be in the process of discovering. That is, he may want to reject the idea that there are beings that exist and are what they are independent of and apart from our interests and practices. If this is what he wants to reject, then despite the statement cited above, he is not abandoning the primacy of practice. So what is his position?

Putnam states that “the notion that our words and life are constrained by a reality not of our own invention plays a deep role in our lives and is to be respected.”Footnote ¹³¹ Note that this statement does not say that there exists a reality not of our own invention that constrains our words and lives. Rather, it says that the notion of a reality not of our invention that constrains us plays a deep role in our lives. To say this is not to give up the primacy of practice. The real remains dependent on practice.Footnote ¹³² Putnam is subtle, and he is adopting a strategy described earlier: namely, he is trying to adopt an attitude of “deliberate naïveté” and return to “natural realism.” Yet how does one cross over the bridge to natural realism given the philosophical waters that have flowed beneath it? How does one adopt what Putnam now calls a “second naïveté”?Footnote ¹³³ The only way Putnam can do so is by discrediting metaphysical questioning and making practice ultimate. But now this must be done on one hand while not letting the other hand be part of the process. Practice must somehow be both primary and not primary. Thus, Putnam has succeeded in showing not the antinomy of realism but rather the antinomy of practice.Footnote ¹³⁴