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Naturalism, Realism, and Normativity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 June 2015

HILARY PUTNAM
HILARY PUTNAM*
Affiliation:
HARVARD UNIVERSITYhilary.putnam@gmail.com
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Abstract:

This essay describes three commitments that have become central to the author's philosophical outlook, namely, to liberal naturalism, to metaphysical realism, and to the epistemic and ontological objectivity of normative judgments. Liberal naturalism is contrasted with familiar scientistic versions of naturalism and their project of forcing explanations in every field into models derived from one or another particular science. The form of metaphysical realism that the author endorses rejects every form of verificationism, including the author's one-time ‘internal realism’, and insists that our claims about the world are true or false and not just epistemically successful or unsuccessful and that the terms they contain typically refer to real entities. ‘Representationalism is no sin’. The central part of the essay is an account of truth based on a detailed analysis of Tarski's theory of truth and of the insights we can get from it as well as of the respects in which Tarski is misleading. (This part goes beyond what the author has previously published on the subject.) The account of the objectivity of the normative in this essay draws on insights from Dewey as well as Scanlon.

Keywords

ethicsmetaphysicsnaturalismphilosophy of languagetheory of truth
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the American Philosophical Association , Volume 1 , Issue 2 , Summer 2015 , pp. 312 - 328
Copyright
Copyright © American Philosophical Association 2015 

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