ENGLISH

Ethics Without Ontology

By Hilary Putnam

Book information

Publisher
Harvard University Press
Year
2004
ASIN
B002OEBOAA
Language
english
Format
PDF
Filesize
5 MB (5112415 bytes)
Pages
87\87
Library
torrents.ru tech collections 2009-11-14
Time added
2010-05-17 00:23:50

Description

In this brief book one of the most distinguished living American philosophers takes up the question of whether ethical judgments can properly be considered objective--a question that has vexed philosophers over the past century. Looking at the efforts of philosophers from the Enlightenment through the twentieth century, Putnam traces the ways in which ethical problems arise in a historical context. Hilary Putnam's central concern is ontology--indeed, the very idea of ontology as the division of philosophy concerned with what (ultimately) exists. Reviewing what he deems the disastrous consequences of ontology's influence on analytic philosophy--in particular, the contortions it imposes upon debates about the objective of ethical judgments--Putnam proposes abandoning the very idea of ontology. He argues persuasively that the attempt to provide an ontological explanation of the objectivity of either mathematics or ethics is, in fact, an attempt to provide justifications that are extraneous to mathematics and ethics--and is thus deeply misguided.(20071201)

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