On Entanglement of Fact and Value in the Views of Hilary Putnam

Abstract

The subject of this paper is the analysis of Hilary Putnam’s thesis on the fact/value entanglement along with some of his arguments meant to corroborate this stance. One of his main objectives of putting forward this thesis is reconciliation of science and values, bringing an end to the picture of the former as a ‘value-free zone’. While Putnam’s polemics with standpoints conflicted with his own one are carried out in quite a comprehensive way, the way he formulates some of his constructive arguments meant to augment his own stance are a bit enigmatic. The goal of this paper is to clarify some of them. The first part of this paper briefly outlines Putnam’s arguments aiming to undermine the fact/value dichotomy, which is contradictory to the thesis title. The second one is focused on the issue of so called ‘thick concepts’, which might be considered as counterexamples for the aforementioned dichotomy, and the thesis, correlated with the title one, that description and evaluation are interdependent.