• Journal of Korean Philosophical Society
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• v.120
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• pp.109-130
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• 2011

The main purpose of this paper is to examine Putnam's recent conception of ethics, and show that it gives rise to an ineluctable incoherence with his rationalism. This suggests that Putnam's philosophy has to be far more naturalized to make his new position cogent. Putnam recently has shown some explicit turn toward pragmatism a la James and Dewey under the name of "pragmatic pluralism." Putnam says that traditional ethics has presupposed some form of ontology in one way or another, which he sees is based on an unnecessary pursuit of a misleading conception of objectivity. Putnam tries to get rid of any notion of ontology in ethics, whereby we can talk about a third view which runs between traditional objectivism and nihilistic relativism. In this sense, he defines pragmatism as "fallibilism cum antiskepticism." Putnam's suggestion makes a good sense as far as it goes. However, his continuous transition toward pragmatism is critically impeded by his own adhesion to the normative conception of "reason." In this light, Putnam himself is wobbling between Kant and Dewey, just as he describes ethics is. Dewey's pragmatism does not have recourse to the very notion of reason to secure objectivity necessary to make sense of moral experience. Putnam needs to be far more naturalized to reach cogently where he espouses, and this can be done only by renouncing the normative conception of reason.