A Probe Into The Postmodern Ethics Of Putnam

Ethics is the key of Putnam’s later philosophy research. Previous research inPutnam philosophy often focused on its internal realism and not pay attention to thespecialized ethics thought, and the existing research on Putnam’s ethical thoughts areonly contained in the article of discussing about the truth view. Thus, the researchabout Putnam old steering’s ethics thought is ignored. Putnam’s ethics thought areclosely related with its internal realism thought, especially the view of truth thought,he reflected for moral philosophy especially for the nature of ethics as well as theconcept of "democracy","equality" standing in the realist position, He demonstratesthe objectivity of ethical is posterior, it found in’s constant pursuit for objectivestandard, the community is the composition of free people. These thoughts of ethics isvery inspiring for contemporary people to explore ethics.Putnam want to reshape the objectivity of ethics, the first step is drawing a clearline with objectivity thought of traditional ethics. So the first part mainly discusses thetraditional philosophy’s understanding of "objectivity", mainly includes two kinds of"objectivity" thought, one is the "objectivity"in the ontological meaning, mainly refersto the transcendental moral philosophy, represented by Plato and Kant,it assert thatthere is a priori, absolute basis, the foundation is the objectivity and it beyond allhuman moral experience and moral intuition, the foundation can make final judgmenton ethical judgment; another is the "objectivity" in the epistemological meaning,mainly refers to the objectivity of ethics in the eyes of the logical positivists, it thinkobjectivity means that can be proved by scientific means. Putnam respectively madecritical to these two kind of objectivity thought, pointed out the contradictions and hasdefects, on this basis, he put forward their posterior ethics thought.That thesis consists of four major parts.Putnam want to reshape the objectivity of ethics, the first step is drawing a clearline with objectivity thought of traditional ethics. So the first part mainly discusses the traditional philosophy’s understanding of "objectivity", mainly includes two kinds of"objectivity" thought, one is the "objectivity"in the ontological meaning, mainly refersto the transcendental moral philosophy, represented by Platon and Kant,it assert thatthere is a priori, absolute basis, the foundation is the objectivity and it beyond allhuman moral experience and moral intuition, the foundation can make final judgmenton ethical judgment; another is the "objectivity" in the epistemological meaning,mainly refers to the objectivity of ethics in the eyes of the logical positivists, it thinkobjectivity means that can be proved by scientific means.Putnam respectively madecritical to these two kind of objectivity thought, pointed out the contradictions and hasdefects, on this basis, he put forward their posterior ethics thought.The second parts mainly discuss the theory foundation of posteriori ethics.Putnam’s ethics are intricately linked with the thought of outlook on truth, Putnamcriticized the traditional correspondence theory of truth and relativism of truth beforehe proposes his own view of truth, then he linked their own truth with rationalacceptability, thinking that truth is a rational acceptability, also he distinguished thereasonable acceptability with the ideal rational acceptability. Affected by the thoughtof outlook on truth, the pursuit for objectivity of Putnam’s ethics preset the posterior’sobjectivity in the future, namely the objectivity is a kind of ideal state.The third part mainly discusses the basic content of Putnam’s ethics.ThenPutnam stood on the stage of internal realism, through the negation of the fact andvalue he concluded that there is no essential difference between science and ethics,then he affirmed the existence of ethics.Putnam combined with different theoreticalpurport, including Levinas’ attention for "other" in the special situation, Kant’spursuit for the universal moral, Aristotle’s quest on the common prosperity of thehuman, Dewey’ pragmatism that emphasizes practice exploration, then Putnampresented the ethics of pluralism; preinstalled the exists of cultural community,considering that ethical objectivity come from the life practice instead of ametaphysical, the ultimate goal of ethics is to solve practical problems, and pursuit ofthe common prosperity of the human being in the process of practice; Putnamproposes the concept of "democracy","equality", regard the "democracy","equality" as the guarantees of ultimate realization of ethics convergence, but also saved the twoimportant value.The fourth part mainly points out the value of Putnam’s posterior ethics thoughtand some deficiency of its ethics. Putnam showed its thought value and the inevitabledefects in cleaning disorder of posterior ethics and defense for it. Its value mainlyincluding that dening moral doctrine of subjective, to avoid relativism, but also toavoid the way to transcendental ethics of metaphysical, Putnam let the ethics researchand moral practice produce benign interaction, ethics developed in the dynamicprocess of continue to correct their own errors, seeing a the possibility of pragmaticpluralism about posterioril ethics, the pursuit of happiness of the whole human race inpluralism.The main defects is that there is a unbridgeable rip between Putnamculture’s objectivity and the theory of ethics’s finally assemble, in this way, it is easyto return to the team to transcendental ethics.