The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy and Other Essays :

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Summary: The Entanglement of the Fact/Value Distinction
Review: If there is one point that sticks out in my mind after reading Hilary Putnam's "Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy," it is his suggestion that there is an "entanglement" of facts and values, which effectually preserves a distinction between the two without positing a metaphysically dichotomous relationship vis-a-vis facts and values. According to Putnam, logic itself presupposes certain values (e.g., coherence, validity, soundness) and so does science with its talk of "elegant" or "parsimonious" theories. Values permeate all aspects of academic study and human life. No human being reasons on "facts" without simultaneously having axiological concerns. Putnam demonstrates this point analytically, though most of the book is fairly accessible to continental philosophers and even those who are philosophically challenged (n.b., the two aforementioned classes of persons are not to be confused with one another or epistemically conflated). The only portion of the book that I found somewhat challenging was his discussion of economics and Amartya Sen. That chapter notwithstanding, I find myself forced to accept Putnam's pragmatist mantra with some reservations: "knowledge of facts presupposes knowledge of values."

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Summary: Possibly Putnam's most important book?
Review: The fact/value dichotomy remains a standing dogma of contemporary empiricism. One sees it assumed without question in numerous works intended both for students and professional philosophers. (It is taken for granted, for instance, in Peter Singer's recent A Darwinian Left.) Yet Putnam shows that the original dichotomy, usually attributed to David Hume, was based (1) on a metaphysics of fact that nobody has seriously entertained since the early days of Logical Positivism, and (2) on an argument formally identical to Hume's argument against causality, the latter being an argument virtually nobody now accepts as cogent. Putnam argues that we must now accept the embeddedness of values virtually all theoretical and even factual statements. This does not, however, drop us into a morass of post-modern relativism, but allows us to think more clearly about the value-assumptions we make all forms of discourse.