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Wiki MarkupI have been struck by the foHowing comments ofHilary Putnam in discussing an 
important development in his own philosophy:
I have been struck by the following comments of Hilary Putnam in discussing an important development in his own philosophy:

 an important development in his own philosophy: I began to move away from hard-core scientific realism ... partly because becauseII was discovering the important work of a philosopher who has always  insisted that understanding the arts is as important as understanding science in  understanding cognition. That philosopher is Nelson Goodman. I found myself  agreeing with Goodman's insistence that the world does not have a'rcadyalready-made'  or 'built-in' description; many descriptions may 'fit,' depending on our interests  and purposes. (This does not mean that anything we happen to like 'fits.' That  more than one description may be right does not mean that every description is  right, or that rightness is subjective.) While 1 could not agree when Goodman  went so far as to say that there is not one 'world' but many worlds and that these arc arcof ofourour own making, I still find his work a continuing source ofstimulationof stimulation. At  this time I also began to take seriously ... the idea that 'value judgments,' far  from being devoid of 'cognitive meaning,' are actually presupposed in all  cognition; fact and value interpenetrate.... \[T\]he denial that reality dictates one  unique description and the conception of fact and value as interpenetrating rather  than discrete are as central to my thinking now as they were then ("A Half  Century of Philosophy, Viewed from Within," _Daedalus,_ _126, 1 \[Winter 1997\]:  198_ _f)._ _Of particular interest to me in this is whether it  

Of particular interest to me in this is whether it doesn't suffice to provide the rationale for the pluralistic (as distinct from any monistic) pluralism that I understand to be to be integral to my "fourth option" in the Christian theology of religions. Essential to this optionthis option, as I understand it, is its difference from relativism. But if Goodman is right, that many that many "world views,_Of course, no such account could be complete without something like a transcendental metaphysics that is at once broad and austere, in the way in which IH views," in Geertz's sense, may "fit^ll fitll need not mean that any world view we happen we happen to like "fits." Nor does more than one world view's possibly being right mean that every that every world view is right, or that the rightness of a world view is subjective. On the contrarythe contrary, provided world views are (1) directly concerned with ultimate reality's meanings meaning-for-us and only indirectly concerned with its structure-in-itself; and (2) are characteristically are characteristically formulated in symbolic rather than literal language, there's good reason why reason why one may give a pluralistic account of alternative world views without in the least asserting least asserting or implying relativism. ²

Of course, no such account could be complete without something like a transcendental metaphysics that is at once broad and austere, in the way in which I understand understand it to be. For without such a metaphysics there can be no nonreductive way of establishing of establishing that any world view is right and that its rightness is not subjective.  

10 10 November 2007