Hilary Putnam to Deliver Rosenthal Lectures at Law School
CHICAGO -- Hilary Putnam, one of the most distinguished living
philosophers, will deliver this year's Julius Rosenthal Foundation
Lecture Series, "The Collapse of the Fact-Value Dichotomy," Nov. 6-8
at Northwestern University School of Law, 357 E. Chicago Ave.
Putnam, the Cogan University Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at
Harvard University, is known as a "big picture" thinker whose range
is enormous, touching upon many aspects of philosophy, from formal
logic to the philosophy of religion, from quantum theory to ethics.
He has been at the center of debates in the philosophy of mind and
language, where his positions have become landmarks.
Free and open to the public, Putnam's three lectures take place
at noon. They are titled "The Fact- Value Dichotomy: The Empiricist
Background" (Nov. 6), "The Entanglement of Fact and Value" (Nov. 7)
and "Fact and Value in the World of Amartya Sen" (Nov. 8).
"The lecture series has assumed a preeminent position among distinguished
legal lecture programs," said David E. Van Zandt, professor of law
and dean of Northwestern University School of Law. "Publication of
the lectures has contributed to legal literature and scholarship for
more than 60 years. Professor Putnam is certain to continue this tradition
with his bold and energetic approach to philosophical questions."
Putnam surveys a wide range of areas, including metaphysics and
epistemology, philosophy of science, philosophy of language, philosophy
of mind, ethics and American Pragmatism. His many papers are collected
in three volumes of "Philosophical Papers" (1979-1985). He also is
the author of 14 books, including most recently "Renewing Philosophy"
(1992), "Words and Life" (1994), "Pragmatism: An Open Question" (1995)
and "The Threefold Cord: Mind, Body and World" (2000).
Before joining the faculty at Harvard, where he has taught for
35 years, Putnam taught at Northwestern and Princeton and was professor
of philosophy of science at MIT. He is a past president of the American
Philosophical Association (Eastern Division), a fellow of the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences and a corresponding fellow of the British
Academy.
His position on the nature of truth and justification, which he
calls "pragmatic realism," has become a widely discussed alternative
to traditional metaphysical kinds of realism and post-modernist skepticism.
Combating the influence of Logical Positivism, Putnam argues that
notwithstanding its fixated role in modern thought, the fact-value
dichotomy is "intellectually indefensible and morally disastrous."
He explores and teaches new ways to think about moral, economic, legal
and political questions without the restrictions of the dichotomy.
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