INTERPRETING PUTNAM'S DIALECTICAL METHOD IN PHILOSOPHY

Abstract: Hilary Putnam's philosophical views have undergone extensive interpretation over many years. One such interpretive work is George Myerson's book Rhetoric, Reason and Society. Myerson's interest in dialogic rationalism leads him to examine the views of many theorists of rationality, philosophers and nonphilosophers alike. As a prominent philosopher of rationality, Putnam is at the very center of this examination. Notwithstanding this fact, I contend that Myerson misinterprets the dialectical character of Putnam's philosophy in general and of Putnam's views on rationality in particular. This misinterpretation, I argue, is revealing of an illusion of thought to which Myerson is subject, an illusion that makes it seem that it is possible to theorize intelligibly about rationality from a metaphysical standpoint. This same illusion, I claim, also makes it seem that Myerson's positive views on rationality are intelligible. Employing a close textual analysis of Myerson's book, I argue that neither scenario is the case.