Hilary Putnam 在他的《Ethics without Ontology》即大力批評傳統的形而上道德理論，並嘗試建構一個新的、非形而上（也就是非本體論）的、無關於 theory of being 的，道德理論：
I have claimed that ethics and mathematics can and do possess objectivity without being about sublime or intangible objects, such as "Platonic forms" or "abstract entities", and that the idea that "exist" has a unique and determinate meaning, one cast in stone, so to speak, is mistaken. And ethics, I have argued, following the lead of the classic American pragmatists, must not be identified with one single human concern or with one single set of concepts (Putnam, 2005: 2).
事實上，Putnam 所指的 ontology，就是形而上物：
Ontology, in the other sense, the more traditional one, is part of metaphysics (at times for some philosophers, it seems to be virtually the whole of metaphysics), and it is often described as "the science of Being" (Putnam, 2005: 17).
Putnam 對這種形而上道德概念的批評，not only 聚焦在 monism and reductionism上，but，諷刺的是，also 如同形而上理論家對道德社會建構理論的批評，認為其既無法被測量，也無法進行正確的判斷。這些都體現在 Putnam 對 G.E. Moore 的評論上，who 'announced that what ethical judfments are really about is a single, supersensible quality he called "good"' (Putnam, 2005: 18):
Not only "good" supposed to be invisible to the senses and undetectable by the natural sciences, it is also "simple", according to Moore's theory -- that is, not analyzable in terms of other properties or qualities. [...] And for Moore, just as for the Platonist (althought Moore's ethical theory was quite different from any Platonic one), it is by a special intuition of the supersensible object (in Moore's theory, an intuition of which states of affairs possess the greatest amount of good) that we determine the correct ethical judgments.
[...] [W]hen one thinks that one has explained why some persons, traits of character, activities, and states of affairs are good by postulating something "non-natural", something mysterious and sublime standing invisibly behind the goodness of the persons, actions, situations, etc., in question, one thereby commits oneself to a form of monism in the sense that one reduces (or imagines one has reduced) all ethical phenomena, all ethical problems, all ethical questions, indeed all value problems, to just one issue, the presence or absence of this single super-thing Good (Putnam, 2005: 18-9).
因此，對 Putnam 而言，"[t]he primary aim of the ethicist ... should not be to produce a 'system', but to contribute to the solution of practical problems" (Putnam, 2005: 4), which "means simply 'problems we encounter in practice', specific and situated problems, as opposed to abstract, idealized, or theoretical problems" (Putnam, 2005: 28).
然而，Putnam 與 Dewey 的這種 pragmatist ethics 卻存在兩個問題。第一個問題來自Putnam 批評傳統 ontological ethics 的切入點，in which 他矛盾地以一個更本體論的、更形而上的真理，the natural science，來 value 他所批評的道德立場。顯而易見地，在這樣科學中心式的現代理性檢視之下，傳統論述中的形而上道德當然是invisible, and undecteble. 而在此架構下所發展出來的道德理論，也當然不會是ethics without ontology，而是 ethics with specific, scientific ontology of modernity.
第二個問題，thus，也就是所有 ontological ethics 都會遇上的問題，即，這些道德所提供的行為方針，或是所描述的人類社會，都與實際現實狀況有很大的差距。即使是Putnam 與 Dewey 等人所發展出來的 pragmatist ethics whose primary aim is tosolve practical problems，也窘困地面臨到一個相反的現實社會，in which the goal of human action is not to solve practical problems. 這一點已經清楚地呈現在Putnam 作品裡社會主義實行與否的討論中：
Whether, for example, a fully socialist society – that is, one which did not allow large private businesses and corporations – could exist and be peaceful, economically successful, and democratic, is, by anybody’s lights, an empirical question, but it is a empirical question on which we are unlikely to ever get agreement, unless, that is, such a society actually comes into existence at some time, and is peaceful, economically successful, and democratic. (We all know that there have been fully socialist societies which were neither economically successful ore democratic, but that hardly settles the possibility-question to the satisfaction of all social thinkers). If the power of pro-capitalist forces is sufficiently great to prevent such a society from ever being tried only in impoverished and backward countries, and fail there it is unlikely that there will ever be agreement on ”which would have happened if”. And even incases where the relevant experiment is tried – not, of course, the experiment of a fully socialist society, but some other social experiment – and the experiment is successful, questions as to whether the same thing would work the next time, or in the next case, are frequently highly controversial, and the model of everyone ultimately converging to one view has, as far as I can see, no relation to reality.
[…] In short, my view is that the impossibility of getting clean-cut “verifications” that something is the right thing to do, even when the success-criteria are agreed upon – unless, that is, you have actually done it, and it has “worked” to everyone’s satisfaction – is a general feature of practical problem resolution (Putnam, 2005: 76-7).
於是 pragmatist ethics 成了一個套套邏輯性的循環論證：pragmatist ethics 的主要目標在於解決實際問題，而實際問題的真正解決（verified resolution）卻在於你已經解決（done）了它的時候，而且還要是人人滿意的。那麼，在我們遇到一個實際問題（當然，我們還不知道它的解決辦法；如果知道了那這還會成為一個問題嗎？）的時候，pragmatist ethics 該如何幫助我們解決它？還有，在現實生活中，哪一個解決方法是「人人」滿意的？這兩個尖銳的問題直指了一個事實，那就是 pragmatist ethics 的道德狀態不僅在過去歷史上的不存在，在人類未來行動的指引上亦是不可行。
（此外，除了執行層面的問題之外，pragmatist ethics 將會造成分析上與價值判斷上的問題，因為它很事後諸葛。可是我還不確定要不要寫進去。）