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Hilary Whitehall Putnam (; July 31, 1926 – March 13, 2016) was an American philosopher, mathematician, and computer scientist, and a major figure in analytic philosophy in the second half of the 20th century. He made significant contributions to philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, philosophy of mathematics, and philosophy of science.Casati R., "Hillary Putnam" in ''Enciclopedia Garzanti della Filosofia'', ed. Gianni Vattimo. 2004. Garzanti Editori. Milan. Outside philosophy, Putnam contributed to mathematics and computer science. Together with Martin Davis he developed the Davis–Putnam algorithm for the Boolean satisfiability problemDavis, M. and Putnam, H. "A computing procedure for quantification theory" in ''Journal of the ACM'', 7:201–215, 1960. and he helped demonstrate the unsolvability of Hilbert's tenth problem. Putnam was known for his willingness to apply equal scrutiny to his own philosophical positions as to those of others, subjecting each position to rigorous analysis until he exposed its flaws.King, P.J. ''One Hundred Philosophers: The Life and Work of the World's Greatest Thinkers''. Barron's 2004, p. 170. As a result, he acquired a reputation for frequently changing his positions. In philosophy of mind, Putnam is known for his argument against the type-identity of mental and physical states based on his hypothesis of the multiple realizability of the mental, and for the concept of functionalism, an influential theory regarding the mind–body problem. In philosophy of language, along with Saul Kripke and others, he developed the causal theory of reference, and formulated an original theory of meaning, introducing the notion of semantic externalism based on a thought experiment called Twin Earth.P. Clark-B. Hale (eds.), "Reading Putnam", Blackwell, Cambridge (Massachusetts): Oxford 1995. In philosophy of mathematics, he and his mentor W. V. O. Quine developed the "Quine–Putnam indispensability thesis", an argument for the reality of mathematical entities, later espousing the view that mathematics is not purely logical, but "quasi-empirical".Putnam, H. ''Philosophy of Mathematics: Selected Readings''. Edited with Paul Benacerraf. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1964. 2nd ed., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. In epistemology, he is known for his critique of the well-known "brain in a vat" thought experiment. This thought experiment appears to provide a powerful argument for epistemological skepticism, but Putnam challenges its coherence.Putnam, H. (1981)
"Brains in a vat"
in ''Reason, Truth, and History'', Cambridge University Press; reprinted in DeRose and Warfield, editors (1999): ''Skepticism: A Contemporary Reader'', Oxford UP.
In metaphysics, he originally espoused a position called metaphysical realism, but eventually became one of its most outspoken critics, first adopting a view he called "internal realism",Putnam, H. ''Realism with a Human Face''. Edited by J. F. Conant. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1990. which he later abandoned. Despite these changes of view, throughout his career he remained committed to scientific realism, roughly the view that mature scientific theories are approximately true descriptions of ways things are. In the philosophy of perception, Putnam came to endorse direct realism, according to which perceptual experiences directly present one with the external world. He once further held that there are no mental representations, sense data, or other intermediaries that stand between the mind and the world.Putnam, H.. ''The Threefold Cord: Mind, Body, and World''. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. By 2012, however, he rejected this commitment in favor of "transactionalism", a view that accepts both that perceptual experiences are world-involving transactions, and that these transactions are functionally describable (provided that worldly items and intentional states may be referred to in the specification of the function). Such transactions can further involve qualia. In his later work, Putnam became increasingly interested in American pragmatism, Jewish philosophy, and ethics, engaging with a wider array of philosophical traditions. He also displayed an interest in metaphilosophy, seeking to "renew philosophy" from what he identified as narrow and inflated concerns. He was at times a politically controversial figure, especially for his involvement with the Progressive Labor Party in the late 1960s and early 1970s. At the time of his death, Putnam was Cogan University Professor Emeritus at Harvard University.

Life

Putnam was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1926. His father, Samuel Putnam, was a scholar of Romance languages, columnist, and translator who wrote for the ''Daily Worker'', a publication of the American Communist Party, from 1936 to 1946 (when he became disillusioned with communism). As a result of his father's commitment to communism, Putnam had a secular upbringing, although his mother, Riva, was Jewish. The family lived in France until 1934, when they returned to the United States, settling in Philadelphia. Putnam attended Central High School; there he met Noam Chomsky, who was a year behind him. The two remained friends—and often intellectual opponents—for the rest of Putnam's life. Putnam studied philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania, receiving his B.A. degree and becoming a member of the Philomathean Society, the country's oldest continually existing collegiate literary society.Hickey, L. P.
''Hilary Putnam''
(London / New York: Continuum, 2009).

Philosophy of mind

Multiple realizability

Putnam's best-known work concerns philosophy of mind. His most noted original contributions to that field came in several key papers published in the late 1960s that set out the hypothesis of multiple realizability.Bickle, Joh
"Multiple Realizability"
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2006 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)
In these papers, Putnam argues that, contrary to the famous claim of the type-identity theory, it is not necessarily true that "Pain is identical to C-fibre firing." According to Putnam's papers, pain may correspond to utterly different physical states of the nervous system in different organisms even if they all experience the same mental state of "being in pain". Putnam cited examples from the animal kingdom to illustrate his thesis. He asked whether it was likely that the brain structures of diverse types of animals realize pain, or other mental states, the same way. If they do not share the same brain structures, they cannot share the same mental states and properties, in which case mental states must be realized by different physical states in different species. Putnam then took his argument a step further, asking about such things as the nervous systems of alien beings, artificially intelligent robots and other silicon-based life forms. These hypothetical entities, he contended, should not be considered incapable of experiencing pain just because they lack human neurochemistry. Putnam concluded that type-identity theorists had been making an "ambitious" and "highly implausible" conjecture that could be disproved by one example of multiple realizability.Putnam, H. (1975) ''Mind, Language and Reality. Philosophical Papers, vol. 2''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975. This is sometimes called the "likelihood argument". Putnam formulated a complementary argument based on what he called "functional isomorphism". He defined the concept in these terms: "Two systems are functionally isomorphic if 'there is a correspondence between the states of one and the states of the other that preserves functional relations'." In the case of computers, two machines are functionally isomorphic if and only if the sequential relations among states in the first exactly mirror the sequential relations among states in the other. Therefore, a computer made of silicon chips and one made of cogs and wheels can be functionally isomorphic but constitutionally diverse. Functional isomorphism implies multiple realizability. This is sometimes called an "''a priori'' argument". Putnam, Jerry Fodor, and others argued that, along with being an effective argument against type-identity theories, multiple realizability implies that any low-level explanation of higher-level mental phenomena is insufficiently abstract and general. Functionalism, which identifies mental kinds with functional kinds that are characterized exclusively in terms of causes and effects, abstracts from the level of microphysics, and therefore seemed to be a better explanation of the relation between mind and body. In fact, there are many functional kinds, such as mousetraps, software and bookshelves, that are multiply realized at the physical level.

Machine state functionalism

Putnam himself put forth the first formulation of such a functionalist theory. This formulation, now called "machine-state functionalism", was inspired by analogies Putnam and others made between the mind and Turing machines. The point for functionalism is the nature of the states of the Turing machine. Each state can be defined in terms of its relations to the other states and to the inputs and outputs, and the details of how it accomplishes what it accomplishes and of its material constitution are completely irrelevant. According to machine-state functionalism, the nature of a mental state is just like the nature of a Turing machine state. Just as "state one" simply is the state in which, given a particular input, such-and-such happens, so being in pain is the state which disposes one to cry "ouch", become distracted, wonder what the cause is, and so forth.

Rejection of functionalism

In the late 1980s, Putnam abandoned his adherence to functionalism and other computational theories of mind. His change of mind was primarily due to the difficulties computational theories have in explaining certain intuitions with respect to the externalism of mental content. This is illustrated by Putnam's own Twin Earth thought experiment (see ''Philosophy of language''). In 1988 he also developed a separate argument against functionalism based on Fodor's generalized version of multiple realizability. Asserting that functionalism is really a watered-down identity theory in which mental kinds are identified with functional kinds, Putnam argued that mental kinds may be multiply realizable over functional kinds. The argument for functionalism is that the same mental state could be implemented by the different states of a universal Turing machine. Despite Putnam's rejection of functionalism, it has continued to flourish and been developed into numerous versions by Fodor, David Marr, Daniel Dennett, and David Lewis, among others.Marhaba, Sadi. (2004) ''Funzionalismo''in "Enciclopedia Garzantina della Filosofia" (ed.) Gianni Vattimo. Milan: Garzanti Editori. Functionalism helped lay the foundations for modern cognitive science and is the dominant theory of mind in philosophy today. By 2012 Putnam accepted a modification of functionalism called "liberal functionalism". The view holds that "what matters for consciousness and for mental properties generally is the right sort of functional capacities and not the particular matter that subserves those capacities". The specification of these capacities may refer to what goes on outside the organism's "brain", may include intentional idioms, and need not describe a capacity to compute something or other.

Philosophy of language

Semantic externalism

One of Putnam's contributions to philosophy of language is his claim that "meaning just ain't in the head". His views on meaning, first laid out in ''Meaning and Reference'' (1973), then in'' The Meaning of "Meaning"'' (1975), use his "Twin Earth" thought experiment to illustrate that terms' meanings are determined by factors outside the mind. Twin Earth shows this, according to Putnam, since on Twin Earth everything is identical to Earth, except that its lakes, rivers and oceans are filled with XYZ rather than H2O. Consequently, when an earthling, Fredrick, uses the Earth-English word "water", it has a different meaning from the Twin Earth-English word "water" when used by his physically identical twin, Frodrick, on Twin Earth. Since Fredrick and Frodrick are physically indistinguishable when they utter their respective words, and since their words have different meanings, meaning cannot be determined solely by what is in their heads. This led Putnam to adopt a version of semantic externalism with regard to meaning and mental content. The philosopher of mind and language Donald Davidson, despite his many differences of opinion with Putnam, wrote that semantic externalism constituted an "anti-subjectivist revolution" in philosophers' way of seeing the world. Since Descartes's time, philosophers had been concerned with proving knowledge from the basis of subjective experience. Thanks to Putnam, Saul Kripke, Tyler Burge and others, Davidson said, philosophy could now take the objective realm for granted and start questioning the alleged "truths" of subjective experience.

Theory of meaning

Along with Kripke, Keith Donnellan, and others, Putnam contributed to what is known as the causal theory of reference. In particular, he maintained in ''The Meaning of "Meaning"'' that the objects referred to by natural kind terms—such as "tiger", "water", and "tree"—are the principal elements of the meaning of such terms. There is a linguistic division of labor, analogous to Adam Smith's economic division of labor, according to which such terms have their references fixed by the "experts" in the particular field of science to which the terms belong. So, for example, the reference of the term "lion" is fixed by the community of zoologists, the reference of the term "elm tree" is fixed by the community of botanists, and chemists fix the reference of the term "table salt" as sodium chloride. These referents are considered rigid designators in the Kripkean sense and are disseminated outward to the linguistic community. Putnam specifies a finite sequence of elements (a vector) for the description of the meaning of every term in the language. Such a vector consists of four components: # the object to which the term refers, e.g., the object individuated by the chemical formula H2O; # a set of typical descriptions of the term, referred to as "the stereotype", e.g., "transparent", "colorless", and "hydrating"; # the semantic indicators that place the object into a general category, e.g., "natural kind" and "liquid"; # the syntactic indicators, e.g., "concrete noun" and "mass noun". Such a "meaning-vector" provides a description of the reference and use of an expression within a particular linguistic community. It provides the conditions for its correct usage and makes it possible to judge whether a single speaker attributes the appropriate meaning to it or whether its use has changed enough to cause a difference in its meaning. According to Putnam, it is legitimate to speak of a change in the meaning of an expression only if the reference of the term, and not its stereotype, has changed. But since no possible algorithm can determine which aspect—the stereotype or the reference—has changed in a particular case, it is necessary to consider the usage of other expressions of the language. Since there is no limit to the number of such expressions to be considered, Putnam embraced a form of semantic holism.

Philosophy of mathematics

Putnam made a significant contribution to philosophy of mathematics in the Quine–Putnam "indispensability argument" for mathematical realism.C. S. Hill (ed.), "The Philosophy of Hilary Putnam", Fayetteville, Arkansas 1992. Stephen Yablo considers this argument one of the most challenging in favor of the existence of abstract mathematical entities, such as numbers and sets. The form of the argument is as follows. # One must have ontological commitments to ''all'' entities that are indispensable to the best scientific theories, and to those entities ''only'' (commonly referred to as "all and only"). # Mathematical entities are indispensable to the best scientific theories. Therefore, # One must have ontological commitments to mathematical entities.Putnam, H. ''Mathematics, Matter and Method. Philosophical Papers, vol. 1''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975. 2nd. ed., 1985. The justification for the first premise is the most controversial. Both Putnam and Quine invoke naturalism to justify the exclusion of all non-scientific entities, and hence to defend the "only" part of "all and only". The assertion that "all" entities postulated in scientific theories, including numbers, should be accepted as real is justified by confirmation holism. Since theories are not confirmed in a piecemeal fashion, but as a whole, there is no justification for excluding any of the entities referred to in well-confirmed theories. This puts the nominalist who wishes to exclude the existence of sets and non-Euclidean geometry but include the existence of quarks and other undetectable entities of physics, for example, in a difficult position. Putnam holds the view that mathematics, like physics and other empirical sciences, uses both strict logical proofs and "quasi-empirical" methods. For example, Fermat's last theorem states that for no integer $n>2$ are there positive integer values of ''x'', ''y'', and ''z'' such that $x^n+y^n=z^n$. Before Andrew Wiles proved this for all $n>2$ in 1995, it had been proved for many values of ''n''. These proofs inspired further research in the area, and formed a quasi-empirical consensus for the theorem. Even though such knowledge is more conjectural than a strictly proved theorem, it was still used in developing other mathematical ideas.

Mathematics and computer science

Putnam has contributed to scientific fields not directly related to his work in philosophy. As a mathematician, he contributed to the resolution of Hilbert's tenth problem in mathematics. This problem (now known as Matiyasevich's theorem or the MRDP theorem) was settled by Yuri Matiyasevich in 1970, with a proof that relied heavily on previous research by Putnam, Julia Robinson and Martin Davis. In computability theory, Putnam investigated the structure of the ramified analytical hierarchy, its connection with the constructible hierarchy and its Turing degrees. He showed that there are many levels of the constructible hierarchy that add no subsets of the integers and later, with his student George Boolos, that the first such "non-index" is the ordinal $\beta_0$ of ramified analysis (this is the smallest $\beta$ such that $L_\beta$ is a model of full second-order comprehension), and also, together with a separate paper with Richard Boyd (another of Putnam's students) and Gustav Hensel, how the Davis–MostowskiKleene hyperarithmetical hierarchy of arithmetical degrees can be naturally extended up to $\beta_0$. In computer science, Putnam is known for the Davis–Putnam algorithm for the Boolean satisfiability problem (SAT), developed with Martin Davis in 1960. The algorithm finds whether there is a set of true or false values that satisfies a given Boolean expression so that the entire expression becomes true. In 1962, they further refined the algorithm with the help of George Logemann and Donald W. Loveland. It became known as the DPLL algorithm. It is efficient and still forms the basis of most complete SAT solvers.

Epistemology

In epistemology, Putnam is known for his "brain in a vat" thought experiment (a modernized version of Descartes's evil demon hypothesis). The argument is that one cannot coherently suspect that one is a disembodied "brain in a vat" placed there by some "mad scientist". This follows from the causal theory of reference. Words always refer to the kinds of things they were coined to refer to, the kinds of things their user, or the user's ancestors, experienced. So, if some person, Mary, is a "brain in a vat", whose every experience is received through wiring and other gadgetry created by the mad scientist, then Mary's idea of a brain does not refer to a real brain, since she and her linguistic community have never encountered such a thing. To her a brain is actually an image fed to her through the wiring. Nor does her idea of a vat refer to a real vat. So if, as a brain in a vat, she says, "I'm a brain in a vat", she is actually saying, "I'm a brain-image in a vat-image", which is incoherent. On the other hand, if she is not a brain in a vat, then saying that she is a brain in a vat is still incoherent, because she actually means the opposite. This is a form of epistemological externalism: knowledge or justification depends on factors outside the mind and is not solely determined internally. Putnam has clarified that his real target in this argument was never skepticism, but metaphysical realism.Wright, C. (1992), "On Putnam's Proof That We Are Not Brains-in-a-Vat", Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 92. Since realism of this kind assumes the existence of a gap between how one conceives the world and the way the world really is, skeptical scenarios such as this one (or Descartes's evil demon) present a formidable challenge. By arguing that such a scenario is impossible, Putnam attempts to show that this notion of a gap between one's concept of the world and the way it is is absurd. One cannot have a "God's-eye" view of reality. One is limited to one's conceptual schemes, and metaphysical realism is therefore false.

Metaphilosophy and ontology

In the late 1970s and the 1980s, stimulated by results from mathematical logic and by some of Quine's ideas, Putnam abandoned his long-standing defence of metaphysical realism—the view that the categories and structures of the external world are both causally and ontologically independent of the conceptualizations of the human mind. He adopted a rather different view, which he called "internal realism" or "pragmatic realism". Internal realism is the view that, although the world may be ''causally'' independent of the human mind, the world's structure—its division into kinds, individuals and categories—is a function of the human mind, and hence the world is not ''ontologically'' independent. The general idea is influenced by Immanuel Kant's idea of the dependence of our knowledge of the world on the categories of thought. The problem with metaphysical realism, according to Putnam, is that it fails to explain the possibility of reference and truth. According to the metaphysical realist, our concepts and categories refer because they match up in some mysterious manner with the categories, kinds and individuals inherent in the external world. But how is it possible that the world "carves up" into certain structures and categories, the mind carves up the world into its own categories and structures, and the two carvings perfectly coincide? The answer must be that the world does not come pre-structured but that the human mind and its conceptual schemes impose structure on it. In ''Reason, Truth, and History'', Putnam identified truth with what he termed "idealized rational acceptability." The theory, which owes something to C. S. Peirce, is that a belief is true if it would be accepted by anyone under ideal epistemic conditions. Nelson Goodman formulated a similar notion in ''Fact, Fiction and Forecast'' (1956). "We have come to think of the actual as one among many possible worlds. We need to repaint that picture. All possible worlds lie within the actual one", Goodman wrote. Putnam rejected this form of social constructivism, but retained the idea that there can be many correct descriptions of reality. None of these descriptions can be scientifically proven to be the "one, true" description of the world. For Putnam, this does not imply relativism, because not all descriptions are equally correct and correctness is not determined subjectively. Putnam renounced internal realism in his reply to Simon Blackburn in the volume ''Reading Putnam''. The reasons he gave up his "antirealism" are stated in the first three of his replies in "The Philosophy of Hilary Putnam", an issue of the journal ''Philosophical Topics'', where he gives a history of his use(s) of the term "internal realism", and, at more length, in his ''The Threefold Cord: Mind, Body and World'' (1999). Although he abandoned internal realism, Putnam still resisted the idea that any given thing or system of things can be described in exactly one complete and correct way. He thus accepts "conceptual relativity"—the view that it may be a matter of choice or convention, e.g., whether mereological sums exist, or whether spacetime points are individuals or mere limits. In other words, having abandoned internal realism, Putnam came to accept metaphysical realism in the broad sense of rejecting all forms of verificationism and all talk of our "making" the world. Under the influence of Peirce and William James, Putnam also became convinced that there is no fact–value dichotomy; that is, normative (e.g., ethical and aesthetic) judgments often have a factual basis, while scientific judgments have a normative element.

Neopragmatism and Wittgenstein

At the end of the 1980s, Putnam became increasingly disillusioned with what he perceived as the "scientism" and the rejection of history that characterize modern analytic philosophy. He rejected internal realism because it assumed a "cognitive interface" model of the relation between the mind and the world. Putnam claimed that the very notion of truth would have to be abandoned by a consistent eliminative materialist. Under the increasing influence of James and the pragmatists, he adopted a direct realist view of this relation. For a time, under the influence of Ludwig Wittgenstein, he adopted a pluralist view of philosophy itself and came to view most philosophical problems as nothing more than conceptual or linguistic confusions created by philosophers by using ordinary language out of context. A book of articles on pragmatism by Ruth Anna Putnam and Hilary Putnam, ''Pragmatism as a Way of Life: The Lasting Legacy of William James and John Dewey'' (Harvard UP, ), edited by David Macarthur, was published in 2017. Many of Putnam's last works addressed the concerns of ordinary people, particularly social problems. For example, he wrote about the nature of democracy, social justice and religion. He also discussed Jürgen Habermas's ideas, and wrote articles influenced by continental philosophy.

Criticism

Major works and bibliography

Vincent C. Müller compiled a detailed bibliography of Putnam's writings, citing 16 books and 198 articles, published in 1993 in PhilPapers.Müller, V. C.
"Bibliography of Hilary Putnam's Writings"
PhilPapers, 1993. * An updated version
"Hilary Putnam Bibliography"
appeared on Harvard's servers in 2008.
* ''Philosophy of Mathematics: Selected Readings''. Edited with Paul Benacerraf. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1964. 2nd ed., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. * "The 'Innateness Hypothesis' and Explanatory Models in Linguistics", ''Synthese'', Vol. 17, No. 1, March 1967, pp. 12–22.
''Philosophy of Logic''
New York: Harper & Row, 1971. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1972. * ''Mathematics, Matter and Method. Philosophical Papers, vol. 1''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975. 2nd. ed., 1985 paperback: * ''Mind, Language and Reality. Philosophical Papers, vol. 2''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975. 2003 paperback: * ''Meaning and the Moral Sciences''. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978. * ''Reason, Truth, and History''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981. 2004 paperback: * ''Realism and Reason. Philosophical Papers, vol. 3.'' Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. 2002 paperback: * ''Methodology, Epistemology, and Philosophy of Science: Essays in Honour of Wolfgang Stegmüller''. edited with Wilhelm K. Essler and Carl G. Hempel. Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1983. * ''Epistemology, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science: Essays in Honour of Carl G. Hempel''. edited with Wilhelm K. Essler and Wolfgang Stegmüller. Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1985. * ''The Many Faces of Realism''. La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1987. * ''Representation and Reality''. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1988. * ''Realism with a Human Face''. edited by J. F. Conant. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1990
9780674749450 Description.
* ''Renewing Philosophy''. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1992
9780674760943 Description.
* ''Pursuits of Reason: Essays in Honor of Stanley Cavell''. edited with Ted Cohen and Paul Guyer. Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 1993. * ''Words and Life''. edited by J. F. Conant. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1994
9780674956070 Description.
* ''Pragmatism: An Open Question''. Oxford: Blackwell, 1995. * ''The Threefold Cord: Mind, Body, and World''. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. * ''Enlightenment and Pragmatism''. Assen: Koninklijke Van Gorcum, 2001. 48pp. * ''The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy and Other Essays''. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2002
Description.
* ''Ethics Without Ontology''. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2002
9780674018518 Description.
* ''Jewish Philosophy as a Guide to Life: Rosenzweig, Buber, Levinas, Wittgenstein''. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008. * ''Philosophy in an Age of Science,'' edited by Mario De Caro and David Macarthur. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2012
9780674050136 Description.
* ''Naturalism, Realism, and Normativity,'' edited by Mario De Caro, Cam, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2016, . *
Pragmatism as a Way of Life: The Lasting Legacy of William James and John Dewey
' (with Ruth Anna Putnam), edited by David Macarthur, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2017
Description.
.

* American philosophy * List of American philosophers * "Is Logic Empirical?"

Notes

References

* Bechtel, W. & Mundale, J. "Multiple Realizability Revisited" in ''Philosophy of Science'' 66: pp. 175–207. * Bickle, J. "Multiple Realizability" in ''The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' (Fall 2006 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)
(online)
* Brown, C. "Internal Realism: Transcendental Idealism?" ''Midwest Studies in Philosophy'' 12 (1988): pp. 145–155. * Casati R. "Hilary Putnam" in ''Enciclopedia Garzanti della Filosofia''. Gianni Vattimo (ed). Milan: Garzanti Editori, 2004. . * Churchland, P. ''Neurophilosophy''. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1986. * Clark, P. & Hale, B. (eds.) ''Reading Putnam''. Oxford: Blackwell, 1995. * Dummett, M. ''The Logical Basis of Metaphysics''. Harvard University Press. Cambridge (MA) 1972. * Fodor, J. & Lepore, E. ''Holism: A Shopper's Guide''. Oxford: Blackwell, 1992. * Foley, M. ''Confronting the War Machine''. North Carolina: North Carolina Press. 1983. . * Gaynesford, M. de ''Hilary Putnam'', Acumen, 2006. (See Robert Maximilian de Gaynesford) * Hickey, L. P., ''Hilary Putnam'' (London / New York: Continuum, 2009). * Hill, C. S. (ed.) ''The Philosophy of Hilary Putnam'', Fayetteville, Arkansas. 1992. * Kim, J. "Multiple Realizability and the Metaphysics of Reduction." ''Philosophy and Phenomenological Research'' 52: 1–26. * King, P. J. ''One Hundred Philosophers: The Life and Work of the World's Greatest Thinkers''. Barron's 2004, p. 170. * Lewis, D. "Review of Art, Mind, and Religion." ''Journal of Philosophy'' 66 (1969): 23–35. * Matiyesavic, Y. 'Hilbert's Tenth Problem''. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1993. . * Penco, C. ''Olismo e Molecularismo'' in ''Olismo'', ed. Massimo Dell'Utri. Quodlibet. Macerata. 2002. * Putnam. ''Philosophy of Mathematics: Selected Readings''. Edited with P. Benacerraf. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, (1964). 2nd ed., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. * ———. ''Mind, Language and Reality. Philosophical Papers, vol. 2''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, (1975). * ———. "Brains in a Vat" in ''Reason, Truth, and History'', Cambridge University Press (1981); reprinted in DeRose and Warfield, editors (1999): ''Skepticism: A Contemporary Reader'', Oxford University Press. * ———. ''Realism with a Human Face''. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1990. * ———. ''The Threefold Cord: Mind, Body, and World''. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. * ___. "Mind, Body and World in the Philosophy of Hilary Putnam". Interview wit Léo Peruzzo Júnior. In: Transformação Journal - UNESP, v.38, n.2, 2015. * Richardson, R. "Functionalism and Reductionism." ''Philosophy of Science'' 46 (1979): 533–558. * Searle, J.
Minds, Brains and Programs
" ''Behavioral and Brain Sciences'' 3 (1980). * Wertheimer, L.
"Finding My Religion
" ''Boston Globe'', July 30, 2006. * Yablo, S

June 8, 1998.

* Y. Ben-Menahem (ed.), ''Hilary Putnam'', Contemporary Philosophy in Focus, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2005. * P. Clark-B. Hale (eds.), ''Reading Putnam'', Blackwell, Cambridge (Massachusetts)-Oxford 1995. * C. S. Hill (ed.), ''The Philosophy of Hilary Putnam'', Fayetteville, Arkansas 1992. * M. Rüdel, ''Erkenntnistheorie und Pragmatik: Untersuchungen zu Richard Rorty und Hilary Putnam'' (dissertation), Hamburg 1987. * Maximilian de Gaynesford, ''Hilary Putnam'', McGill-Queens University Press / Acumen, 2006. * Auxier, R. E., Anderson, D. R., & Hahn, L. E., eds., ''The Philosophy of Hilary Putnam'', The Library of Living Philosophers, Open Court, Chicago, Illinois, 2015. * Sanjit Chakraborty, ''Understanding Meaning and World: A Relook on Semantic Externalism'', Cambridge Scholars Publishing, London, 2016.

* * * *
An extensive bibliography

An extensive directory
*
''London Review of Books'' contributor page

Hilary Putnam: On Mind, Meaning and Reality
Interview by Josh Harlan, ''The Harvard Review of Philosophy'', spring 1992.
"To Think with Integrity"
Hilary Putnam's Farewell Lecture, ''The Harvard Review of Philosophy'', Spring 2000.

audio/video lecture, audio discussion, March 2007, University College Dublin.
Hilary Putnam – Externalism: Its Motivation And Its Critics
video of a lecture, delivered at Harvard University on October 4, 2007. *
''The Moscow Center for Consciousness Studies'' video interview with Hilary Putnam
2010-04-21 (with transcript) {{DEFAULTSORT:Putnam, Hilary Category:1926 births Category:2016 deaths Category:20th-century American mathematicians Category:20th-century American non-fiction writers Category:20th-century American philosophers Category:20th-century essayists Category:21st-century American mathematicians Category:21st-century American non-fiction writers Category:21st-century American philosophers Category:21st-century essayists Category:American academics Category:American Jews Category:American logicians Category:American male essayists Category:American male non-fiction writers Category:Analytic philosophers Category:Central High School (Philadelphia) alumni Category:Contemporary philosophers Category:Corresponding Fellows of the British Academy Category:Deaths from cancer in Massachusetts Category:Deaths from lung cancer Category:Epistemologists Category:Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Category:Harvard University alumni Category:Harvard University faculty Category:Jewish philosophers Category:Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty Category:Mathematicians from Illinois Category:Members of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts Category:Metaphilosophers Category:Metaphysicians Category:Northwestern University faculty Category:Ontologists Category:Philosophers of education Category:Philosophers of Judaism Category:Philosophers of language Category:Philosophers of logic Category:Philosophers of mathematics Category:Philosophers of mind Category:Philosophers of science Category:Philosophers of technology Category:Philosophy academics Category:Philosophy writers Category:Pragmatists Category:Princeton University faculty Category:Scientists from Chicago Category:Tarski lecturers Category:University of California, Los Angeles alumni Category:University of Pennsylvania alumni