Hilaryputnam

Hilary Putnam July 31, 1936-March 13, 2016

By Stevensteward214

  • Psychological Predicates and Multiple Realizability

    Psychological Predicates and Multiple Realizability
    Multiple realizability in the philosophy of the mind is a theory that argues that a mental state can be acquired through different physical states. Multiple realizability had been theorized before Putnam by Alan Turing, Putnam initialized the theory into the philosophy of the mind. Hilary Putnam argued in opposition to type physicalism theory and brain state theorists by delving into questions of what pain is and how, not just humans, but animals and hypothetical creatures would sense pain.

  • The Meaning of Meaning and Semantic Externalism

    The Meaning of Meaning and Semantic Externalism
    In "The Meaning of Meaning", Putnam stressed that a word's intent comes from aspects that are beyond the mind with the Twin Earth thought experiment. If two identical beings from twin Earths only difference is what they call water, Putnam says, "...in the sense in which it is used on Twin Earth, the sense of water, what we call "water" simply isn't water; while in the sense in which it is used on Earth, the sense of water, what the Twin Earthians call "water" simply isn't water." (Putnam 1975).

  • The No Miracles/Success Argument of the Quine-Putnam Indispensability Argument

    The No Miracles/Success Argument of the Quine-Putnam Indispensability Argument
    The Quine–Putnam indispensability argument is widely considered a crucially important argument in the philosophy of mathematics. Putnam's success argument asserts that because of the mathematical successes in the ability to explain scientific functions, realism mathematics must be legitimate. As Russell Marcus wrote in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "The success argument emphasizes the success of science, rather than the construction and interpretation of a best theory." (Marcus).

  • Brain in a Vat

    Brain in a Vat
    The "brain in a vat" thought experiment was devised as an assertion of epistemology externalism. The idea is that if the statement of any person being a brain in a vat and sent images by wiring, the experiences that one has are incoherent relative to the existence of the world that the brain in a vat is in. Michael McKinsey wrote in "Skepticism and Content Externalism", "...propositions about the external world that we take for granted are propositions that we don’t know." (McKinsey 2018).

  • References

    References
    Putnam, Hilary. (1975). The Meaning of "Meaning". University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis. Retrieved from the University of Minnesota Digital Conservancy, https://hdl.handle.net/11299/185225. Marcus, Russell. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, https://iep.utm.edu/indimath/#H3.

  • References Continued

    References Continued
    McKinsey, Michael, "Skepticism and Content Externalism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2018 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2018/entries/skepticism-content-externalism/.