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Hilary Putnam July 31st, 1926 - March 13th 2016

By KatelynFiedler

  • Born July 31st, 1926

    Hilary Putnam was born on July 31st, 1926 in Chicago, IL.

  • Education

    Hilary Putnam majored in philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania. One of his professors suggested that he pursued a doctorate in philosophy. He then went to Harvard and graduated with a Ph.D. in philosophy in 1951.

  • Functionalism

    Functionalism
    Hilary Putnam spent time focusing on the function and structure of mental states in the human mind. Putnam, 2015 stated, "the mind cannot be described without describing the transactions of the organism with an environment, including, in the human case, the social environment." Hilary Putnam's theorized that the environment we are surrounded by has a big influence on our way of thinking. This idea influenced psychology because it focuses on how people think and their mental reality.

  • The meaning of 'meaning'

    The meaning of 'meaning'
    In the 1970s Hilary Putnam wrote an essay on the meaning of "meaning." He thought that meaning is a mental entity or a set intention. "Another assumption deemed obvious by the secular reflection on language is the one
    according to which two terms cannot differ in extension and have the same intension. " (Massimo, 2017). Hilary Putnam idea is that a meaning has one specific truth.

  • Conceptual relativity

    Conceptual relativity
    Conceptual relativity is a topic that Hilary Putnam worked on throughout his entire career. His idea of conceptual relativity states that "two sentences saying different things about the same portion of reality and that, nevertheless, are both true." (Massimo, 2017). Hilary Putnam's idea suggests that two different perspectives on a topic can be true because they are both from a different perspective allowing them to be cognitively equivalent.

  • Functionalism Video

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mG-LWOq6jvY In this video, Hilary Putnam does a great job at quickly simplifying functionalism by comparing the human mind and computers.

  • Moral Philosophy

    Moral Philosophy
    Hilary Putnam spent time trying to understand what is considered the truth. Massimo, 2017 shared that "Given that talk about facts regarding bacteria, atoms, subatomic particles, spatiotemporal curvature and many others besides are by now quite widespread, ‘‘the idea that a ‘fact’ is just a sensible ‘impression’ would hardly seem to be tenable any longer’’ (Putnam 2002, 22)." Hilary Putnam is saying that facts intertwine with values and cannot be separated.

  • Died March 13th, 2016

  • Citations

    Citations
    Putnam, Hilary, and Léo Peruzzo. “MIND, BODY AND WORLD IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF HILARY PUTNAM.” Transformação, vol. 38, no. 2, 2015, pp. 211–16, https://doi.org/10.1590/S0101-317320150002000011. Dell’Utri, Massimo. “‘Metaphysics Without Ethics Is Blind’: The Legacy of Hilary Putnam.” Journal for General Philosophy of Science, vol. 48, no. 4, 2017, pp. 501–15, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10838-017-9385-9.