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Birth
Hilary Whitehall Putman is born. He was know for being a philosopher, mathematician, and computer scientist. He was also known for applying the same level of scrutiny to both his own philosophical ideas as well as others. -
Returning to the US
Putnam lived with his family in France until 1934. Upon returning to the US, the family settled down in Philadelphia where Putnam attended Central High School. While attending CHS he met Noam Chomsky, the two of which were friends, and often intellectual opponents. -
Ph.D studies
Received his Ph.D. in 1951 from UCLA for his dissertation "The Meaning of the Concept of Probability in Application to Finite Sequences." -
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Early Teaching Career
Putnam taught at Northwestern (1951-52), Princeton (1953-61), and MIT (1961-65) -
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Putnam was elected as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In regards to the brain-on-a-vat, it has been used in several science fiction works. It deals with a brain that has been disembodied but continues to have normal conscious experiences through a computer providing stimulus. -
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Contributions to Philosophy
Brain in a Vat by SRFKultur
In regards to science, Putnam believed in scientific realism. "Realism is the only philosophy that does not make the success of science a miracle." Thought experiments such as "brain in a vat" are still used for their value of philosophical skepticism. -
American Philosophical Association
In 1976, he was elected as the President of the American Philosophical Association. Soon after he was selected as Walter Beverly Pearson Professor of Mathematical Logic. Used in a more modern sense, it could be used to describe a person who is in a sophisticated enough virtual reality simulation and unaware of it. Suddenly the science fiction and thought experiment hit a lot closer to home with today's addiction to virtual reality. -
Retirement from teaching
Putnam retired from teaching at Harvard in June of 2000. He continued to give yearly seminars after his retirement until 2009. The point of the BIV experiment is that the brain could still reach the same conclusions in a simulation as it could in a real body, which means that our own conclusions about our daily lives may be questionable. -
Death
Hilary Putnam passed away in his home in Arlington, Massachusetts from mesothelioma.