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Hilary's Early Life and Beliefs
Putnam was involved in the antiwar that was against the U.S participation. He was involved in the Students for Democratic Society, and a Maoist group. So his originally views on philosophy and science were based on the democratic side. He eventually adapted into his Jewish heritage and went to the far left ideology -
Concept of Meaning
Putnam proposed this within a paper "The Meaning of "Meaning" " which he explains that meanings are not mental images but actual reality. He believes that statements that are just meanings and neither true or false, they are still cognitively meaningful. He ties this into how if scientific theories are not understood than their success is impossible to explain.
https://youtu.be/E4HQZrOeZ7E -
Philosphy and Mental Life
Putnam introduced the idea of functionalism. He associates mental state to the functional roles to other mental states and behaviors. He states that the question of mental life and nothing to do with soul stuff. So basically mental state is defined by function as he correlates the brain as the hardware and software being the mind. -
Realism
According to Putnam he said realism is actually metaphysical realism. This is being that we can think about things as they are without thinking and independent of our minds, but then correlating it to the terms of our language. He produced a book " Why There Isn't a Ready- Made World." He related this to science and mathematics where there are different theories or descriptions and then these theories can differ but still explain the same phenomena.
