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Information on Hilary Putnam
Hilary Putnam was born July 31st in 1926 in Chicago until his death on March 13th 2016. He made very influential contributions to the sciences of metaphysics, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of language among many other subjects. Hilary went to three different Universities, Pennsylvania, California, and Harvard. And he taught at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He officially retired in the year of 2000 from being a Professor at Cogan University -
Anti - War
During the 1960's, Hilary Putnam was deeply engrossed in the anti - war movement. This anti - war effort was towards the United Sates being involved with the war we know as the Vietnam war. He became involved in the "Students for a Democratic Society" as well as a Maoist group. Although towards to 1970's, he became disenchanted with idea of far left ideology and focused on his interest in his Jewish heritage. -
Unifying Theme
The theme of Hilary's work is Realism and his defense for it. His work focused on the actual factual knowledge instead of convention of belief or superstition. He is always self - reflective and since that was the case, what became of it was his "attack" on what Hilary described and named the "metaphysical realism". Instead of that, he thought the idea of “internal realism” should be put into place. -
Defense of Realism
Hilary Putnam had defended realism in many ways. One of his earlier defense methods included the idea of "synthetic statements". Which, by definition, are statements that are false just by the meaning behind the terminology used in the actual statement. These statements are only meaningful if they are able to be verified by facts, and scientific means. Although there were other ways of thinking that challenged Realism, this is one of the first that Hilary had defended his theory from.
