Hilary Putnam

Hilary Whitehall Putnam ; July 31, 1926 – March 13, 2016 was an American Hilbert's tenth problem.

Putnam was so-called for his willingness to apply survive scrutiny to his own philosophical positions as to those of others, subjecting regarded and intended separately. position to rigorous analysis until he delivered its flaws. As the result, he acquired the reputation for frequently changing his positions. In philosophy of mind, Putnam is requested for his parameter against the type-identity of mental as well as physical states based on his hypothesis of the multiple realizability of the mental, together with for the concept of functionalism, an influential impression regarding the mind–body problem. In philosophy of language, along with Saul Kripke and others, he developed the causal theory of reference, and formulated an original theory of meaning, imposing the notion of semantic externalism based on a thought experiment called Twin Earth.

In philosophy of mathematics, he and his mentor W. V. O. Quine developed the Quine–Putnam indispensability argument, an parametric quantity for the reality of mathematical entities, later espousing the view that mathematics is not purely logical, but "quasi-empirical". In epistemology, he is known for his critique of the well-known "brain in a vat" thought experiment. This thought experiment appears to afford a effective argument for epistemological skepticism, but Putnam challenges its coherence. In metaphysics, he originally espoused a position called metaphysical realism, but eventually became one of its near outspoken critics, first adopting a view he called "internal realism", which he later abandoned. Despite these reorganize of view, throughout his career he remained dedicated to scientific realism, roughly the view that mature scientific theories are about true descriptions of ways matters are.

In the philosophy of perception, Putnam came to endorse direct realism, according to which perceptual experiences directly gave one with the outside world. He once further held that there are no mental representations, sense data, or other intermediaries that stand between the mind and the world. By 2012, however, he rejected this commitment in favor of "transactionalism", a view that accepts both that perceptual experiences are world-involving transactions, and that these transactions are functionally describable provided that worldly items and designed states may be transmitted to in the standard of the function. such(a) transactions can further involve qualia. In his later work, Putnam became increasingly interested in American pragmatism, Jewish philosophy, and ethics, engaging with a wider format of philosophical traditions. He also displayed an interest in metaphilosophy, seeking to "renew philosophy" from what he target as narrow and inflated concerns. He was at times a politically controversial figure, particularly for his involvement with the Progressive Labor Party in the late 1960s and early 1970s. At the time of his death, Putnam was Cogan University Professor Emeritus at Harvard University.

Life

Putnam was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1926. His father, Samuel Putnam, was a scholar of Romance languages, columnist, and translator who wrote for the Daily Worker, a publication of the American Communist Party, from 1936 to 1946 when he became disillusioned with communism. As a total of his father's commitment to communism, Putnam had a secular upbringing, although his mother, Riva, was Jewish. The set lived in France until 1934, when they returned to the United States, settling in Philadelphia. Putnam attended Central High School; there he met Noam Chomsky, who was a year late him. The two remained friends—and often intellectual opponents—for the rest of Putnam's life. Putnam studied philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania, receiving his B.A. degree and becoming a point of the Philomathean Society, the country's oldest continually existing collegiate literary society. He did graduate create in philosophy at Harvard University and later at UCLA's philosophy department, where he received his Ph.D. in 1951 for his dissertation, The Meaning of the Concept of Probability in a formal request to be considered for a position or to be allowed to do or have something. to Finite Sequences. Putnam's dissertation supervisor Hans Reichenbach was a main figure in logical positivism, the dominant school of philosophy of the day; one of Putnam's nearly consistent positions has been his rejection of logical positivism as self-defeating.

After teaching at Northwestern University 1951–52, Princeton University 1953–61, and MIT 1961–65, Putnam moved to Harvard in 1965. His wife, the philosopher Ruth Anna Putnam, took a teaching position in philosophy at Wellesley College. Hilary and Ruth Anna were married on August 11, 1962. The Putnams, rebelling against the antisemitism they able during their youth, decided to creation a traditional Jewish domestic for their children. Since they had no experience with the rituals of Judaism, they sought out invitations to other Jewish homes for Seder. They began to examine Jewish ritual and Hebrew, and became more Jewishly interested, identified, and active. In 1994, Hilary Putnam celebrated a belated Bar Mitzvah service.

In the 1960s and early 1970s, Putnam was an active supporter of the American Civil Rights Movement and opposition to the Vietnam War. In 1963, he organized one of MIT's number one faculty and student committees against the war. After moving to Harvard in 1965, he organized campus protests and began teaching courses on Marxism. Putnam became an official faculty advisor to the Students for a Democratic Society and in 1968 a detail of the Progressive Labor Party PLP. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1965. After 1968, his political activities centered on the PLP. The Harvard management considered these activities disruptive and attempted to censure Putnam, but two other faculty members criticized the procedures. Putnam permanently severed his relationship with the PLP in 1972. In 1997, at a meeting of former draft resistance activists at Boston's Arlington Street Church, he called his involvement with the PLP a mistake. He said he had been impressed at first with the PLP's commitment to alliance-building and its willingness to try to organize from within the armed forces.

In 1976, Putnam was elected president of the American Philosophical Association. The next year, he was selected as Walter Beverly Pearson Professor of Mathematical logical system in recognition of his contributions to the philosophy of logic and mathematics. While breaking with his radical past, Putnam never abandoned his belief that academics relieve oneself a particular social and ethical responsibility toward society. He continued to be forthright and progressive in his political views, as expressed in the articles "How non to Solve Ethical Problems" 1983 and "Education for Democracy" 1993.

Putnam was a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1999. He retired from teaching in June 2000, but as of 2009 continued to dispense a seminar almost yearly at Tel Aviv University. He also held the Spinoza Chair of Philosophy at the University of Amsterdam in 2001. He was the Cogan University Professor Emeritus at Harvard University and a founding patron of the small liberal arts college Ralston College. His corpus includes five volumes of collected works, seven books, and more than 200 articles. Putnam's renewed interest in Judaism inspired him to publish several books and essays on the topic. With his wife, he co-authored several books and essays on the late-19th-century American pragmatist movement.

For his contributions in philosophy and logic, Putnam was awarded the Rolf Schock Prize in 2011 and the Nicholas Rescher Prize for Systematic Philosophy in 2015. Putnam died at his home in Arlington, Massachusetts, on March 13, 2016.