Advertisement
| hilary putnam reason truth and history: Reason, Truth and History Hilary Putnam, 1981-12-31 'This is a timely book, with penetrating discussion of issues very much in the forefront of the contemporary philosophy. Despite the prominence of negative arguments it contains much to contribute positively to our understanding of what is needed for a conception of rationality and objectivity that covers ethics and value theory generally as well as physics.' |
| hilary putnam reason truth and history: Words and Life Hilary Putnam, 1994 Putnam offers a sweeping account of the sources of several central problems of philosophy. A unifying theme of the volume is that reductionism, scientism, and old-style disenchanted naturalism tend to be obstacles to philosophical progress. |
| hilary putnam reason truth and history: Representation and Reality Hilary Putnam, 1988 The author, one of the first philosophers to advance the notion that the computer is an apt model for the mind, takes a radical view of his own theory of functionalism in this book. |
| hilary putnam reason truth and history: The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy and Other Essays Hilary Putnam, 2004-03-30 If philosophy has any business in the world, it is the clarification of our thinking and the clearing away of ideas that cloud the mind. In this book, one of the world's preeminent philosophers takes issue with an idea that has found an all-too-prominent place in popular culture and philosophical thought: the idea that while factual claims can be rationally established or refuted, claims about value are wholly subjective, not capable of being rationally argued for or against. Although it is on occasion important and useful to distinguish between factual claims and value judgments, the distinction becomes, Hilary Putnam argues, positively harmful when identified with a dichotomy between the objective and the purely subjective. Putnam explores the arguments that led so much of the analytic philosophy of language, metaphysics, and epistemology to become openly hostile to the idea that talk of value and human flourishing can be right or wrong, rational or irrational; and by which, following philosophy, social sciences such as economics have fallen victim to the bankrupt metaphysics of Logical Positivism. Tracing the problem back to Hume's conception of a matter of fact as well as to Kant's distinction between analytic and synthetic judgments, Putnam identifies a path forward in the work of Amartya Sen. Lively, concise, and wise, his book prepares the way for a renewed mutual fruition of philosophy and the social sciences. |
| hilary putnam reason truth and history: The Many Faces of Realism Hilary Putnam, 1987 The first two lectures place the alternative I defend -- a kind of pragmatic realism -- in a historical and metaphysical context. Part of that context is provided by Husserl's remark that the history of modern philosophy begins with Galileo -- that is, modern philosophy has been hypnotized by the idea that scientific facts are all the facts there are. Another part is provided by the analysis of a very simple example of what I call 'contextual relativity'. The position I defend holds that truth depends on conceptual scheme and it is nonetheless 'real truth'. In my third lecture I turn to the Kantian antecedents of this view, explaining what I think should be retained of the Kantian idea of autonomy as the central theme of morality, and extracting from Kant's work a 'moral image of the world' that connects the ideals of equality and intellectual liberty. In this lecture I defend the idea that moral images are an indispensible part of our moral and cultural heritage. In the final lecture I defend the idea of moral objectivity. I compare our epistemological positions in ethics, history, analysis of human character, and science, and I argue that in no area can we hope for a 'foundation' which is more ultimate than the beliefs that actually, at a given time, function as foundational in the area, the beliefs concerning which one has to say 'this is where my spade is turned'. In ethics such beliefs are represented in moral images of the world. |
| hilary putnam reason truth and history: Hilary Putnam Urszula M. Żegleń, James Conant, 2002 One of the most influential contemporary philosophers, Hilary Putnam's involvement in philosophy spans philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, ontology and epistemology and logic. This specially commissioned collection discusses his contribution to the realist and pragmatist debate. Hilary Putnam comments on the issues raised in each article, making it invaluable for any scholar of his work. |
| hilary putnam reason truth and history: Representing and Intervening Ian Hacking, 1983-10-20 This 1983 book is a lively and clearly written introduction to the philosophy of natural science, organized around the central theme of scientific realism. It has two parts. 'Representing' deals with the different philosophical accounts of scientific objectivity and the reality of scientific entities. The views of Kuhn, Feyerabend, Lakatos, Putnam, van Fraassen, and others, are all considered. 'Intervening' presents the first sustained treatment of experimental science for many years and uses it to give a new direction to debates about realism. Hacking illustrates how experimentation often has a life independent of theory. He argues that although the philosophical problems of scientific realism can not be resolved when put in terms of theory alone, a sound philosophy of experiment provides compelling grounds for a realistic attitude. A great many scientific examples are described in both parts of the book, which also includes lucid expositions of recent high energy physics and a remarkable chapter on the microscope in cell biology. |
| hilary putnam reason truth and history: Beyond the Analytic-Continental Divide Jeffrey A. Bell, Andrew Cutrofello, Paul M. Livingston, 2015-08-27 This forward-thinking collection presents new work that looks beyond the division between the analytic and continental philosophical traditions—one that has long caused dissension, mutual distrust, and institutional barriers to the development of common concerns and problems. Rather than rehearsing the causes of the divide, contributors draw upon the problems, methods, and results of both traditions to show what post-divide philosophical work looks like in practice. Ranging from metaphysics and philosophy of mind to political philosophy and ethics, the papers gathered here bring into mutual dialogue a wide range of recent and contemporary thinkers, and confront leading problems common to both traditions, including methodology, ontology, meaning, truth, values, and personhood. Collectively, these essays show that it is already possible to foresee a future for philosophical thought and practice no longer determined neither as analytic nor as continental, but, instead, as a pluralistic synthesis of what is best in both traditions. The new work assembled here shows how the problems, projects, and ambitions of twentieth-century philosophy are already being taken up and productively transformed to produce new insights, questions, and methods for philosophy today. |
| hilary putnam reason truth and history: Philosophy in an Age of Science Hilary Putnam, 2012-04-17 Hilary Putnam's unceasing self-criticism has led to the frequent changes of mind he is famous for, but his thinking is also marked by considerable continuity. A simultaneous interest in science and ethicsÑunusual in the current climate of contentionÑhas long characterized his thought. In Philosophy in an Age of Science, Putnam collects his papers for publicationÑhis first volume in almost two decades. Mario De Caro and David Macarthur's introduction identifies central themes to help the reader negotiate between Putnam past and Putnam present: his critique of logical positivism; his enduring aspiration to be realist about rational normativity; his anti-essentialism about a range of central philosophical notions; his reconciliation of the scientific worldview and the humanistic tradition; and his movement from reductive scientific naturalism to liberal naturalism. Putnam returns here to some of his first enthusiasms in philosophy, such as logic, mathematics, and quantum mechanics. The reader is given a glimpse, too, of ideas currently in development on the subject of perception. Putnam's work, contributing to a broad range of philosophical inquiry, has been said to represent a Òhistory of recent philosophy in outline.Ó Here it also delineates a possible future. |
| hilary putnam reason truth and history: The Cambridge Companion to William James Ruth Anna Putnam, 1997-04-13 The most convenient and accessible guide to James currently available. |
| hilary putnam reason truth and history: After Philosophy Kenneth Baynes, James Bohman, Thomas A. McCarthy, Thomas McCarthy, 1987 After Philosophy provides an excellent framework for understanding the most important strains of current philosophical work in North America, England, France, and Germany. The selections from the work of fourteen contemporary philosophers not only display the multiplicity of approaches being pursued since the breakup of any consensus on what philosophy is, but also help to clarify this proliferation of views and to spell out today's basic options for doing, or not doing, philosophy today. With a general introduction delineating what is in dispute between the different parties to the end-of-philosophy debates, brief introductions to the thought of each author, and suggestions for further reading following each selection, After Philosophy is ideally suited for use in any course that includes an overview of the bewildering variety of contemporary approaches to philosophy.The major sections and contributors are: I. The End of Philosophy. Richard Rorty Jean-François Lyotard, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida. II. The Transformation of Philosophy: Systematic Proposals. Donald Davidson, Michael Dummett, Hilary Putnam, Karl-Otto Apel, Jürgen Habermas. III. The Transformation of Philosophy: Hermeneutics, Narrative, Rhetoric. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Paul Ricoeur, Alasdair Maclntyre, Hans Blumenberg, Charles Taylor.Kenneth Baynes is currently doing postgraduate research at the University of Frankfurt. James Bohman lectures in philosophy at Boston University, and Thomas McCarthy is a professor of philosophy at Northwestern University and the editor of the MIT Press series Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought. |
| hilary putnam reason truth and history: The Philosophy of Hilary Putnam Randall E. Auxier, Douglas R. Anderson, Lewis Edwin Hahn, 2015-05-18 Hilary Putnam, who turned 88 in 2014, is one of the world’s greatest living philosophers. He currently holds the position of Cogan University Professor Emeritus of Harvard. He has been called “one of the 20th century’s true philosophic giants” (by Malcolm Thorndike Nicholson in Prospect magazine in 2013). He has been very influential in several different areas of philosophy: philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of science. This volume in the prestigious Library of Living Philosophers series contains 26 chapters original to this work, each written by a well-known philosopher, including the late Richard Rorty and the late Michael Dummett. The volume also includes Putnam’s reply to each of the 26 critical and descriptive essays, which cover the broad range of Putnam’s thought. They are organized thematically into the following parts: Philosophy and Mathematics, Logic and Language, Knowing and Being, Philosophy of Practice, and Elements of Pragmatism. Readers will also appreciate the extensive Intellectual Autobiography. |
| hilary putnam reason truth and history: Moore and Wittgenstein A. Coliva, 2010-09-17 Does scepticism threaten our common sense picture of the world? Does it really undermine our deep-rooted certainties? Answers to these questions are offered through a comparative study of the epistemological work of two key figures in the history of analytic philosophy, G. E. Moore and Ludwig Wittgenstein. |
| hilary putnam reason truth and history: Kurt Gödel and the Foundations of Mathematics Matthias Baaz, Christos H. Papadimitriou, Hilary W. Putnam, Dana S. Scott, Charles L. Harper, Jr, 2011-06-06 This volume commemorates the life, work and foundational views of Kurt Gödel (1906–78), most famous for his hallmark works on the completeness of first-order logic, the incompleteness of number theory, and the consistency - with the other widely accepted axioms of set theory - of the axiom of choice and of the generalized continuum hypothesis. It explores current research, advances and ideas for future directions not only in the foundations of mathematics and logic, but also in the fields of computer science, artificial intelligence, physics, cosmology, philosophy, theology and the history of science. The discussion is supplemented by personal reflections from several scholars who knew Gödel personally, providing some interesting insights into his life. By putting his ideas and life's work into the context of current thinking and perceptions, this book will extend the impact of Gödel's fundamental work in mathematics, logic, philosophy and other disciplines for future generations of researchers. |
| hilary putnam reason truth and history: Truth and Progress Richard Rorty, 1991 The volume complements two highly successful previously published volumes of Richard Rorty's philosophical papers: Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth, and Essays on Heidegger and Others. The essays in the volume engage with the work of many of today's most innovative thinkers including Robert Brandom, Donald Davidson, Daniel Dennett, Jacques Derrida, Juergen Habermas, John McDowell, Hilary Putnam, John Searle, and Charles Taylor. The collection also touches on problems in contemporary feminism raised by Annette Baier, Marilyn Frye, and Catherine MacKinnon, and considers issues connected with human rights and cultural differences. |
| hilary putnam reason truth and history: Realism with a Human Face Hilary Putnam, 1992 One of America's great philosophers says the time has come to reform philosophy. Putnam calls upon philosophers to attend to the gap between the present condition of their subject and the human aspirations that philosophy should and once did claim to represent. His goal is to embed philosophy in social life. |
| hilary putnam reason truth and history: Knowledge Jennifer Nagel, 2014 What is knowledge? Is it the same as opinion or truth? Do you need to be able to justify a claim in order to count as knowing it? How can we know that the outer world is real and not a dream? Questions like these have existed since ancient times, and the branch of philosophy dedicated to answering them - epistemology - has been active for thousands of years. In this thought-provoking Very Short Introduction, Jennifer Nagel considers the central problems and paradoxes in the theory of knowledge and draws attention to the ways in which philosophers and theorists have responded to them. By exploring the relationship between knowledge and truth, and considering the problem of scepticism, Nagel introduces a series of influential historical and contemporary theories of knowledge, incorporating methods from logic, linguistics, and psychology, using a number of everyday examples to demonstrate the key issues and debates. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable. |
| hilary putnam reason truth and history: On Reason Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze, 2008-07-04 A philosophical argument that rationality is based on, or produced from, difference, and is not only worth retaining but necessary in a culturally diverse world. |
| hilary putnam reason truth and history: The Jewish Political Tradition Michael Walzer, Menachem Lorberbaum, Noam J. Zohar, Ari Ackerman, 2006-05-15 This book launches a landmark four-volume collaborative work exploring the political thought of the Jewish people from biblical times to the present. The texts and commentaries in Volume I address the basic question of who ought to rule the community.--Descripción del editor. |
| hilary putnam reason truth and history: Selected Writings on Self-organization, Philosophy, Bioethics, and Judaism Henri Atlan, 2011 During the last thirty years, biophysicist and philosopher Henri Atlan has been a major voice in contemporary European philosophical and bio-ethical debates. In a massive oeuvre that ranges from biology and neural network theory to Spinoza's thought and the history of philosophy, and from artificial intelligence and information theory to Jewish mysticism and to contemporary medical ethics, Atlan has come to offer an exceptionally powerful philosophical argumentation that is as hostile to scientism as it is attentive to biology's conceptual and experimental rigor, as careful with concepts of rationality as it is committed to rethinking the human place in a radically determined yet forever changing world. --Book Jacket. |
| hilary putnam reason truth and history: The Last Word Thomas Nagel, 2001-11-01 If there is such a thing as reason, it has to be universal. Reason must reflect objective principles whose validity is independent of our point of view--principles that anyone with enough intelligence ought to be able to recognize as correct. But this generality of reason is what relativists and subjectivists deny in ever-increasing numbers. And such subjectivism is not just an inconsequential intellectual flourish or badge of theoretical chic. It is exploited to deflect argument and to belittle the pretensions of the arguments of others. The continuing spread of this relativistic way of thinking threatens to make public discourse increasingly difficult and to exacerbate the deep divisions of our society. In The Last Word, Thomas Nagel, one of the most influential philosophers writing in English, presents a sustained defense of reason against the attacks of subjectivism, delivering systematic rebuttals of relativistic claims with respect to language, logic, science, and ethics. He shows that the last word in disputes about the objective validity of any form of thought must lie in some unqualified thoughts about how things are--thoughts that we cannot regard from outside as mere psychological dispositions. |
| hilary putnam reason truth and history: Telling the Truth about History Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt, Margaret Jacob, 2011-02-14 A fascinating historiographical essay. . . . An unusually lucid and inclusive explication of what it ultimately at stake in the culture wars over the nature, goals, and efficacy of history as a discipline.—Booklist |
| hilary putnam reason truth and history: Ethics without Ontology Hilary Putnam, 2005-11-30 In this brief book one of the most distinguished living American philosophers takes up the question of whether ethical judgments can properly be considered objective—a question that has vexed philosophers over the past century. Looking at the efforts of philosophers from the Enlightenment through the twentieth century, Hilary Putnam traces the ways in which ethical problems arise in a historical context. Putnam’s central concern is ontology—indeed, the very idea of ontology as the division of philosophy concerned with what (ultimately) exists. Reviewing what he deems the disastrous consequences of ontology’s influence on analytic philosophy—in particular, the contortions it imposes upon debates about the objective of ethical judgments—Putnam proposes abandoning the very idea of ontology. He argues persuasively that the attempt to provide an ontological explanation of the objectivity of either mathematics or ethics is, in fact, an attempt to provide justifications that are extraneous to mathematics and ethics—and is thus deeply misguided. |
| hilary putnam reason truth and history: Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline Bernard Williams, 2009-02-09 What can--and what can't--philosophy do? What are its ethical risks--and its possible rewards? How does it differ from science? In Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline, Bernard Williams addresses these questions and presents a striking vision of philosophy as fundamentally different from science in its aims and methods even though there is still in philosophy something that counts as getting it right. Written with his distinctive combination of rigor, imagination, depth, and humanism, the book amply demonstrates why Williams was one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century. Spanning his career from his first publication to one of his last lectures, the book's previously unpublished or uncollected essays address metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics, as well as the scope and limits of philosophy itself. The essays are unified by Williams's constant concern that philosophy maintain contact with the human problems that animate it in the first place. As the book's editor, A. W. Moore, writes in his introduction, the title essay is a kind of manifesto for Williams's conception of his own life's work. It is where he most directly asks what philosophy can and cannot contribute to the project of making sense of things--answering that what philosophy can best help make sense of is being human. Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline is one of three posthumous books by Williams to be published by Princeton University Press. In the Beginning Was the Deed: Realism and Moralism in Political Argument was published in the fall of 2005. The Sense of the Past: Essays in the History of Philosophy is being published shortly after the present volume. |
| hilary putnam reason truth and history: Kripke John P. Burgess, 2013-04-03 Saul Kripke has been a major influence on analytic philosophy and allied fields for a half-century and more. His early masterpiece, Naming and Necessity, reversed the pattern of two centuries of philosophizing about the necessary and the contingent. Although much of his work remains unpublished, several major essays have now appeared in print, most recently in his long-awaited collection Philosophical Troubles. In this book Kripke’s long-time colleague, the logician and philosopher John P. Burgess, offers a thorough and self-contained guide to all of Kripke’s published books and his most important philosophical papers, old and new. It also provides an authoritative but non-technical account of Kripke’s influential contributions to the study of modal logic and logical paradoxes. Although Kripke has been anything but a system-builder, Burgess expertly uncovers the connections between different parts of his oeuvre. Kripke is shown grappling, often in opposition to existing traditions, with mysteries surrounding the nature of necessity, rule-following, and the conscious mind, as well as with intricate and intriguing puzzles about identity, belief and self-reference. Clearly contextualizing the full range of Kripke’s work, Burgess outlines, summarizes and surveys the issues raised by each of the philosopher’s major publications. Kripke will be essential reading for anyone interested in the work of one of analytic philosophy’s greatest living thinkers. |
| hilary putnam reason truth and history: The Revival of Pragmatism Morris Dickstein, 1998-11-23 Although long considered the most distinctive American contribution to philosophy, pragmatism—with its problem-solving emphasis and its contingent view of truth—lost popularity in mid-century after the advent of World War II, the horror of the Holocaust, and the dawning of the Cold War. Since the 1960s, however, pragmatism in many guises has again gained prominence, finding congenial places to flourish within growing intellectual movements. This volume of new essays brings together leading philosophers, historians, legal scholars, social thinkers, and literary critics to examine the far-reaching effects of this revival. As the twenty-five intellectuals who take part in this discussion show, pragmatism has become a complex terrain on which a rich variety of contemporary debates have been played out. Contributors such as Richard Rorty, Stanley Cavell, Nancy Fraser, Robert Westbrook, Hilary Putnam, and Morris Dickstein trace pragmatism’s cultural and intellectual evolution, consider its connection to democracy, and discuss its complex relationship to the work of Emerson, Nietzsche, and Wittgenstein. They show the influence of pragmatism on black intellectuals such as W. E. B. Du Bois, explore its view of poetic language, and debate its effects on social science, history, and jurisprudence. Also including essays by critics of the revival such as Alan Wolfe and John Patrick Diggins, the volume concludes with a response to the whole collection from Stanley Fish. Including an extensive bibliography, this interdisciplinary work provides an in-depth and broadly gauged introduction to pragmatism, one that will be crucial for understanding the shape of the transformations taking place in the American social and philosophical scene at the end of the twentieth century. Contributors. Richard Bernstein, David Bromwich, Ray Carney, Stanley Cavell, Morris Dickstein, John Patrick Diggins, Stanley Fish, Nancy Fraser, Thomas C. Grey, Giles Gunn, Hans Joas, James T. Kloppenberg, David Luban, Louis Menand, Sidney Morgenbesser, Richard Poirier, Richard A. Posner, Ross Posnock, Hilary Putnam, Ruth Anna Putnam, Richard Rorty, Michel Rosenfeld, Richard H. Weisberg, Robert B. Westbrook, Alan Wolfe |
| hilary putnam reason truth and history: Skepticism Keith DeRose, Ted A. Warfield, 1999 Skepticism: Contemporary Reader brings together the most important recent contributions to the discussion of skepticism. Covering major approaches to the skeptical problem, it features essays by Anthony Brueckner, Keith DeRose, Fred Dretske, Graeme Forbes, Christopher Hill, David Lewis, Thomas Nagel, Robert Nozick, Hilary Putnam, Ernest Sosa, Gail Stine, Barry Stroud, Peter Unger, and Ted Warfield. |
| hilary putnam reason truth and history: Truth in Context Michael P. Lynch, 1998-12-01 A Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 1999 Academic debates about pluralism and truth have become increasingly polarized in recent years. One side embraces extreme relativism, deeming any talk of objective truth as philosophically naïve. The opposition, frequently arguing that any sort of relativism leads to nihilism, insists on an objective notion of truth according to which there is only one true story of the world. Both sides agree that there is no middle path. In Truth in Context, Michael Lynch argues that there is a middle path, one where metaphysical pluralism is consistent with a robust realism about truth. Drawing on the work of Hilary Putnam, W.V.O. Quine, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, among others, Lynch develops an original version of metaphysical pluralism, which he calls relativistic Kantianism. He argues that one can take facts and propositions as relative without implying that our ordinary concept of truth is a relative, epistemic, or soft concept. The truths may be relative, but our concept of truth need not be. |
| hilary putnam reason truth and history: Philosophy of Mathematics Paul Benacerraf, Hilary Putnam, 1984-01-27 The twentieth century has witnessed an unprecedented 'crisis in the foundations of mathematics', featuring a world-famous paradox (Russell's Paradox), a challenge to 'classical' mathematics from a world-famous mathematician (the 'mathematical intuitionism' of Brouwer), a new foundational school (Hilbert's Formalism), and the profound incompleteness results of Kurt Gödel. In the same period, the cross-fertilization of mathematics and philosophy resulted in a new sort of 'mathematical philosophy', associated most notably (but in different ways) with Bertrand Russell, W. V. Quine, and Gödel himself, and which remains at the focus of Anglo-Saxon philosophical discussion. The present collection brings together in a convenient form the seminal articles in the philosophy of mathematics by these and other major thinkers. It is a substantially revised version of the edition first published in 1964 and includes a revised bibliography. The volume will be welcomed as a major work of reference at this level in the field. |
| hilary putnam reason truth and history: Future Pasts Juliet Floyd, Sanford Shieh, 2001-08-30 This collection of previously unpublished essays presents a new approach to the history of analytic philosophy--one that does not assume at the outset a general characterization of the distinguishing elements of the analytic tradition. Drawing together a venerable group of contributors, including John Rawls and Hilary Putnam, this volume explores the historical contexts in which analytic philosophers have worked, revealing multiple discontinuities and misunderstandings as well as a complex interaction between science and philosophical reflection. |
| hilary putnam reason truth and history: Words, Objects and Events in Economics Peter Róna, László Zsolnai, Agnieszka Wincewicz-Price, 2020-09-03 This open access book examines from a variety of perspectives the disappearance of moral content and ethical judgment from the models employed in the formulation of modern economic theory, and some of the papers contain important proposals about how moral judgment could be reintroduced in economic theory. The chapters collected in this volume result from the favorable reception of the first volume of the Virtues in Economics series and represent further contributions to the themes set out in that volume: (i) examining the philosophical and methodological fallacies of this turn in modern economic theory that the removal of the moral motivation of economic agents from modern economic theory has entailed; and (ii) proposing a return descriptive economics as the means with which the moral content of economic life could be restored in economic theory. This book is of interest to researchers and students of the methodology of economics, ethics, philosophers concerned with agency and economists who build economic models that rest in the intention of the agent. |
| hilary putnam reason truth and history: Knowledge from a Human Point of View Ana-Maria Crețu, Michela Massimi, 2019-11-29 This open access book – as the title suggests – explores some of the historical roots and epistemological ramifications of perspectivism. Perspectivism has recently emerged in philosophy of science as an interesting new position in the debate between scientific realism and anti-realism. But there is a lot more to perspectivism than discussions in philosophy of science so far have suggested. Perspectivism is a much broader view that emphasizes how our knowledge (in particular our scientific knowledge of nature) is situated; it is always from a human vantage point (as opposed to some Nagelian view from nowhere). This edited collection brings together a diverse team of established and early career scholars across a variety of fields (from the history of philosophy to epistemology and philosophy of science). The resulting nine essays trace some of the seminal ideas of perspectivism back to Kant, Nietzsche, the American Pragmatists, and Putnam, while the second part of the book tackles issues concerning the relation between perspectivism, relativism, and standpoint theories, and the implications of perspectivism for epistemological debates about veritism, epistemic normativity and the foundations of human knowledge. |
| hilary putnam reason truth and history: The Ashtray Errol Morris, 2018-05-16 Filmmaker Errol Morris offers his perspective on the world and his powerful belief in the necessity of truth. In 1972, philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn threw an ashtray at Errol Morris. This book is the result. At the time, Morris was a graduate student. Now we know him as one of the most celebrated and restlessly probing filmmakers of our time, the creator of such classics of documentary investigation as The Thin Blue Line and The Fog of War. Kuhn, meanwhile, was—and, posthumously, remains—a star in his field, the author of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, a landmark book that has sold well over a million copies and introduced the concept of “paradigm shifts” to the larger culture. And Morris thought the idea was bunk. The Ashtray tells why—and in doing so, it makes a powerful case for Morris’s way of viewing the world, and the centrality to that view of a fundamental conception of the necessity of truth. “For me,” Morris writes, “truth is about the relationship between language and the world: a correspondence idea of truth.” He has no patience for philosophical systems that aim for internal coherence and disdain the world itself. Morris is after bigger game: he wants to establish as clearly as possible what we know and can say about the world, reality, history, our actions and interactions. It’s the fundamental desire that animates his filmmaking, whether he’s probing Robert McNamara about Vietnam or the oddball owner of a pet cemetery. Truth may be slippery, but that doesn’t mean we have to grease its path of escape through philosophical evasions. Rather, Morris argues powerfully, it is our duty to do everything we can to establish and support it. In a time when truth feels ever more embattled, under siege from political lies and virtual lives alike, The Ashtray is a bracing reminder of its value, delivered by a figure who has, over decades, uniquely earned our trust through his commitment to truth. No Morris fan should miss it. |
| hilary putnam reason truth and history: Narrow Content Juhani Yli-Vakkuri, John Hawthorne, 2018 Can there be 'narrow' mental content, that is entirely determined by the goings-on inside the head of the thinker? This book argues not, and defends instead a thoroughgoing externalism: the entanglement of our minds with the external world runs so deep that no internal component of mentality can easily be cordoned off. |
| hilary putnam reason truth and history: Reality and Representation David Papineau, 1991 |
| hilary putnam reason truth and history: Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature Richard Rorty, 1980 |
| hilary putnam reason truth and history: How Not to Solve Ethical Problems Hilary Putnam, 1983 |
| hilary putnam reason truth and history: Introduction to Philosophy Guy Axtell, 2022-01-26 Introduction to Philosophy: Epistemology engages first-time philosophy readers on a guided tour through the core concepts, questions, methods, arguments, and theories of epistemology-the branch of philosophy devoted to the study of knowledge. After a brief overview of the field, the book progresses systematically while placing central ideas and thinkers in historical and contemporary context. The chapters cover the analysis of knowledge, the nature of epistemic justification, rationalism vs. empiricism, skepticism, the value of knowledge, the ethics of belief, Bayesian epistemology, social epistemology, and feminist epistemologies. Along the way, instructors and students will encounter a wealth of additional resources and tools: Chapter learning outcomes Key terms Images of philosophers and related art Useful diagrams and tables Boxes containing excerpts and other supplementary material Questions for reflection Suggestions for further reading A glossary For an undergraduate survey epistemology course, Introduction to Philosophy: Epistemology is ideal when used as a main text paired with primary sources and scholarly articles. For an introductory philosophy course, select book chapters are best used in combination with chapters from other books in the Introduction to Philosophy series: https: //www1.rebus.community/#/project/4ec7ecce-d2b3-4f20-973c-6b6502e7cbb2. |
| hilary putnam reason truth and history: Pragmatism as Anti-Authoritarianism Richard Rorty, 2021-08-17 The last book by the eminent American philosopher and public intellectual Richard Rorty, providing the definitive statement of his mature philosophical and political views. Richard RortyÕs Pragmatism as Anti-Authoritarianism is a last statement by one of AmericaÕs foremost philosophers. Here Rorty offers his culminating thoughts on the influential version of pragmatism he began to articulate decades ago in his groundbreaking Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Marking a new stage in the evolution of his thought, RortyÕs final masterwork identifies anti-authoritarianism as the principal impulse and virtue of pragmatism. Anti-authoritarianism, on this view, means acknowledging that our cultural inheritance is always open to revision because no authority exists to ascertain the truth, once and for all. If we cannot rely on the unshakable certainties of God or nature, then all we have left to go onÑand argue withÑare the opinions and ideas of our fellow humans. The test of these ideas, Rorty suggests, is relatively simple: Do they work? Do they produce the peace, freedom, and happiness we desire? To achieve this enlightened pragmatism is not easy, though. Pragmatism demands trust. Pragmatism demands that we think and care about what others think and care about, which further requires that we account for othersÕ doubts of and objections to our own beliefs. After all, our own beliefs are as contestable as anyone elseÕs. A supple mind who draws on theorists from John Stuart Mill to Annette Baier, Rorty nonetheless is always an apostle of the concrete. No book offers a more accessible account of RortyÕs utopia of pragmatism, just as no philosopher has more eloquently challenged the hidebound traditions arrayed against the goals of social justice. |
| hilary putnam reason truth and history: The Habermas Handbook Hauke Brunkhorst, Regina Kreide, Cristina Lafont, 2017-10-24 Jürgen Habermas is one of the most influential philosophers of our time. His diagnoses of contemporary society and concepts such as the public sphere, communicative rationality, and cosmopolitanism have influenced virtually all academic disciplines, spurred political debates, and shaped intellectual life in Germany and beyond for more than fifty years. In The Habermas Handbook, leading Habermas scholars elucidate his thought, providing essential insight into his key concepts, the breadth of his work, and his influence across politics, law, the social sciences, and public life. This volume offers a comprehensive overview and an in-depth analysis of Habermas’s work in its entirety. After examining his intellectual biography, it goes on to illuminate the social and intellectual context of Habermasian thought, such as the Frankfurt School, speech-act theory, and contending theories of democracy. The Handbook provides an extensive account of Habermas’s texts, ranging from his dissertation on Schelling to his most recent writing about Europe. It illustrates the development of his thought and its frequently controversial reception while elaborating the central ideas of his work. The book also provides a glossary of key terms and concepts, making the complexity of Habermas’s thought accessible to a broad readership. |
Hilary - University of Nevada, Las Vegas
REASON, TRUTH AND HISTORY Hilary Putnam CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS . Contents Preface 1 Brains in a vat 2 A problem about reference ... 4 Mind and body 5 Two conceptions of rationality 6 Fact and value 7 Reason and history 8 The impact of science on modern conceptions of rationality 9 Values, facts and cognition Appendix Index . Preface
MIND DEPENDENCE - JSTOR
In the préfacé to Reason, Truth and History Hilary Putnam writes, In short, I shall advance a view in which the mind does not simply 'copy' a world which admits of description by One True Theory. But my view is not a view in which the mind makes up the world, either.... If one must use metaphorical language, then let the metaphor be
The Fact/Value Dichotomy: Revisiting Putnam and Habermas
without putting them into the domain of transcendent truth. Austin’s model of truth emerges from the fact of the world where truth does not sound as a property rather an ‘immanent truth’ i.e. truth is a part of total corpus related to the reference of the words. Putnam considers that a …
MIND, BODY AND WORLD IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF HILARY PUTNAM …
ntrvista / ntrvi Trans/Form/Ação, Marília, v. 38, n. 2, p. 211-216, Maio./Ago., 2015 215 7. Léo Peruzzo – I would like, now, to turn to a classical question in your “semantic externalism ...
BERNARD WILLIAMS ON PHILOSOPHY'S NEED FOR HISTORY
Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, and Hilary Putnam's Reason, Truth, and History along with other works from the late 1970s by such thinkers as Charles Taylor, Quentin Skinner, and Ian Hacking.1 During the time that Correspondence to: Colin Koopman, Department of Philosophy, University of Oregon, 1415 Kincaid St., PLC 338, Eugene, OR 97403.
BOOK REVIEWS 257 - JSTOR
Reason, Truth and History. HILARY PUTNAM. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981. xii, 222 p. Cloth $29.50, paper $9.95. In his stimulating and wide-ranging new book, Hilary Putnam takes aim at three main targets: the correspondence, or metaphysi-cal realist theory of truth; the positivist conception of rationality
ReferenceMagnetismBeyondthePredicate: Two Putnam …
4Hilary Putnam, “Models and Reality,” The Journal of Symbolic Logic, xlv, 3 (September 1980): 464– 82; Hilary Putnam, “Realism and Reason,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Association, l, 6 (Au-gust 1977): 483–98; Hilary Putnam, Reason, Truth and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
Internal Realism, Truth and Understanding - JSTOR
of truth Putnam has thrown away the very doctrine which can save his theory from relativistic consequences. Consider Putnam's argument for scientific realism. In Reason, Truth and History Putnam discusses the truth of our "directive beliefs", which he characterizes as beliefs of the form, "If I do x, I will get .
RATIONALITY AND THE OBJECTIVITY OF VALUES - JSTOR
One of the central themes of Hilary Putnam's recent book, Reason, Truth and History, is the objectivity of values. The objectivity of values is a central component of the position Putnam calls "internal realism." Inter nal realism is an attempt to delimit a point of view which is, on the one hand, objective, and, on the other, non-absolutistic.
Philosophy of Science Reading List - University of Oxford
Philosophy of Science Reading List James Read james.read@philosophy.ox.ac.uk This is James Read’s reading list for the Finals paper on Philosophy of Science.
Putnam, Hilary. The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy and …
Reason Papers 28 (Spring 2006): 125-131. ... Putnam, Hilary. The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy and Other Essays. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002. It has long been a dogma in some quarters that value judgments are ... been shown to lead us reliably to the truth; but as Putnam points out, we have
0521813115 - Hilary Putnam Excerpt More information 1 Introduction
Putnam grew up in a home steeped in intellectual and political activ-ity. His father, Samuel Putnam, was a well-known writer and translator, an active communist, and a columnist for TheDailyWorker.During the Vietnam War, Hilary Putnam, a member of SDS (Students for a Demo-cratic Society), and the Progressive Labor Party, a Maoist group, took an
Hilary Putnam And Immanuel Kant: Two `Internal Realists'?
a more accommodating account of reason, such as is to be found in Hegel, ... ‘internal realist’ view of truth. (Putnam 1981, 60) During the eighties, Putnam gradually became dissatisfied with the label ... because it retains connotations of commitment to an internalist account of the epistemological object),2 and, in recent. HILARY PUTNAM ...
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE WRITINGS OF HILARY PUTNAM
HILARY PUTNAM Compiled and Edited by JOHN R. SHOOk with the assistance of ... Reason, Truth and History. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1981. Translated ... Reason and History, 150–73 8. The Impact of Science on Modern Conceptions of Rationality (1981), 174–200 9. Values, Facts and Cognition, 201–16
MIND DEPENDENCE - JSTOR
In the préfacé to Reason, Truth and History Hilary Putnam writes, In short, I shall advance a view in which the mind does not simply 'copy' a world which admits of description by One True Theory. But my view is not a view in which the mind makes up the world, either.... If one must use metaphorical language, then let the metaphor be
Putnam, Languages and Worlds - PhilPapers
The key argument of Hilary Putnam for conceptual relativism, his so-called mereological argument, is ... 2 Reason, Truth and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 49–50. much discussed, viz. his mereological or “Carnapian world” argument; and the few
Choosing Conceptions of Realism: The Case of the Brains in a …
Hilary Putnam's analysis in the first chapter of his I98I book Reason, Truth and History.2 Probably because of the sketchiness of Putnam's analysis, his radical solution of the sceptical problem has generally been misunderstood. In particular, some critics failed to see that arguing pro or
Hilary Putnam and Immanuel Kant: Two 'Internal Realists'? - JSTOR
of a unique, mind-independent world, and truth understood as correspondence between the mind and that ready-made world. Putnam reads Kant as overcoming the false dichotomies inherent in that picture and even finds some glimmerings of conceptual relativity in Kant's proposed solution. Furthermore, Putnam reads Kant as overcoming the pernicious ...
HILARY PUTNAM - PhilArchive
Boncompagni, and Putnam 2015). But Putnam credits his “conversion” to pragmatism in large part to his wife Ruth Anna Putnam, a renowned scholar of the pragmatist tradition (Putnam and Putnam 2017: 18). Putnam’s Approach to Pragmatism The label “neo-pragmatism” or “new pragmatism” has been applied to the work of a varied
Beyond the Fact-Value Dichotomy - JSTOR
HILARY PUTNAM Harvard University Two years ago I was a guest at a dinner party at which the hostess made a remark that stuck in my mind. It was just ... 2 Reason, Truth and History 1981; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 6. tation than Whitehead's), sometimes on …
Truth, Contingency, and Modernity - JSTOR
cation cannot suffice alone to guarantee truth: there must be some 1. Hilary Putnam, Reason, Truth and History (Cambridge, 1981), p. 55. Jurgen Haber-mas, "Wahrheitstheorien," in Wirklichkeit und Reflexion, ed. Helmut Fahrenbach (Pful-lingen, 1973). Reprinted in Jurgen Habermas, Vorstudien und Ergdnzungen zur Theorie des
Crane The explanation of intentionality
2. Putnam’s ant Putnam’s Reason, Truth and History starts with a striking and memorable image: An ant is crawling on a patch of sand. As it crawls, it traces a line in the sand. By pure chance the line that it traces curves and recrosses itself in such a way that it ends up looking like a recognizable caricature of Winston Churchill.
Hilary Putnam (1926{2016): A Lifetime Quest to Understand the ...
Hilary Putnam was a towering gure in philosophy of language, phi-losophy of mind, and in metaphysics, and special attention will be paid ... 5H. Putnam (1975): What is mathematical truth? In Mathematics, Matter, and Method, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 60{78.
Hilary Putnam and Immanuel Kant: Two 'Internal Realists'? - JSTOR
of a unique, mind-independent world, and truth understood as correspondence between the mind and that ready-made world. Putnam reads Kant as overcoming the false dichotomies inherent in that picture and even finds some glimmerings of conceptual relativity in Kant's proposed solution. Furthermore, Putnam reads Kant as overcoming the pernicious ...
Truth, Contingency, and Modernity - JSTOR
cation cannot suffice alone to guarantee truth: there must be some 1. Hilary Putnam, Reason, Truth and History (Cambridge, 1981), p. 55. Jurgen Haber-mas, "Wahrheitstheorien," in Wirklichkeit und Reflexion, ed. Helmut Fahrenbach (Pful-lingen, 1973). Reprinted in Jurgen Habermas, Vorstudien und Ergdnzungen zur Theorie des
Inferentialism and Semantic Externalism A Neglected Debate …
[Abstract] In his 1975 paper “The Meaning of ‘Meaning,’” Hilary Putnam famously argued for semantic externalism. Little attention has been paid, however, to the fact that already in 1973, Putnam had presented the idea of the ... In chapter 1 of Reason, Truth, and History, Putnam also embraces externalism about mental contents, and ...
THE HEART OF PUTNAM'S PLURALISTIC REALISM - JSTOR
Putnam also addresses the history of the term 'internal realism' in his "Reply to Burton Dreben" in "Replies," Philosophical Topics 20, 1 (Spring 1992), 407, ... Hilary Putnam, "Why Reason Can't be Naturalized," in Putnam's Realism and Reason: Philosophical Papers, Vol. 3 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), ... truth that is the ...
X*-WHAT IS REALISM? by Hilary Putnam - JSTOR
T1. But it does not follow that it must imply the truth of the laws of T1 in some limit. There are many other ways of constructing T2 so that it will imply the truth of most of the observation sentences of T1; and making T2 imply the "approximate truth" of the laws of T1 is often the hardest way. Nor is there any reason why T2 should have the ...
Hilary Putnam on Meaning and Necessity - DiVA portal
Öberg, A. 2011. Hilary Putnam on Meaning and Necessity. Department of Philosophy. 166 pp. Uppsala. ISBN 978-91-506-2243-0. ... he was critical of the notion of truth by convention. Instead he developed a notion of relative a priori truth, that is, a notion of neces- ... criticism of an absolute reason, Putnam defends an enlightenment ideal ...
MICHEL GHINS PUTNAM’S NO-MIRACLE ARGUMENT: A CRITIQUE 1. PUTNAM…
More than a quarter of a century has elapsed since Hilary Putnam first ... realism has to do with theory of truth. (Putnam 1978, p. 18). ... of Putnam’s philosophical agenda and the main reason
Hilary Putnam: acerca del significado y la referencia - CORE
Hilary Putnam y la filosofía del lenguaje El 29 de diciembre de 1976 en la ciudad de Boston, Hilary Putnam toma posesión del cargo de presidente de la División Este de la Asociación Filosófica Americana. En ella, lee el discurso “Realism and Reason” …
1 Pragmatism: Acknowledging Authority by De-Representing 3 The ...
RTH Hilary Putnam, Reason, Truth and History, 1997 TC Hilary Putnam, The Threefold Cord, 1999 MWJohn McDowell, Mind and World, 1996 Acknowledgements I owe a special thank to Bjørn Ramberg for valuable and considerate guidance. I want to thank my parents and Linn for invaluable support. My thanks also go to those who have been kind
Why reason can't be naturalized - DocDroid
HILARY PUTNAM WHY REASON CAN'T BE NATURALIZED* The preceding lecture described the failure of contemporary attempts to "naturalize" metaphysics; in the present lecture I shall examine ... even if our rational beliefs contribute to our survival for some reason other than truth, the way "truths" are identified guarantees that reason will seem to ...
PHI 92 360 BookReview 305. - JSTOR
24 Jan 2017 · Putnam explicitly denies that we ‘get’ from qualia to apperception (193–6). 17 And this denial is inevitable: since apperceptions ain’tin thehead, butqualiaare,thereisnofunction fromqualiatoappercep-
Hilary Putnam And Immanuel Kant: Two `Internal Realists'?
a more accommodating account of reason, such as is to be found in Hegel, ... ‘internal realist’ view of truth. (Putnam 1981, 60) During the eighties, Putnam gradually became dissatisfied with the label ... because it retains connotations of commitment to an internalist account of the epistemological object),2 and, in recent. HILARY PUTNAM ...
Microsoft Word - Putnam and Descartes.20 - web.ics.purdue.edu
Principle is false. Indeed, in Chapter 3 of Reason, Truth, and History, Putnam offers a decisive example against it: “The idea that causal connection is necessary [for reference] is refuted by the fact that ‘extraterrestrials’ certainly refers to extraterrestrials whether or not we have ever
On the Epistemological Significance of Aesthetic Values in ...
Associate Professor of History and Architecture I See Nelson Goodman Languages of Art: An Approach to a Theory of Symbols (New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc, 1968); Hilary Putnam, Reason, Truth and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981); Satya P. Mohanty, Literary Theory and the Claims of History:
Reason, Truth, and Counterexample - Springer
Keywords Reason ·Truth ·Rational acceptability ·Pragmatist theory of truth · Hilary Putnam ·Hartry Field ·Values ·Usability ·Jane Addams · Counterexamples 9.1 Idealized Rational Acceptability Putnam’stheoryoftruth,aspresentedinReason,Truth,andHistory(1981),operates as an alternative to the correspondence theory, in which p is true ...
On the Epistemological Significance of Aesthetic Values in ...
Associate Professor of History and Architecture I See Nelson Goodman Languages of Art: An Approach to a Theory of Symbols (New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc, 1968); Hilary Putnam, Reason, Truth and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981); Satya P. Mohanty, Literary Theory and the Claims of History:
Is There a Possibility of Being a Mere and Unknowing Brain in a Vat?
Hilary Putnam, Reason, Truth and History David Lewis was not arguing (in the previous reading) directly against skeptical thinking. But perhaps an aspect of his approach may be used for that end. Lewis sought to understand what connection to the world must be part of really seeing the
ia800404.us.archive.org
Note Areaderwhoisunusedtotechnicalphilosophy,orwhowishes togainanoverviewoftheargumentofthisbook,mightwell startbyreadingChapter5totheendofthebook,andonlythen ...
ia802606.us.archive.org
Note Areaderwhoisunusedtotechnicalphilosophy,orwhowishes togainanoverviewoftheargumentofthisbook,mightwell startbyreadingChapter5totheendofthebook,andonlythen ...
HILARY AND ME: TRACKING DOWN PUTNAM ON THE REALISM …
Hilary Putnam’s contribution to the Michael Dummett volume of the . Library of Living Philosophers, “Between Scylla and Charybdis: Does Dummett Have a Way Out?” (2007), is on the realism issue. He concludes a brief defense of Dummett’ anti-realism from my criticisms in Realism and Truth(1984/1991b) as follows: “Devitt’s dismissive ...
Inferentialism and Semantic Externalism A Neglected Debate …
28 Aug 2020 · [Abstract] In his 1975 paper “The Meaning of ‘Meaning,’” Hilary Putnam famously argued for semantic externalism. Little attention has been paid, however, to the fact that already in 1973, Putnam had presented the idea of the ... In chapter 1 of Reason, Truth, and History, Putnam also embraces externalism about mental contents, and ...
Hilary Putnam Reason Truth And History [PDF]
Reason, Truth and History Hilary Putnam,1998 Representation and Reality Hilary Putnam,1988 The author, one of the first philosophers to advance the notion that the computer is an apt model for the mind, takes a radical view of his own theory of functionalism in this book.
Diplomová práce - dspace.zcu.cz
Hilary Putnam předpokládal, že jeho argumenty, jež budou nyní podrobně představeny, budou mít určité důsledky nejen pro sémantiku a filosofii jazyka či filosofii ... 5 PUTNAM, Reason, Truth and History, s. 2. 6 analogii stejné planety jako je ta naše, pouze s rozdílem, že její obyvatelé nikdy neviděli stromy. V případě ...
PART IV FACT/VALUE DICHOTOMY - PhilArchive
Hilary Putnam traces the history of the fact-value dichotomy from Hume to ... (ideal) possibility to achieve objective knowledge and absolute truth in the realm of fact. Not to say, these “metaphysical grounds” presuppose ... reason, it would normally remain unspoken. The second reason seems more noble, but not necessarily sounder from a ...
There Is at Least One a priori Truth
25 Jun 2001 · HILARY PUTNAM THERE IS AT LEAST ONE A PRIORI TRUTH In a number of famous publications (the most famous being the celebrated ... on the basis of an induction from the history of science. It was not itself supposed to be an a priori truth. Thus the cheap shot, which ... Hilary Putnam, There Is at Least One a priori Truth, Erkenntnis (1975-), Vol ...
Semantic Pragmatism A Priori Knowledge (or 'Yes we could all be …
Hilary Putnam has famously argued that we can know that we are not ... 2 H. Putnam, Reason, Truth and History (New York: Cambridge University Press 1981), ch.l 3 Ibid., 6. This point is stressed in D. Davies, 'Putnam's Brain-Teaser/ Canadian Journal ... 5 Reason, Truth and History, 5-6 6 Ibid., 14. See also, 'Although the people in that ...
