10 ms·
Hilary Putnam has died
- ronald_dregan 11y agowas i the only one upset it wasnt the more well-known Hilary?
- rahuldeshpande 11y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilary_Putnam https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilary_Putnam
- agumonkey 11y agoStudent of Quine, also reddit thread https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilary_Putnam https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilary_Putnam
- philippnagel 11y agoHis brain should be preserved in a vat.
- rayval 11y agoHilary Putnam had many achievements in the field of philosophy. Here's some context about his concept of "brain in a vat"[1], in his 1981 book, "Reason, Truth and History". The brain-in-a-vat concept was famously used in the The Matrix films.[2] A summary from Philosophy Index: "The example supposes that a mad scientist has removed your brain, and placed it into a vat of liquid to keep it alive and active. The scientist has also connected your brain to a powerful computer, which sends neurological signals to the brain in the way the brain normally receives them. Thus, the computer is able to send your brain data to fool you into believing that you are still walking around in your body." "The brain-in-a-vat thought experiment is generally used to ask the question: how do you know that you are not a brain in a vat? The question mirrors an early one from Descartes, which asks how you are to know that there is not an evil demon feeding false information to your senses. The essential conclusion is that, from the perspective of the brain itself, it is impossible to tell whether it is a brain in a vat or a brain in a skull." [1][3] ___________ Links: [1] http://www.philosophy-index.com/putnam/brain-vat/ http://www.philosophy-index.com/putnam/brain-vat/ [2] http://consc.net/papers/matrix.html http://consc.net/papers/matrix.html [3] https://philosophy.as.uky.edu/sites/default/files/Brains%20in%20a%20Vat%20-%20Hilary%20Putnam.pdf https://philosophy.as.uky.edu/sites/default/files/Brains%20i...
- omginternets 11y agoHow is the "Brain in a vat" version different from the Descartes version?
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- hyperpape 11y agoGood question. As far as the thought experiment itself, it's really just a modern phrasing of Descartes' thought experiment. I have no idea if Putnam was even the first to mention a BIV.[0] The real novelty is Putnam's response, based on the causal theory of reference or content externalism or something like it (I'm fuzzy on this point). I hope I can do it justice from memory. He argues that because the brain in a vat has never had the appropriate sort of causal contact with external objects, its thoughts don't refer to them. So the brain has whatever brain states go on in me when I think "the sky is blue", but it has never seen the sky, and so its mental states don't refer to the sky. They refer to something else. Probably some disjunctive property of however the apparatus stimulates the brain's nerves (it's really hard to say what this is). It turns out then, that the brain is not falsely believing/failing to know the facts that we might think about by thinking "the sky is blue", it's accurately representing some other kinds of facts. So that type of scepticism is self-undermining, because it attributes thoughts to the BIV that it couldn't possibly have. I should add that it seems to me that while this argument is tremendously creative, it belongs to a whole strand of philosophy from the 80s that seems to have died out. There's a decent chance you'll read some Putnam, but AFAIK people aren't publishing much on his BIV argument (though people use the example of a brain in a vat sometimes). [0] Arguably, Descartes posited that the deceiver could deceive you about anything, including logical relations, while the BIV case just involves people giving you misleading sensations, so that's one conceivable difference in the discussions, but that's not a point that I ever saw anyone discuss in detail. It matters for Descartes scholarship, but that's all.
- hackuser 11y agoHere's more about it from an authoritative and amazing free resource, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/skepticism-content-externalism/ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/skepticism-content-externa...
- skarist 11y agoA great thinker has passed. One of the great names of 20th century analytical philosophy. They have now all left us, Quine, Rorty, Davidson and now Putnam. RIP. I guess they had a similar event on Twin Earth... even though their "water" may be a bit different from our H2O.
- nullified-vga 11y agoKripke is still here. I would add him to that list.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- skarist 11y agoMost definitely.
- tshtf 11y agoWho stole his ideas from Ruth Barcan Marcus: http://linguafranca.mirror.theinfo.org/Archive/whose.html http://linguafranca.mirror.theinfo.org/Archive/whose.html
- simondedalus 11y agoif this article makes you think kripke stole the idea of rigid designation, you may as well say he stole it from john stuart mill (or st. augustine, for that matter).
- simondedalus 11y agoyeah. kripke can be convicted of truly awful exegesis of russell, frege, wittgenstein, but his own contributions to philosophy are mammoth. his attack on the identity of necessary truths and a priori knowledge alone is excellent.
- skarist 11y ago
- simondedalus 11y agounlike a lot of contemporaries read through the end of the 20th century / beginning of the 21st, putnam was a rigorous and important philosopher (as opposed to, say, jerry fodor, who should be lauded for generating interest in philosophy and opening new discussions but whose arguments are almost uniformly terrible, technically). i'd forgotten about his direct realism, but it makes sense given his sort of instinctual bent toward wittgenstein. i wish more analytic philosophers were adventurous enough to reject platonist place-holders and carry their views out to the furthest logical extent. sorry that this comment was so vague, but what else could it be? just wanted to post that we've lost a great mind. some random reading in the realm of what i'm talking about: http://philpapers.org/rec/FINWOR http://philpapers.org/rec/FINWOR (doesn't mention putnam if i recall, but the wittgensteinian considerations here can shed light on what i'm talking about re: putnam's instincts) http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/23171-hilary-putnam-pragmatism-and-realism-routledge/ http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/23171-hilary-putnam-pragmatism-and-r... the quick summary of direct realism here corresponds very well with how many of us chicago-wittgensteinians are pulled toward direct realism; once you discard the idea of a correspondence theory of truth and knowledge, and start to recognize that truth conditions are ubiquitously context dependent (in terms of what the speaker is trying to accomplish with the words, the shared cultural knowledge of speaker and listener, etc etc), so too can you get rid of many of the pesky oddities of traditional 20th century analytic philosophy of mind: (abstract?) mental items, qualia (maybe), etc etc. if i see a cow, i don't see "cow + some LaTeX symbol" that exists just-for-me--that's not how language works, and we're not talking about magic observational souls, we're saying that guy over there looked and saw a cow--or whatever we're actually talking about). anyway, putnam is very worth reading, if only to remember rigor and honesty. as with all philosophy, the conclusions you can take or leave.
- sriram_sun 11y agoJust wanted to highlight this from the article: "If you would like to make a gift in Hilary’s memory, please donate to Southern Poverty Law Center, 400 Washington Avenue, Montgomery, Alabama 36104."
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- woodandsteel 11y agoA little background for the non-philosophers. In the history of Western philosophy, there is a great debate. On one side is the foundational-axiomatic position. According to this general view, philosophy correctly done is like geometry. You start out with a limited set of perfectly clear and absolutely certain concepts and prepositions, and then use these to logically deduct everything important about reality. Major philosophies that assume this include cartesian dualism, materialism, and absolute idealism. The contrary view is that we can know about reality, but our understandings are always imperfect, including not being able to express everything in a single set of precise concepts. In my view this was Aristotle's overall view, but in any case in the last century and a half, Western philosophy has swung in this direction, including Whitehead, Heidegger, the later Wittgenstein, and all the Pragmatists. Putnam was a leading American philosopher in this anti-foundationalist trend. Let me add that the foundational-axiomatic position tends to imply that political rule should be by something like a philosopher-king, while I think the anti-foundational one implies liberal democracy.
- js8 11y ago"Let me add that the foundational-axiomatic position tends to imply that political rule should be by something like a philosopher-king, while I think the anti-foundational one implies liberal democracy." Really? That's a very strong statement which I would like to see to be backed up with some axioms. :-) (Because both analytic philosophy and democracy seem more preferable to me.)
- woodandsteel 11y agoA foundational-axiomatic view implies a philosopher king because the vast majority of citizens lack the intellectual ability, much less motivation, to understand it and apply it to political decisions. Anti-foundationalists, in contrast, think that reality is far too complicated for a single person to figure out, and so we need extended democratic discussion. They also tend to believe that average citizens have a considerable degree of rationality and good motivation, and so can be trusted to be responsible voters. This is, of course, imperfect, but as Churchill famously said, it is better than all the alternatives. As far as analytic philosophy goes, the classic version is foundationalist-axiomatic, but later versions, such as Strawson, are anti-foundationalist. Later Wittgenstein I think is a mixed case.
- arstin 11y agoSome readers here might be interested in the nice blog he kept last year. http://putnamphil.blogspot.com/?m=1 http://putnamphil.blogspot.com/?m=1
- igravious 11y agoBetter link: https://putnamphil.blogspot.com/ https://putnamphil.blogspot.com/
- petegrif 11y agoA was a big fan of 'Meaning and the Moral Sciences.'
- petegrif 11y agoI was a big fan of 'Meaning and the Moral Sciences.'
- yoaviram 11y agoI was very lucky to attend one of Putnam's seminars at Uni abot logic and necessity. His in depth understanding of mathematics, physics, biology and many other sciences made him an almost ideal critic. I was impressed by how, when challenged, he was always able to restate his arguments based on stronger, more fundamental assumption. Putnam is a pleasure to read (which is not always the case when it comes to philosophers) and addresses many of the topics that occasionally come up on hacker news. Can't recommend him enough.
- GirlProgrammer 11y agoSo sad to see her go!
- conceit 11y agoJust read the name yesterday linked to "trial-and-error predicates" [2], reading on Neural Nets, super-Turing computation and hypercomputation [1]. [1] mentiones nonrecursive sets of numbers, which seems awfully related to a crackpot theory of mine. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercomputation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercomputation [2] direkt link from the wiki artikel: https://dx.doi.org/10.2307%2F2270581 https://dx.doi.org/10.2307%2F2270581