Questions tagged [hilary-putnam]
For questions referring to texts and concepts of Hilary Whitehall Putnam (1926-2016).
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Semantic externalism and transitivity of causal chains (using Putnam's brain-in-a-vat thought experiment)
TL;DR: I'm looking for information on semantic externalist views on transitivity of causal chains. Is it an objection anyone has invoked? Does it hold? What are potential pro-Putnam responses to it?
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What is the status of the no miracles argument?
The most powerful intuition motivating realism is an old idea,
commonly referred to in recent discussions as the “miracle argument”
or “no miracles argument”, after Putnam’s (1975a: 73) claim that
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user71083
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In the Twin Earth thought experiment, why doesnt "water" turn out to be a hypernym (parent term)?
Background
Putnam's Twin Earth thought experiment asks us to imagine a planet called Twin Earth, which is exactly like Earth except on Twin Earth their water is not H2O, but rather, XYZ. The ...
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The antagonist in the no miracle argument
We have from Putnam’s Mathematics, Matter and Method:
“The positive argument for realism is that it is the only philosophy that doesn’t make the success of science a miracle”
-and from Stanford ...
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Quine-Putnam indispensability argument
If Quine-Putnam's argument is (following the SEP):
(P1) We ought to have ontological commitment to all and only the
entities that are indispensable to our best scientific theories.
(P2) Mathematical ...
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epistemic externalism and content externalism
Putnam's original twin earth experiment shows that the meaning of "water" is determined by external factors. This is an epistemic fact about knowledge and meaning: What we really mean by ...
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Reversed Twin Earth: example from history of science
I'm looking for a real example from history of science, in which one thing is discovered to actually be two different things.
This is a kind of a reversed Twin Earth experiment:
Oscar's community is ...
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Is functionalism a significant improvement on behaviourism with respect to behaviour?
Functionalism appears to be free of many of the issues that behaviourism faces, however is it all positive? Is there any objection at all to Functionalism being such an improvement in respect to ...
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Chalmers'argument that the brain in the VAT does not lead to skepticism [closed]
Chalmers presented an argument in "The Matrix as Metaphysics" (featured in the philosophy section of the official Matrix website and also appearing in C. Grau (Ed.), Philosophers Explore the ...
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Query the salient differences between the neo pragmatistism of Richard Rorty and Hillary Putnam (may they RIP)
While I have over the years read most of what Richard Rorty and Hillary Putnam have “popularly” written/edited [that is aside from their scholarly treatises in academic journals that have for years ...
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Did Quine ever respond to the major criticisms of Two Dogmas?
I'm specifically thinking about Grice and Strawson's paper "In Defense of a Dogma" and Putnam's paper "Two Dogmas Revisited". Both raise major issues with the content of Quine's "Two Dogmas of ...
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Why did Hilary Putnam change of opinion towards Quantum Logic?
Hilary Putnam is known for having proposed a radical change in our thinking about the physical universe: He proposed that the universe was fundamentally based on Quantum Logic, and not in Classical ...
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Hilary Putnam's criticism of Carnap's 'Principle of Tolerance'
I am left quite confused at how Hilary Putnam showed that Carnap's response to the self-defeating objection of the verification principle was circular and hence unviable. Can anybody help explain it ...
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The myth of the given and externalism
According to Wilfrid Sellars any talk of a given out there should be condemned as a mere myth. Therefore, nothing from the physical world outside can limit our language - the "space of reason", and ...
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What are "Concepts" according to Hilary Putnam?
I am reading Putnam's "Brains in a Vat" (1981) and I seem to be having a hard time getting through his terminologies.
Is he saying that possessing a concept is not the same as possessing an image? ...
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