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Hilary Putnam has died

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Re: Hilary Putnam has died

#11

Post by simondedalus »

unlike 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 (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-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.

Re: Hilary Putnam has died

#12

Post by simondedalus »

nullified-vga wrote: post #8
skarist wrote: post #7

A 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.

Kripke is still here. I would add him to that list.

yeah. 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.

Re: Hilary Putnam has died

#13

Post by sriram_sun »

Just 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."

Re: Hilary Putnam has died

#15

Post by skarist »

simondedalus wrote: post #12
nullified-vga wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kripke is still here. I would add him to that list.

yeah. 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.

While I would agree that his interpretation of Wittgenstein on following a rule and private language, is wrong as such, i.e. as an interpretation, it is definitely very interesting and thought provoking stuff. It is good philosophy and bears good witness to the creative genius of Kripke.

Re: Hilary Putnam has died

#16

Post by tshtf »

nullified-vga wrote: post #8
skarist wrote: post #7

A 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.

Kripke is still here. I would add him to that list.

Who stole his ideas from Ruth Barcan Marcus: http://linguafranca.mirror.theinfo.org/Archive/whose.html

Re: Hilary Putnam has died

#17

Post by EazyC »

skarist wrote: post #7

A 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.

Tyler Burge, Kripke, and David Kaplan are still left from the old guard of the golden age of philosophy of language/mind era.

Re: Hilary Putnam has died

#18

Post by woodandsteel »

A 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.

Re: Hilary Putnam has died

#20

Post by GFK_of_xmaspast »

nullified-vga wrote: post #8
skarist wrote: post #7

A 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.

Kripke is still here. I would add him to that list.

That phrasing is a little unfortunate.
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