Hilary Putnam: Rules, attunement, and "applying words to the world": The struggle to understand Wittgenstein's vision of language 9

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Hilary Putnam ◽  
The World

scholarly journals Stanley Cavell, Philosopher Untamed

2020 ◽  
pp. 43-45
Author(s):  
Lindsay Waters
Keyword(s):  
Hilary Putnam ◽  
Stanley Cavell ◽  
The World

Why not use the word “star,” Stanley asked in his breakthrough book on movies, The World Viewed, why not “the more beautiful and more accurate word,” rather than actor or actress? In philosophy he was a Hepburn, a Brando, a Dean, a Bacall, stars into whose souls he gave us entryways. I always thought of him and Hilary Putnam as the “glimmer twins.” Time was on their side, for so many decades, thank the lord. And on ours, too!

scholarly journals PERSPECTIVAL EXTERNALISM IS THE ANTIDOTE FOR RADICAL SKEPTICISM

Episteme ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 363-379 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Miracchi
Keyword(s):  
Crucial Role ◽  
Hilary Putnam ◽  
Semantic Externalism ◽  
Skeptical Argument ◽  
Actual Case ◽  
Radical Skepticism ◽  
Promising Strategy ◽  
The World ◽  
Mental Events

ABSTRACTHilary Putnam (1981) provides an anti-skeptical argument motivated by semantic externalism. He argues that our best theorizing about what it takes to experience, think, and so on, entails that the world is much as we take it to be. This fact eliminates the possibility of radical skeptical scenarios, where from our perspective everything seems as it does in the actual case, but we are widely and systematically mistaken. I think that this approach is generally correct, and that it is the most promising strategy for undermining radical skepticism. There are, however, well-discussed difficulties with Putnam's way of pursuing this strategy (see especially Anthony Brueckner 1986). I argue that in order to avoid these objections we will have to be more radical externalists than Putnam proposed; in particular, we will have to beperspectival externalists. According to perspectival externalism, a subject's reliable relations to her environment play a crucial role in determining not only the contents of her mental events, but also what it is like for her to grasp those contents. While semantic externalism is widely accepted in epistemology, perspectival externalism is not. I argue that perspectival externalism is independently more plausible than mere semantic externalism, and that such an account can enable us to better pursue Putnam's anti-skeptical strategy.

God and other programs

1979 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marie-Louise Friquegnon
Keyword(s):  
Computer Program ◽  
Hilary Putnam ◽  
Other Minds ◽  
Alvin Plantinga ◽  
Analogical Inference ◽  
Belief In God ◽  
Teleological Argument ◽  
The World ◽  
Central Argument ◽  
Analogical Argument

In God and Other Minds, Alvin Plantinga formulated an ingenious defence of the teleological argument for the belief in God, based on alleged similarities to the analogical argument for other minds. I shall state what I take to be Plantinga's central argument and then I shall criticize it on two counts: 1. Even if Plantinga's claims about the similarities between these two famous arguments were sound, they would at most provide rational support for pantheism, but not for the traditional Judaeo-Christian theism that Plantinga attempts to defend; and 2. The similarities alleged by Plantinga do not in fact hold. The analogical inference to other minds is grounded on resemblance between one's own behaviour and the behaviour of others, while the teleological argument for God is grounded on resemblance between human contrivances and the world. If the teleological argument really worked, it would count against rather than being supported by the analogical argument, for it would reduce the world to a soulless machine created and programmed by God, and, by inverse inference, would strongly suggest that God himself is exactly so much of a Mind as J. C. Smart and Hilary Putnam take human minds to be, i.e. a computer program.

scholarly journals Religion som verdenshåndtering

2014 ◽  
Vol 77 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-45
Author(s):  
Troels Engberg-Pedersen
Keyword(s):  
Hilary Putnam ◽  
The World ◽  
Science Building

The article discusses two questions: whether (and in whatsense) Christianity can be ‘naturalized’; and whether ancient Stoicismmay contribute to a modern reformulation of ‘Christianity naturalized’.To answer these questions, the article focuses on articulating an understandingof ‘religion’ in relation to ‘science’. Building on the accountgiven of the philosophical discipline of ‘ethics’ by Hilary Putnam inEthics without Ontology, the article attempts to construct a structurallysimilar understanding of ‘religion’ (and its philosophical counterpart,‘theology’) that will give it a legitimate position ‘in an age of science’(cf. Putnam, Philosophy in an Age of Science). ‘Religion’ is here seen asone particular way of ‘coping with the world’. The article concludesby sketching some ways in which ancient Stoicism (as a specimen of a‘natural philosophy and theology’) may help in reformulating an adequate,contemporary understanding of Christianity.

Could We be Brains in a Vat?

1982 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Smith
Keyword(s):  
Hilary Putnam ◽  
Sensory Receptors ◽  
The World ◽  
Mad Scientist ◽  
Erroneous Beliefs

The course of my experience is quite consistent with the hypothesis that it is being produced by a mad scientist who is feeding into my sensory receptors entirely delusive stimuli. Indeed, I could at this very moment be nothing more than a brain floating in a vat of nutrients, my nerve ends linked up to some infernal apparatus by means of which my unknown deceiver induces in me utterly erroneous beliefs about the world.So begins a familiar line of thought which dramatizes an equally familiar sceptical problem about the relation between our experiences and the world. However, Hilary Putnam has recently offered a marvellously ambitious argument which is intended to kill stone-dead the philosophical fantasy that we might be deluded brains in a vat.

scholarly journals Cartesian Skepticism, Content Externalism, and Self-Knowledge

2005 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Brueckner
Keyword(s):  
Key Words ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Hilary Putnam ◽  
Skeptical Argument ◽  
Content Externalism ◽  
Cartesian Skepticism ◽  
Meditations On First Philosophy ◽  
The World ◽  
Self Knowledge ◽  
Brains In Vats

Há um argumento cético clássico derivado das Meditações sobre a filosofia primeira. Este artigo oferece uma formulação contemporânea padrão do argumento, pretendendo mostrar que ninguém sabe qualquer coisa sobre o mundo extramental. A obra de Hilary Putnam na filosofia da linguagem e da mente parece fornecer uma resposta a uma versão atualizada do argumento cético cartesiano. Em sua maior parte, este artigo é dedicado a uma análise e crítica das meditações anti-céticas de Putnam. PALAVRAS-CHAVE – Descartes. Putnam. Ceticismo. Cérebros em cubas. Externalismo de conteúdo. ABSTRACT There is a classical skeptical argument that derives from Descartes’s Meditations on first Philosophy. This paper offers a standard contemporary formulation of the argument, which purports to show that no one knows anything about the world that exists outside our minds. The work of Hilary Putnam in the philosophy of language and mind seems to afford an answer to an updated version of the Cartesian skeptical argument. The bulk of this paper is devoted to an analysis and critique of Putnam’s anti-skeptical meditations. KEY WORDS – Descartes, Putnam, Skepticism, Brains in vats, Content externalism.

Putnam's Brain-Teaser

1995 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-227 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Davies
Keyword(s):  
Hilary Putnam ◽  
The World

1. Metaphysical Realists have traditionally relied upon the skeptic to give substance to the idea that truth is, in the words of Hilary Putnam, 'radically non-episternic,’ forever outstripping, in principle at least, the reach of justification. What better model of truth so conceived, after all, than the skeptic's contention that even our firmest convictions might be mistaken in that we might be the victims of demonic deception or the machinations of an evil scientist? But the availability of this favorite model of Realist truth, encapsulated in the claim that we might be ‘brains in a vat,’ has been called into question by Putnam in the opening chapter of Reason, Truth, and History. Putnam contends that, if we grant the Realist notion of truth, as referentially mediated correspondence to THE WORLD, then, given certain plausible constraints on reference, we can know that we are not brains in a vat (or, more accurately, ‘brains in a vat' of a particular kind, as we shall see).

scholarly journals Perspectivism and The Absolute Conception of the World

1993 ◽  
Vol 25 (74) ◽  
pp. 105-116
Author(s):  
Kai Nielsen
Keyword(s):  
Richard Rorty ◽  
Hilary Putnam ◽  
Bernard Williams ◽  
Absolute Conception ◽  
The World ◽  
The Absolute

La concepción absoluta del mundo consiste en una explicación del mundo que sería independiente en grado sumo de las peculiaridades humanas. Es una descripción ideal que podría usar cualquier observador incluso un ser no humano, capaz de investigar el mundo. Bernard Williams formuló esta concepción para derrotar todas las formas de perspectivismo, relativismo y antropocentrismo sin quedar en obligación con el realismo metafísico. Para cumplir con esto, la concepción está diseñada de tal modo que proporcione un contraste inteligible entre el mundo como es en sí mismo y el mundo como nos parece que es. Hilary Putnam y Richard Rorty han sostenido que semejante concepción del mundo es incoherente. No tenemos, ni podemos tener, ninguna concepción de la descripción del mundo única, singularmente verdadera. Williams intenta refutar esto, pero se alega que la respuesta de William a sus críticos no es válida. Sin embargo, también se argumenta que lo inevitable del perspectivismo no implica etnocentrismo ni parroquialismo, así como tampoco un rechazo de la distinción habermasiana entre discurso distorsionado y no distorsionado. [Traducción: Gabriela Montes de Oca V.]

A pragmatist philosophy of psychological science and its implications for replication

2018 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Gantman ◽  
Robin Gomila ◽  
Joel E. Martinez ◽  
J. Nathan Matias ◽  
Elizabeth Levy Paluck ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
William James ◽  
Mental Processes ◽  
Psychological Science ◽  
Behavioral Measurement ◽  
The World ◽  
Pragmatist Philosophy

AbstractA pragmatist philosophy of psychological science offers to the direct replication debate concrete recommendations and novel benefits that are not discussed in Zwaan et al. This philosophy guides our work as field experimentalists interested in behavioral measurement. Furthermore, all psychologists can relate to its ultimate aim set out by William James: to study mental processes that provide explanations for why people behave as they do in the world.

Culture and the plasticity of perception

2020 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Lifshitz ◽  
T. M. Luhrmann
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
Sensory Experience ◽  
Cultural Learning ◽  
The World

Abstract Culture shapes our basic sensory experience of the world. This is particularly striking in the study of religion and psychosis, where we and others have shown that cultural context determines both the structure and content of hallucination-like events. The cultural shaping of hallucinations may provide a rich case-study for linking cultural learning with emerging prediction-based models of perception.

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