Hilary Putnam’s Philosophical Naturalism: Making Philosophy Matter for Life

Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Contents
Chronology of Life and Work
Introduction
	Notes
Chapter One: Necessary and A Priori
	A Red Thread
	The Concept of Analyticity
	The Concepts of Necessity and A Priori
	Sophisticated Fallibilism
	Notes
Chapter Two: The Nature of Mathematics
	Quasi-Empirical Mathematics
	Conceptual Relativity and Equivalent Descriptions
		Examples of Equivalent Descriptions
	Two Wrong Reactions
		Fact and Convention
		The Nature of the Relation between Equivalent Descriptions
		Conceptual Relativity
	Mathematics as Modal Logic
	Equivalent Descriptions?
	Notes
Chapter Three: What Is the Human Mind
	The Functionalist Hypothesis
	Turing Machine and Probabilistic Automaton
	The Synthetic Identity of Properties
	Criticism of Rival Proposals
	The Departure from Computational Functionalism: Liberalized Functionalism
	Notes
Chapter Four: The Causal Conception of Meaning
	The Semantic Tradition in a Nutshell
	Twin Earth
	But Then Where Are the Meanings?
	The Causal Chain of Reference
	Two Alternative Hypothesis about the Meaning of “Water”
	The Meaning of “Meaning”
	Epistemological Consequences
	Further Linguistic Expressions
	Final Gloss
	Notes
Chapter Five: The Philosophy of Science
	Against Logical Positivism
	Observation Language and Theoretical Language
	The Logical Positivist Debasement of Scientific Theories
	The Idealistic Fallacy
	Scientific Realism
	The Many Faces of Realism
	Notes
Chapter Six: The Faces of Realism and Truth
	Metaphysical Realism
		Four Assumptions
		Brains in a Vat
		A Fifth Assumption: The OTT
	Internal Realism
		Truth and Assertibility
		The Critique of Correspondence: Absolute Skolemization
		Some Considerations
		The Causal Relationship
		The Rejection of Dichotomies
		BIV: A Self-Refuting Hypothesis
	Notes
Chapter Seven: Natural Realism
	The Solipsistic Trap
	The Interfaces between Us and the World
	Mind, Perception, Understanding: Liberal Functionalism
	The Understanding of Language
	The Picture of Reality: Our Ontology
	Alethic Pluralism
	BIV Again
	Notes
Chapter Eight: Moral Philosophy and Philosophy of Religion
	Why Philosophy
	The Function of Ethics
	Practice
	An Argument against the Fact/Value Dichotomy: The Notion of Fact
	An Argument against the Fact/Value Dichotomy: The Entanglement of Description and Evaluation
		Scientific Language and Values
		Ordinary Language and Values
	The Religious Dimension
	Ruth Anna: Partner in Life and Philosophy
	Objectivity
	Notes
Chapter Nine: Learning from Pragmatism
	A Slow Approach
	The Relevance of Pragmatism
	The Exchange with Rorty
		Rorty’s Epistemology in Outline
		Putnam’s Reaction
	Notes
Epilogue: The End of a Journey
Bibliography
Index
About the Author