Hilary Putnam

Hilary Putnam

Naturalism, Realism, and Normativity

Harvard University Press
Edited by Mario De Caro
Publication: April 2016
248 pages

Table of Contents
Introduction: Putnam’s Philosophy and Metaphilosophy [Mario De Caro]
I. Liberal Naturalism and Normativity
1. Naturalism, Realism, and Normativity
2. On Bernard Williams’s “Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline”
3. What Evolutionary Theory Doesn’t Tell Us about Ethics
II. Realism and Ontology
4. Sosa on Internal Realism and Conceptual Relativity
5. Richard Boyd on Scientific Realism
III. Realism and Verificationism
6. Hans Reichenbach: Realist and Verificationist
7. Between Scylla and Charybdis: Does Dummett Have a Way Through?
8. When “Evidence Transcendence” Is Not Malign
IV. Naive Realism, Sensation, and Apperception
9. Sensation and Apperception
10. Perception without Sense Data
11. “Naive Realism” and Qualia
V. Looking Back
12. The Development of Externalist Semantics
13. Sixty-Five Years of Philosophy: A Participant’s Thoughts and
Experiences
Acknowledgments
Index

Martha C.Nussbaum, Hilary Putnam (1926-2016), The Huffingtonpost

Jane O’Grady, Hilary Putnam obituary, The Guardian

Bruce Weber, Hilary Putnam, Giant of Modern Philosophy, Dies at 89, The New York Times

Mario De Caro, Il realismo non ammette miracoli, Il Sole 24 ore

Maurizio Ferraris, E’ morto Hilary Putnam, “patriarca” della filosofia, La Repubblica

A collection of obituaries and memories here: DailyNous

My personal obituary:

• (short version) La filosofia a 360 gradi di Putnam, Il Trentino, 24 marzo 2016. PDF here
• (complete version) Hilary Putnam, il logico dal volto umano, Il Margine, 36 (2016), n.5

Very sadly, I’ve learned that Hilary Putnam has died today at the age of 89.

Anyone who met him and read his writings sympathetically can attest he was a great man AND a great philosopher.

The philosophical landscape will appear much empty from now on. But his struggle against both “irrealistic” scientism and irresponsible relativism will remain always as a very precious heritage.

We will miss you a lot, dear Hilary.

RIP

October 3, 2015 – October 5, 2015

Putnam now has a blog, titled “Sardonic comment”! About this unusual name, he writes:

“In 1976, when I delivered the John Locke Lectures at Oxford, I often spent time with Peter Strawson, and one day at lunch he made a remark I have never been able to forget. He said, “Surely half the pleasure of life is sardonic comment on the passing show”.  This blog is devoted to comments, not all of them sardonic, on the passing philosophical show.”

Well done!

http://putnamphil.blogspot.it

I am pleased to announce that Hilary Putnam has been honored with a Laurea Honoris Causa at the University of Venezia Cà Foscari (Italy) .

I graduated at this university, so I am doubly happy for him!

Here a video of the ceremony, and Putnam’s prolusion “Philosophy as a value”. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJymyBtteqQ

A short interview here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYUKvY5mv-E

“It seems that Fodor was seized by what seemed to him to be the ‘key’ to all my views: Wittgensteinian semantics! You got me wrong, Jerry, I am no ‘Wittgensteinian’.”

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n02/jerry-fodor/cest-mon-metier

(2007)

1. Why and how the very need for philosophy became a question

2. Logical Positivism as a failed response

3. Postmodernism as another failed response

4. The importance and value of philosophy as I see it

5. Another look at the history

Read more here

Philosophy in an Age of Science. Physics, Mathematics, and Skepticism

Hilary Putnam

Edited by Mario De Caro and David Macarthur

672 pages

Harvard University Press

April 2012

Contents