
Hilary Putnam has died - waffle_ss
http://dailynous.com/2016/03/13/hilary-putnam-1929-2016/
======
rayval
Hilary Putnam had many achievements in the field of philosophy. Here's some
context about his concept of "brain in a vat"[1], in his 1981 book, "Reason,
Truth and History".

The brain-in-a-vat concept was famously used in the The Matrix films.[2]

A summary from Philosophy Index: "The example supposes that a mad scientist
has removed your brain, and placed it into a vat of liquid to keep it alive
and active. The scientist has also connected your brain to a powerful
computer, which sends neurological signals to the brain in the way the brain
normally receives them. Thus, the computer is able to send your brain data to
fool you into believing that you are still walking around in your body."

"The brain-in-a-vat thought experiment is generally used to ask the question:
how do you know that you are not a brain in a vat? The question mirrors an
early one from Descartes, which asks how you are to know that there is not an
evil demon feeding false information to your senses. The essential conclusion
is that, from the perspective of the brain itself, it is impossible to tell
whether it is a brain in a vat or a brain in a skull." [1][3]

___________

Links: [1] [http://www.philosophy-index.com/putnam/brain-
vat/](http://www.philosophy-index.com/putnam/brain-vat/) [2]
[http://consc.net/papers/matrix.html](http://consc.net/papers/matrix.html) [3]
[https://philosophy.as.uky.edu/sites/default/files/Brains%20i...](https://philosophy.as.uky.edu/sites/default/files/Brains%20in%20a%20Vat%20-%20Hilary%20Putnam.pdf)

~~~
omginternets
How is the "Brain in a vat" version different from the Descartes version?

~~~
nerfhammer
One difference is <s>Putnam concludes you can't tell whether life is an
illusion or not</s>, whereas Descartes concludes you can and also god exists.
Setupwise it's essentially the same.

EDIT: I got Putnam wrong. There is still the theistic difference though.

~~~
hyperpape
That's not right. Putnam's argument is explicitly anti-sceptical. See the
Stanford Encyclopedia article linked down thread.

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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.

~~~
js8
"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."

Really? That's a very strong statement which I would like to see to be backed
up with some axioms. :-) (Because both analytic philosophy and democracy seem
more preferable to me.)

~~~
woodandsteel
A foundational-axiomatic view implies a philosopher king because the vast
majority of citizens lack the intellectual ability, much less motivation, to
understand it and apply it to political decisions.

Anti-foundationalists, in contrast, think that reality is far too complicated
for a single person to figure out, and so we need extended democratic
discussion. They also tend to believe that average citizens have a
considerable degree of rationality and good motivation, and so can be trusted
to be responsible voters. This is, of course, imperfect, but as Churchill
famously said, it is better than all the alternatives.

As far as analytic philosophy goes, the classic version is foundationalist-
axiomatic, but later versions, such as Strawson, are anti-foundationalist.
Later Wittgenstein I think is a mixed case.

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skarist
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.

~~~
nullified-vga
Kripke is still here. I would add him to that list.

~~~
simondedalus
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.

~~~
arstin
I enjoy reading Kripke and agree he's done solid work. But I must admit I
don't get the "Great Philosopher" thing. He did great work in mathematics as a
teenager then basically just applied that model root and branch to the
philosophical problems his teachers fed him. Which was a perfectly legitimate,
even clarifying contribution for the time. But it's not clear to me how the
result was a huge advance outside the local Carnapian tradition he was
entirely inside of. (And as received a nice documentation in Soames's history
of analytic philosophy which uses Kripke as the hero.) Then again I read "Two
Dogmas of Empiricism" as almost provincial!

FWIW, I personally find Putnam, Quine, and even Rorty far more interesting to
read both now and from a historical perspective.

~~~
simondedalus
i agree on the last point (all 3 more interesting, and i agree with including
the 'even'). like i said above though, it's hard to deny that his discussion
of contingent a priori as such speaks to kant more directly and strongly than,
yeah, "two dogmas of empiricism" (i wasn't impressed either).

to put it another way, i think it would be hard to take many other
philosophers as deeply entrenched in a particular set of concerns and
assumptions (take, like, derrida or godel) and as effectively press the points
of their major work against the work of kant or aristotle or some other
towering "we all claim her/him!" figure. "naming and necessity" speaks to kant
in terms that need to be answered, which is way more than most publish or
perish philosophy professors ever achieve in their lifetime (much less right
away, in a lecture presenting a semantics based on modal logic!).

but yeah, the point is well taken. kripke is worth reading once / reading
about. putnam is worth reading a lot.

~~~
arstin
Yea that's a good point about just how much better (and...different) Kripkes
work is than that which has been produced by the publish or perish academic
system in philosophy. As far as I can tell it's been utterly counter-
productive.

In Kripkes favor I would also add that he was a great stylist, with warmth and
humor and...flexibility of presentation. And that partly because of this NN
and WRPL are perfect introductory philosophy texts for "generally educated"
people. If I taught philosophy instead of working in tech, I'd probably help
keep Kripkes legacy alive for that reason alone!

~~~
simondedalus
definitely. his warmth and humor are very much on display in "a puzzle about
belief" as well:

[http://www.uvm.edu/~lderosse/courses/lang/Kripke%281979%29.p...](http://www.uvm.edu/~lderosse/courses/lang/Kripke%281979%29.pdf)

(putnam is cited in this paper as well, by the by)

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yoaviram
I was very lucky to attend one of Putnam's seminars at Uni abot logic and
necessity. His in depth understanding of mathematics, physics, biology and
many other sciences made him an almost ideal critic. I was impressed by how,
when challenged, he was always able to restate his arguments based on
stronger, more fundamental assumption. Putnam is a pleasure to read (which is
not always the case when it comes to philosophers) and addresses many of the
topics that occasionally come up on hacker news. Can't recommend him enough.

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philippnagel
His brain should be preserved in a vat.

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arstin
Some readers here might be interested in the nice blog he kept last year.

[http://putnamphil.blogspot.com/?m=1](http://putnamphil.blogspot.com/?m=1)

~~~
igravious
Better link:
[https://putnamphil.blogspot.com/](https://putnamphil.blogspot.com/)

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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."

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conceit
Just read the name yesterday linked to "trial-and-error predicates" [2],
reading on Neural Nets, super-Turing computation and hypercomputation [1].

[1] mentiones _nonrecursive sets of numbers_ , which seems awfully related to
a crackpot theory of mine.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercomputation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercomputation)
[2] direkt link from the wiki artikel:
[https://dx.doi.org/10.2307%2F2270581](https://dx.doi.org/10.2307%2F2270581)

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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](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...](http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/23171-hilary-putnam-pragmatism-and-realism-
routledge/) 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.

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petegrif
I was a big fan of 'Meaning and the Moral Sciences.'

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agumonkey
Student of Quine, also reddit thread
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilary_Putnam](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilary_Putnam)

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rahuldeshpande
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilary_Putnam](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilary_Putnam)

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petegrif
A was a big fan of 'Meaning and the Moral Sciences.'

