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Bibliography
Hilary Putman was one of the most influential philosophers during the mid 1900's. During his time he wrote 24 books about his theories and contributions to the many philosophical fields. Hilary was a professor at Northwestern University, where he taught philosophy until he retired Hilary was known for always chaining his positions on subjects so a lot of his contributions are just his main thoughts overviewed. Hilary died in March 2016, leaving being his creative work and aspiring theories. -
Minds and Machines
Hilary Putnam theory on Minds and Machines is the relationship between a person’s feelings and thoughts and how they process. He believed that if it is possible that humans have souls that is likely that computers can too.Theocratically the model make-up of a human is like the make-up of a program for how a machine operates. This created functionalism, he later went on to disregsrd this idea because our understanding of the Mind and Machine was unable to support functionalist theory. -
Multiple realizability
Hilary believes that is it not entirely true that pain is identical to C-fiber firing. He states that pain relates to a completely different physical state within the nervous system and in different organisms, although they all experience the same mental state of "being in pain". Putnam argues that different Animals recognize pain and mental states differently. This is because they do not share the same brain structure therefore mental states are going to be different in different species. -
Twin Earth
Hilary Putnam’s theory on “The meaning of meaning” resulted from the experiment of Twin Earth. Our earth has Water and Twin Earth has an aesthetic liquid, experiencing the same (having a Liquid) but water has a different meaning.The two Earths are in identical psychological states yet use different meanings. This is because the contents of a person's brain is not sufficient enough to recognize the reference of terms they use. This experiment brought him to his analogy on semantic externalism. -
Brain in a Vat
The Brain in a Vat scenario is used to draw out conceptions of human knowledge. Hilary believed The Brain in a Vat scenario is an illustration of global skepticism. It represents a situation where our beliefs on the world are presumably false although they are justified. If global skepticism exists then our brains are in a vat, but we cannot be brains in a vat. This is because our brains would have no knowledge of external reality so it could not make an appropriate connection to it being a Vat. -
References
“How Can We Know That We’re Not Brains in Vats? – Keith DeRose.” Https://Campuspress.Yale.Edu/Keithderose/How-Can-We-Know/, 2017, campuspress.yale.edu/keithderose/how-can-we-know.
Weber, Bruce. “Hilary Putnam, Giant of Modern Philosophy, Dies at 89.” The New York Times, 18 Mar. 2016, www.nytimes.com/2016/03/18/arts/hilary-putnam-giant-of-modern-philosophy-dies-at-89.html. -
References in YouTube link
“Hilary Putnam: One of the Most Influential Philosophers of Our Time.” The Irish Times, 9 Apr. 2016, www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/people/hilary-putnam-one-of-the-most-influential-philosophers-of-our-time-1.2603528. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLrVxNlUxBo