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Birth
Hilary Whitehall Putnam was born in Chicago, Illinois to Samuel and Riva Putman -
Education
Putnam studied Mathematics and Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania. He continued on to graduate school studying Philosophy at Harvard University and finally UCLA where he received his PhD. -
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Early Career
After obtaining his PhD, Putnam taught philosophy at Northwestern University, Princeton University, and MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) (Ben-Menahem). -
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Philosophy of Language
One of the many area's Putnam is known for was his work in the philosophy of language. Starting in the the 1960's, Putnam was conducting experiments on language. These experiments involved a term "inter alia" meaning that when a belief changes, so too changes the meaning and references of that belief. Putnam famously defended this understanding in his 1975 paper, "The Meaning of 'Meaning'" (Ben-Menahem 17). -
Putnam vs. Kuhn. Which meaning do you mean?
Putnam didn't agree with Kuhn's understanding of paradigms and how the meanings of words didn't transfer from one paradigm to the other. He challenged this theory and came up with two statements that when used in conjunction with one another, they "defeat the relativist argument" (Ben-Menahem). The statements are 1. Terms can span different paradigms because they are established by reference to the time and 2. Words can have the same meaning, but differ on how they are being used (Ben-Menahem). -
Rise of Functionalism
Putnam pioneered another term - functionalism. This term tries to define the processes of our brains in terms of 'functional' items (Ben-Menahem). Putnam describes this analogy using human mentality and computers stating "the hardware (brain) and the software (mind) are disjointed" (Ben-Menahem). Putnam would later relinquish this understanding due to his externalism views, stating "functionalism is still an internalist conception" (Ben-Menahem). -
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Late Career into Retirement
After teaching at a handful of other colleges, Putnam was became a professor at Harvard's philosophy department until he retired in 2000 (Ben-Menahem). -
Death
Hilary Putman passed away on March 13, 2016 (Ben-Menahem).