Hilary Putnam (July 31, 1926 - March 13, 2016)

Hilary Putnam Born

Jul 31, 1926

Hilary Whitehall Putnam ( July 31, 1926 – March 13, 2016) was an American philosopher, mathematician, and computer scientist, and a major figure in analytic philosophy in the second half of the 20th century. He made significant contributions to philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, philosophy of mathematics, and philosophy of science.

Graduate From Harvard University

1946

Attended and graduate from Harvard University for philosophy.

Attended UCLA and earned his PHD

1951

He then attended UCLA’s Philosophy’s department for his PHD.

Philosophy of Mind (1960)

1960

An illustration of multiple realizability. M stands for mental and P stands for physical. It can be seen that more than one P can instantiate one M, but not vice versa. Causal relations between states are represented by the arrows. Putnam's best-known work concerns philosophy of mind. His most noted original contributions to that field came in several key papers published in the late 1960s that set out the hypothesis of multiple realizability.

Functionalism

1970

The point, for functionalism is the nature of the states of the Turing machine. Each state can be defined in terms of its relations to the other states and to the inputs and outputs, and the details of how it accomplishes what it accomplishes and of its material constitution are completely irrelevant.

Rejected Functionalism

1980

Putnam abandoned his adherence to functionalism and other computational theories of mind. His change of mind was primarily due to the difficulties that computational theories have in explaining certain intuitions with respect to the externalism of mental content.

Putnam Death

Mar 13, 2016

Putnam passed away on March 13, 2016.

Educational Video

Mar 6, 2019

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJR04FsNjXU
A short educational video of Hilary Putnam talking about Functionalism.