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Hilary Putnam, Twin Earth Thought Experiment, Born 31 July 1926 died 13 March 2016
This thought experiment is based on meanings that aren't just in one's head, but also one's environment. In the example given, here on earth water is H2O but on an almost identical earth elsewhere water is XYZ. So the meaning of water is the same, a liquid we drink to sustain life, but the substance is not.
Putnam, Hilary. “Meaning and Reference.” The Journal of Philosophy, vol. 70, no. 19, 1973, p. 700
Twin Earth -
Hilary Putnam, Brain in a Vat Thought Experiment, Born 31 July 1926 died 13 March 2016
Hilary Putnam’s “brain in a vat” thought experiment posed the question: What if we are not in our bodies, if our brain only needs electrical stimulation certain areas for the brain to think it is seeing or hearing or touching, what if our brain is in a vat somewhere being given these stimulations, we would never know.
“Brains in a Vat.” Reason, Truth and History, by Hilary Putnam, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1981, pp. 1–21.
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Hilary Putnam, Ethics Without Ontology, Born 31 July 1926 died 13 March 2016
Putnam questions whether ethical judgments can be considered objective and offers Euthyphro's dilemma: Is something good because God likes it or does God like it because it is good? As a religious man I too find this a dilemma, is morality greater than God or can God change what is right or wrong at will, making ethics arbitrary? I choose to believe he decided what was good at our beginning.
Putnam, Hilary. Ethics Without Ontology. Cambridge, Mass. Harvard University Press, 2005. Print. -
Hilary Putnam, Ontology and Epistemology, Born 31 July 1926 died 13 March 2016
Realism vs Relativism Vs Nominalism. Putnam defines himself as a realist. According to ontology, that means he believes in a single possibly obscure truth and that facts are hard to uncover but exist to be revealed. Epistemically, that makes him an optimist. I think it means he likes to think life has meaning. That we are here for a purpose, perhaps to find these facts.
PUTNAM, H. (2015). Naturalism, realism, and normativity. Journal of the American Philosophical Association, 1(2) section 2
