Philosophical Papers: Volume 3, Realism and Reason PDF Download

Author: Hilary Putnam
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521313940
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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Book Description
This is the third volume of Hilary Putnam's philosophical papers, published in paperback for the first time. The volume contains his major essays from 1975 to 1982, which reveal a large shift in emphasis in the 'realist' position developed in his earlier work. While not renouncing those views, Professor Putnam has continued to explore their epistemological consequences and conceptual history. He now, crucially, sees theories of truth and of meaning that derive from a firm notion of reference as inadequate.

Author: Hilary Putnam
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674749450
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 426

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Book Description
One of America's great philosophers says the time has come to reform philosophy. Putnam calls upon philosophers to attend to the gap between the present condition of their subject and the human aspirations that philosophy should and once did claim to represent. His goal is to embed philosophy in social life.

Author: Hilary Putnam
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139935666
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
Hilary Putnam deals in this book with some of the most fundamental persistent problems in philosophy: the nature of truth, knowledge and rationality. His aim is to break down the fixed categories of thought which have always appeared to define and constrain the permissible solutions to these problems.

Author: Hilary Putnam
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674956070
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 614

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Book Description
Putnam offers a sweeping account of the sources of several central problems of philosophy. A unifying theme of the volume is that reductionism, scientism, and old-style disenchanted naturalism tend to be obstacles to philosophical progress.

Author: Hilary Putnam
Publisher: Open Court Publishing Company
ISBN: 9780812690439
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 98

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Book Description
"The first two lectures place the alternative I defend -- a kind of pragmatic realism -- in a historical and metaphysical context. Part of that context is provided by Husserl's remark that the history of modern philosophy begins with Galileo -- that is, modern philosophy has been hypnotized by the idea that scientific facts are all the facts there are. Another part is provided by the analysis of a very simple example of what I call 'contextual relativity'. The position I defend holds that truth depends on conceptual scheme and it is nonetheless 'real truth'. "In my third lecture I turn to the Kantian antecedents of this view, explaining what I think should be retained of the Kantian idea of autonomy as the central theme of morality, and extracting from Kant's work a 'moral image of the world' that connects the ideals of equality and intellectual liberty. In this lecture I defend the idea that moral images are an indispensible part of our moral and cultural heritage. "In the final lecture I defend the idea of moral objectivity. I compare our epistemological positions in ethics, history, analysis of human character, and science, and I argue that in no area can we hope for a 'foundation' which is more ultimate than the beliefs that actually, at a given time, function as foundational in the area, the beliefs concerning which one has to say 'this is where my spade is turned'. In ethics such beliefs are represented in moral images of the world."

Author: Christopher Norris
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 9780719061967
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
This study examines Hilary Putnam's work in epistemology, philosophy of science and mathematics, philosophical logic and semantics and cognitive psychology. It takes account of his various shifts in philosophical viewpoint over the past four decades, and demonstrates how Putnam arrived at the different positions he has occupied during his career, and discusses the various forms of anti-realist doctrine with which he has engaged. The workd offers commentary on Putnam's writing about conceptual problems in the interpretation of quantum mechanics and places Putnam's work in a wider philosophical context, relating it to various contemporary debates in epistemology and the philosophy of science.

Author: Urszula M. Żegleń
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 0415256054
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
One of the most influential contemporary philosophers, Hilary Putnam's involvement in philosophy spans philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, ontology and epistemology and logic. This specially commissioned collection discusses his contribution to the realist and pragmatist debate. Hilary Putnam comments on the issues raised in each article, making it invaluable for any scholar of his work.

Author: Philip Mirowski
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0585268797
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
"The mandate given to the editor of the present volume was succinct and to the point: gather together some of the most recent attempts to remake economic theory at its most fundamental levels, and avoid the two debased brands of academic revolutions. Now, anyone would have realized that this would be a devilishly difficult task, more likely than not to backfire; but, in retrospect, the editor still marvels at the complacency with which he embarked on the enterprise. It was quite easy to identify the critics of conventional economics who had little more than criticism to offer; it was much more difficult to feel certain that he had actually stumbled upon a substantive divergence from the orthodoxy that appeared to promise further fruitful developments. ... Forewarned and forearmed, the prospective reader should then be equipped to judge for him- or herself whether truth in advertising has been further abused, or if something a little more interesting and entertaining is afoot."--Pages 1-2

Author: Robert E. Butts
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400947305
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 367

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Book Description
The papers in this volume are offered in celebration of the 200th anni versary of the pub 1 i cat i on of Inmanue 1 Kant's The MetaphysicaL Foundations of NatupaL Science. All of the es says (including the Introduction) save two were written espe ci ally for thi s volume. Gernot Bohme' s paper is an amended and enlarged version of one originally read in the series of lectures and colloquia in philosophy of science offered by Boston University. My own paper is a revised and enlarged version (with an appendix containing completely new material) of one read at the biennial meeting of the Philosophy of Sci ence Association held in Chicago in 1984. Why is it important to devote this attention to Kant's last published work in the philosophy of physics? The excellent essays in the volume will answer the question. I will provide some schematic com ments designed to provide an image leading from the general question to its very specific answers. Kant is best known for hi s monumental Croitique of Pure Reason and for his writings in ethical theory. His "critical" philosophy requires an initial sharp division of knowledge into its theoretical and practical parts. Moral perfection of attempts to act out of duty is the aim of practical reason. The aim of theoretical reason is to know the truth about ma terial and spiritual nature.

Author: Paul Horwich
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262580888
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 235

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Book Description
Time is generally thought to be one of the more mysterious ingredients of the universe. In this intriguing book, Paul Horwich makes precise and explicit the interrelationships between time and a large number of philosophically important notions. Ideas of temporal order and priority interact in subtle and convoluted ways with the deepest elements in our network of basic concepts. Confronting this conceptual jigsaw puzzle, Horwich notes that there are glaring differences in how we regard the past and future directions of time. For example, we can influence the future but not the past, and can easily gain knowledge of the past but not of the future. Moreover we see a profusion of decay processes but little spontaneous generation of order; time appears to "flow" in one privileged direction, not the other; and we tend to explain phenomena in terms of antecedent circumstances, rather than subsequent ones. Horwich explains such time asymmetries and examines their bearing on the nature of time itself. Asymmetries in Time covers many notoriously difficult problems in the philosophy of science: causation, knowledge, entropy, explanation, time travel, rational choice (including Newcomb's problem), laws of nature, and counterfactual implication—and gives a unified treatment of these matters. The book covers an unusually broad range of topics in a lucid and nontechnical way and includes alternative points of view in the philosophical literature.