Hilary Putnam

Tags: Philosopher.

Hilary Whitehall Putnam (born July 31 1926) is an American philosopher mathematician and computer scientist who has been a central figure in analytic philosophy since the 1960s especially in philosophy of mind philosophy of language philosophy of mathematics and philosophy of science. He is known for his willingness to apply an equal degree of scrutiny to his own philosophical positions as to those of others subjecting each position to rigorous analysis until he exposes its flaws.

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birth date

1926-07-31

birth place

Chicago, Illinois, United States

era

20th-century philosophy

individualised GND number

118823779

influenced

Daniel Dennett, Donald Davidson (philosopher), David Lewis (philosopher), David Marr (neuroscientist), Jerry Fodor, Saul Kripke, Tamar Gendler, Ned Block, Tyler Burge, Joseph E. LeDoux

influenced by

Alan Turing, Charles Sanders Peirce, Immanuel Kant, John Dewey, Karl Marx, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Søren Kierkegaard, Sigmund Freud, Saul Kripke, Willard Van Orman Quine, William James, Nelson Goodman, Hans Reichenbach

main interest

Epistemology, Metaphilosophy, Philosophy of language, Philosophy of mind, Philosophy of mathematics

notableIdea

Causal theory of reference, Brain in a vat, Semantic externalism, Functionalism (philosophy of mind), Multiple realizability, Philosophical realism

philosophicalSchool

Analytic philosophy, Pragmatism