Philosophical Papers

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.

Introduction; 1. Models and reality; 2. Equivalence; 3. Possibility and necessity; 4. Reference and truth; 5. “two dogmas’ revisited; 6. There is at least one a priori truth; 7. Analyticity and apriority: beyond Wittgenstein and Quine; 8. Computational psychology and interpretation theory; 9. Reflections on Goodman’s Ways of Worldmaking; 10. Convention: a theme in philosophy; 11. Philosophers and human understanding; 12. Why there isn’t a ready-made world; 13. Why reason can’t be naturalized; 14. Quantum mechanics and the observer; 15. Vaguenes and alternative logic; 16. Beyond historicism; Bibliography; Acknowledgements; Index.

‘The volume as a whole shows Putnam at the top of his form - moving easily back and forth between brilliantly original arguments on small points in the philosophy of language, and equally original diagnoses of large-scale cultural trends. The book is analytic philosophy at its best. It makes one realize that Putnam is, among contemporary analytic philosophers, the one who most resembles Russell: not just in intellectual curiosity and willingness to change his mind, but in the breadth of his interests and in the extent of his social and moral concerns.’

– Richard Rorty, The London Review of Books