Philosophical Papers: Volume 2, Mind, Language and Reality

Professor Hilary Putnam has been one of the most influential and sharply original of recent American philosophers in a whole range of fields. His most important published work is collected here, together with several new and substantial studies, in two volumes. The first deals with the philosophy of mathematics and of science and the nature of philosophical and scientific enquiry; the second deals with the philosophy of language and mind. Volume one is now issued in a new edition, including an essay on the philosophy of logic first published in 1971.

Introduction; 1. Language and philosophy; 2. The analytic and synthetic; 3. Do true assertions correspond to reality?; 4. Some issues in the theory of grammar; 5. The ‘innateness hypothesis’ and explanatory models in linguistics; 6. How not to talk about meaning; 7. Review of The concept of a person; 8. Is semantics possible?; 9. The refutation of conventionalism; 10. Reply to Gerald Massey; 11. Explanation and reference; 12. The meaning of ‘meaning’; 13. Language and reality; 14. Philosophy and our mental life; 15. Dreaming and ‘depth grammar’; 16. Brains and behaviour; 17. Other minds; 18. Minds and machines; 19. Robots: machines or artificially created life?; 20. The mental life of some machines; 21. The nature of mental states; 22. Logical positivism and the philosophy of mind; Bibliography; Index.

‘Professor Putnam presents a powerful, coherent and persuasive system of thought. Ranging widely over the topics mentioned in their titles, the two volumes of essays yet have a remarkable degree of unity. Their themes overlap and are linked, as philosophical themes, seriously handled, must always overlap and be linked. In a period in which the general level of philosophical competence, as evidenced in publication, is extremely high, Putnam’s work stands conspicuously out by virtue of its combination of technical sophistication, clear-sightedness, depth and power. Nothing of what he says is trivial, most of it is true and all parts of it are systematically interconnected. His prose - lucid, lively and unpretentious - is an excellent medium for his thought.’

– P. F. Strawson, The Times Literary Supplement