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| Hillary Putnam is a key figure in the philosophy of mind during the |
'''Hillary Putnam''' is a key figure in the ] during the ]. He was an early and influential advocate of ] (roughly, the view that the human mind is analogous to a digital computer) but in "Representation and Reality" he recanted his earlier views and set out to explain why functionalism, in his revised view, would not work. He is well known for his doctrine that "meaning is not in the head". This is illustrated by examples such as the imaginary world, identical to our own in most respects, where the place of water is occupied, not by ''H<sub>2</sub>0'', but by ''XYZ''. When Putnam from our world and Putnam from "Twin Earth" talk about a bucket of water, they are mentally and physically identical, but they are talking about different things. | ||
Revision as of 20:14, 8 September 2002
Hillary Putnam is a key figure in the philosophy of mind during the 20th century. He was an early and influential advocate of functionalism (roughly, the view that the human mind is analogous to a digital computer) but in "Representation and Reality" he recanted his earlier views and set out to explain why functionalism, in his revised view, would not work. He is well known for his doctrine that "meaning is not in the head". This is illustrated by examples such as the imaginary world, identical to our own in most respects, where the place of water is occupied, not by H20, but by XYZ. When Putnam from our world and Putnam from "Twin Earth" talk about a bucket of water, they are mentally and physically identical, but they are talking about different things.