The essays in this volume discuss Putnam's major philosophical contributions.

This volume offers an unusual variety of topics presented during the sixth annual Oberlin Colloquium in Philosophy.

The properties of Turing’s famous ‘universal machine’ has long sustained functionalist intuitions about the nature of cognition. Here, I show that there is a logical problem with standard functionalist arguments for multiple realizability. These arguments rely essentially on Turing’s powerful insights regarding computation. In addressing a possible reply to this criticism, I further argue that functionalism is not a useful approach for understanding what it is to have a mind. In particular, I show that the difficulties involved in distinguishing implementation (...) from function make multiple realizability claims untestable and uninformative. As a result, I conclude that the role of Turing machines in philosophy of mind needs to be reconsidered. (shrink)

An introduction to functionalism in the philosophy of psychology/mind, and review of the current state of debate pro and con. Forthcoming in the Routledge Companion to the Philosophy of Psychology (John Symons and Paco Calvo, eds.).

I argue that standard functionalism leads to absurd conclusions as to the number of minds that would exist in the universe if persons were duplicated.

Hilary Putnam, who may have been the first philosopher to advance the notion that the computer is an apt model for the mind, takes a radically new view of his...

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. (shrink)