This book is a collection of essays about the philosophy of Hilary Putnam.

Hilary Putnam is the philosopher who initiated me into contemporary philosophy. My undergraduate thesis advisor had me read “The Meaning of ‘Meaning’” (1975), and I was drawn in by the issues Putnam raises in that challenging and entertaining essay. I went on to read the other essays in his collection Mind, Language, and Reality, then works by the philosophers he referred to (such as Quine and Kripke), and on and on to this day.

Putnam was a fortuitous choice as my first contemporary philosopher:

“If one wanted to write a history of the most important and exciting philosophical debates of the past half-century, there is no better place to begin than with the writings of Hilary Putnam. His philosophic range is enormous and deep. In the philosophy of science, logic, mathematics, language, mind, perception, epistemology, and metaphysics, Putnam’s challenging and controversial claims have been at the very center of discussion.” (Bernstein, p 251)

While my initial interest was the philosophy of language, Putnam led me from it to the philosophy of science, epistemology, and more.

I’ve read a lot of Putnam’s work over the years, and one aspect of his philosophy has continued to puzzle me. In his earlier work, including “The Meaning of ‘Meaning’,” Putnam was clearly a ‘metaphysical realist’ who believed that the ‘true’ structure of the world is independent of our concepts. By the 1980s, however, he had adopted a view he called ‘internal realism’ or ‘pragmatic realism’ and seemed to argue in favor of certain relativistic-sounding doctrines, such as “nature does not single out any one correspondence between our terms and external things” (1981).

“Two things about Hilary Putnam have not changed throughout his career: some (including Putnam himself) have regarded him as a ‘realist’ and some have seen him as a philosopher who changed his positions (certainly with respect to realism) almost continuously.” (Mueller and Fine, p 83)

So Putnam’s beliefs evolved. No problem. But even in his later works, he stands by many of his earlier conclusions, including his analysis of meaning. Didn’t the arguments for those conclusions depend critically on metaphysical realism?

In the introduction to this collection, editor Yemina Ben-Menahem promises that the essays will examine the “change and continuity” in Putnam’s thought. Indeed, I did learn why Putnam continues to consider himself a realist despite holding many relativist positions and how his earlier analyses retain their force. More importantly, I see how his philosophy offers a vision of a ‘middle way’ between the excesses of realism and relativism. The book did enrich my own philosophy regarding these matters.

1. Different theories can refer to ‘the same thing,’ despite conceptual changes.

In “The Meaning of ‘Meaning’,” Putnam argued that the full meaning of a term includes both the mental construct and the extension of the term. While his analysis shows that “meanings ain’t in the head,” the more important consequence from a philosophical point of view is that different (scientific) theories can refer to ‘the same thing.’ If the meaning of a term is identical to the speaker’s concept, then “when our beliefs change (as when science progresses), so do the meanings and referents of our terms.” The result would be relativism. However, the extension of concepts in distinct theories can be (nearly) the same, giving us a basis to translate between the theories.

“Once we let the meanings of terms vary without thereby altering their references, the different theories-different worlds argument for incommensurability is blocked. The goal of providing an alternative account of reference that would give it intertheoretic stability is achieved by the causal theory of reference. … As long as they keep track of the causal links between themselves and the entities they refer to, speakers can refer to the same objects through even radical theoretical change.” (Ben-Menahim, p 136)

2. People with different world views can share beliefs.

Since we can (approximately) translate concepts between conceptual schemes, we can agree about ‘the facts’ of a situation.

“Sharing the situation does not depend on assuming either that we share a ‘neutral’ description we agree on (e.g. ‘what really is’) or that we have direct access to the fact that the situation is shared. … The publicity of the situation among users of different descriptions can be seen as the result of the same interpretative skills and practices that are at work in our use of inductive concepts as they are exhibited within each of the different descriptive practices. They ‘form shared concepts’ by finding a way of approximating the extensions of the other description in extensions of their own.” (Mueller and Fine, p 113)

Here is where Putnam starts to sound like a relativist, or at least not a realist: he attributes the commonality between distinct theories to shared “interpretive skills and practices” rather than to a shared object of description. (Note a difference from Feyerabend: Putnam believes in shared interpretative skills and practices.)

3. We always compare one conceptual scheme to another, not one conceptual scheme to unconceptualized reality.

“From the participant’s perspective, there is no access to any reality but by describing it in a certain way – that is, by using certain conceptual systems. The idea of an absolutely mind-independent, totally unconceptualized reality, since indescribable, is also not usable for any purposes. … From ordinary language to high-level science there exist many different conceptual systems that are perfectly capable of describing a given situation in ways that can be and often are objectively correct.” (Mueller and Fine, p 85)

“Access to a common reality does not require access to something pre-conceptual. It requires, rather, that we be able to form shared concepts.” (Putnam 1995)

Putnam’s belief in the objectivity of value judgements also means that we can reasonably compare rival theories to decide which one is better.

4. It’s still realism because of the causal/intensional link to external reality.

“Because he realizes that some of his own claims about how all knowing is perspectival sound ‘relativistic,’ Putnam is at pains to stress his own robust pragmatic realism – realism with a human face. There are facts of the matter, even though these facts are relative to the adoption of a conceptual scheme – and even though alternative conceptual schemes may be incompatible with each other.” (Bernstein, p 258)

“One of Putnam’s earliest concerns was the defense of scientific truth against skeptical positions that see scientific theories as no more than useful fictions. Hence realism. Putnam viewed his early realism as a philosophical theory analogous, in important respects, to scientific theory, and argued for it on the basis of its superior explanatory power. In his recent writings, however, realism is no longer defended on these terms. Instead, its defense hinges on the indispensability of the notions of truth and objectivity, and their constitutive role in intelligible discourse.” (Ben-Menahim, p 127)

This last point, about the “constitutive role” of objectivity in intelligible discourse, reminds me of Kant’s points about the constitutive role of space and time in reason.

I basically agree with Putnam’s views. The even-numbered conclusions are the ones that these essays made clearer to me and that I’ll incorporate into my own views about the nature of reality. I’m not sure I can fully endorse Putnam continuing to call himself a ‘realist’; I can see why he wants to distance himself from the excesses of ‘relativists,’ although as Rorty sometimes says, it’s not clear that any real philosopher holds the views attributed to the stereotypical relativist.

Juliet Floyd, Externalism in Historical Context

The first essay planted the seeds for my understanding how Putnam’s analysis of meaning relates to other aspects of his philosophy. Floyd identifies Putnam’s goal in “The Meaning of ‘Meaning’” (MoM) as arguing against the view that “when our beliefs change (as when science progresses), so do the meanings and referents of our terms.”

I found Floyd’s characterization of MoM disorienting at first, because her understanding seemed counter to mine. She says that “MoM did not defend or attack realism” when in my mind it depended critically on realism; she said “Putnam’s commitment to semantic externalism... reflected … his rejection of the fact/value dichotomy” whereas I understood these two views as contradictory. For a while, I thought Floyd was mis-interpreting MoM based on a retrospective view from his later work. In fact, it was only after reading some of the other essays that I understood what Floyd was getting at. She was making point 1 from my summary above. This understanding of his aims clarifies how Putnam has continued to stand by his analysis even as he abandoned metaphysical realism: it’s not the realism that matters, but the causal intentionality.

Charles Travis, The Face of Perception

I found this to be one of the weaker essays. The one tidbit I got from it is a clue about the link between Putnam’s analysis of meaning and his pragmatism:

“The [traditional] idea is: when something would fit a given concept – what it would take for something to do so – is something intrinsic to that concept, part of being the concept it is. … So the facts as to when something would fit it are what they are no matter how the world might be. That is a form of Platonism; a form that Putnam, early on, saw would not do.” (p 54)

Concepts are not purely abstract mental categories, but are pragmatically involved with real-world contingencies. Concepts with absolutely no connection to the real world are of no use and are possibly inconceivable. Cf. Davidson’s arguments about incommensurable conceptual schemes.

Axel Mueller and Arthur Fine, Realism, Beyond Miracles

“Two things about Hilary Putnam have not changed throughout his career: some (including Putnam himself) have regarded him as a “realist” and some have seen him as a philosopher who changed his positions (certainly with respect to realism) almost continuously.” (p 83)

This essay resolves the apparent contradiction by showing how Putnam has remained a realist but changed what he assumes that realism means. In a way, he can claim to have remained a realist by virtue of his own argument about how a concept can retain its meaning despite a change in theory. For me, it was the most valuable essay in the collection, because it helped me understand how Putnam’s realist inclinations fit with his recent identification with pragmatism and his attacks on the fact/value dichotomy.

Beyond helping me understand Putnam’s philosophy, the view they present sounds right to me as a way of reconciling ‘real’ belief in an external world with the perspective-bound nature that relativists emphasize. I see how Putnam’s view relates to Rorty’s and to Davidson’s.

The title is a reference to a Putnam quote: “Realism is the only philosophy that does not make the success of science a miracle.”

“Our practices of making empirical claims and taking them to be objectively correct descriptions of a publicly accessible environment do not presuppose any such superthing [i.e one fixed, uniquely structured realm]. Each claim does presuppose a variously accessible, richly conceptualized and sometimes multiply organizable local environment for its evaluation, and environment that, for all of these reasons, can be common to many differently predisposed human beings.” (p 117 – 118)

Yemina Ben-Menahem, Putnam on Skepticism

This essay put the finishing touches on my (hopefully reasonable) understanding of how Putnam’s realism has changed and stayed the same over the years.

“Readers have been perplexed by the relation between the realist conception of meaning Putnam developed in ‘The Meaning of ‘Meaning’’ and his later disavowal of metaphysical realism. [ML: Amen!] … The causal account of reference at the base of MoM enables Putnam both to anchor language in reality, as realists seek to do, and to forgo knowledge of truth conditions as a prerequisite for meaningful discourse.” (p 130)

“The remarkable lesson of the model-theoretic arguments is that the skeptic and the metaphysical realist are in the same boat!

The most important consequence of metaphysical realism is that truth is supposed to be radically non-epistemic – we might be ‘brains in a vat’ and so the theory that is ‘ideal’ from the point of view of operational utility, inner beauty and elegance, ‘plausibility’, ‘simplicity’, ‘conservatism’, etc., might be false. [just like skepticism]” (p 132)

Tim Maudlin, The Tale of Quantum Logic
Nancy Cartwright, bAnother Philosopher Looks at Quantum Mechanics

Early in the book, I took pride in the fact that I understood a lot of the technical philosophical jargon and references (e.g. “Like Carnap, Putnam saw the need for surrendering Frege’s idea of a fixed totality of objects over which Fregean ‘first-order’ quantifiers would univocally range”). These essays brought my ego back to earth with their impenetrable quantum mechanics references (e.g. “In the case of Bohm’s theory, the quantum potential is derived in a very straightforward way using classical Hamilton-Jacoby theory”).

I was not interested enough in the subject matter of these essays -- the philosophical ramifications of quantum mechanics -- to struggle though the scientific details. I enjoyed Maudlin’s insouciant writing style (“Like all good tales, this is a story of temptation”) and followed the outline of his argument. From Cartwright’s essay I extracted a few tidbits that relate to the issues I discuss above.

“Successful theories do not need interpretation” (p 188), because “To adopt a theory of meaning according to which a language whose whole use is specified still lacks something – namely its ‘interpretation’ – is to accept a problem which can only have crazy solutions…. Either the use already fixes the ‘interpretation’ or nothing can.” (Putnam 1983, cited on p 141).

“Just as with any other theoretical concept, the meaning of the quantum state cannot be given by one operational procedure, or one thing the quantum state does, or one set of consequences it implies. To understand what the quantum state means, we must know a great deal about how the quantum state behaves and what kinds of consequences it has in a vast variety of different situations.” (p 197)

John Stachel, Structural Realism and Contextual Individuality

This essay is the weakest in the book. It is dense with scientific and mathematical jargon, and its philosophical point has very little to do with Hilary Putnam. In fact, the text suggests that editor Yemina Ben-Menahem told Stachel about Putnam and suggested the tenuous connection between his work and Stachel’s research.

Oron Shagrir, The Rise and Fall of Computational Functionalism

As its title indicates, this essay describes a philosophical approach that Putnam developed but has largely abandoned. As such, it was of limited interest to someone interested in Putnam’s current views.

Richard J. Bernstein, The Pragmatic Turn

Bernstein has written extensively about the original pragmatists (e.g. William James), and his essay is the clearest expression of Putnam’s interests in pragmatism.

“It may be objected that … there is a major difference between science and ethics. In science we do not have to argue about standards of objectivity; they exist. But in morality or politics they do not exist, they must be instituted. Yet this objection is misguided. If fails to acknowledge that even in the hard sciences there is an ongoing discussion and debate about what constitutes objectivity and objective standards. It is simply not the case that what counted as an objective fact for Copernicus, Kepler, or Galileo is still what counts as an objective fact today…. Much of the dispute about the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics is about what ought to count as the criteria and standards of objectivity. Objectivity is not a metaphysical or an epistemological given – it is an ongoing achievement…” (p 260)