Hilary Putnam, (born July 31, 1926, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.—died March 13, 2016), leading American philosopher who made major contributions to metaphysics, epistemology, the philosophy of mind, the philosophy of language, the philosophy of science, the philosophy of mathematics, and the philosophy of logic. He is best known for his semantic externalism, according to which linguistic meanings are not purely mental entities but reach out to external reality; his antireductionist philosophy of mind; and his persistent defence of realism, the view that truth and knowledge are objective. In his later years he became increasingly sensitive to the moral aspects of epistemology and metaphysics and, more generally, to philosophy’s moral calling.
- from Britannica
“this whole question has nothing to do with our substance. Strange as it may seem to common sense and to sophisticated intuition alike, the question of the autonomy of our mental life does not hinge on and has nothing to do with all that too popular, all too old question about matter or soul stuff.”
“virtually identical structures (physically speaking) have evolved in the eye of the octopus and in the eye of the mammal, notwithstanding the fact that this organ has evolved from different kinds of cells in the two cases”
