Renewing Philosophy - Hardcover

Putnam, Hilary

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 067476093X ISBN 13: 9780674760936

Publisher: Harvard University Press, 1992

Synopsis

Hilary Putnam, one of America’s most distinguished philosophers, surveys an astonishingly wide range of issues and proposes a new, clear-cut approach to philosophical questions―a renewal of philosophy. He contests the view that only science offers an appropriate model for philosophical inquiry. His discussion of topics from artificial intelligence to natural selection, and of reductive philosophical views derived from these models, identifies the insuperable problems encountered when philosophy ignores the normative or attempts to reduce it to something else.

About this title

About the Author

Hilary Putnam was Cogan University Professor, Emeritus, at Harvard University.

Reviews

By criticizing some theses of cognitive science and evolutionary theory, noted Harvard philosopher Putnam tries to show that present-day science does not provide an adequate metaphysics. He then examines Williams's metaphysically materialist view of the world and argues that the attempt to eliminate the normative in favor of a scientific account of how things "really are" is misguided. Putnam then dismisses a variety of relativisms and realisms. He concludes by considering Wittgenstein on religious belief and Dewey on democracy and finds that philosophical reflection that sympathetically examines forms of life not our own or that honestly probes our professed commitments can dissolve prejudices and thereby encourage us to consider possibilities we did not hitherto recognize. A clear, stimulating, and compact discussion that should be part of every major philosophy library.
- Robert Hoffman, York Coll.,
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication date: 1992
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 067476093X
• ISBN 13: 9780674760936
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 248