The Philosophy of Hilary Putnam. The Library of Living Philosophers, vol. 34

The Library of Living Philosophers volumes are always a treat and this one is no exception—complete with a substantial autobiography, twenty-six critical essays, in-depth responses, a detailed index, and an exhaustive bibliography of Putnam's work (by John Shook). It has been long in the making, some contributions dating back to 2002.Hilary Putnam (1926–2016) has left many lasting marks. The editors of this volume have done an admirable job of providing a broad and well-balanced coverage of important strands of Putnam's work in logic, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of science, epistemology, philosophy of language, religious philosophy, and ethics. The cast of contributors is thoughtfully chosen, and stellar. Other collections on Putnam remain valuable, but this one is surely more comprehensive and definitive.1Putnam's own input is very considerable. He has provided a careful and detailed response, or at least a warm and respectful one, to each commentator. His engaging and intriguing intellectual autobiography (3–110) is a great philosophical contribution in itself, giving a panoramic view of his dazzling academic trajectory and a candid account of his upbringing and personal life.We also gain a useful perspective on that familiar phenomenon of “Putnam changing his mind,” which he addresses firmly: “If constantly rethinking one's philosophical arguments and commitments is ‘changing one's mind,’ then I hope I never stop ‘changing my mind.’ To my way of thinking, this is what philosophy at its best is all about” (96–97). Putnam likes (768) Cornel West's characterization: “Like a jazzman in the life of the mind, Putnam is forever on the move in search of persuasive pictures of the position of human beings in the world”; his “passionate pursuit for clarity leads him to wisely learn to live with what is unclear” (764–65).I heartily agree with Putnam's view of philosophy expressed here. Still, it can be exhausting for others to keep up. But why did anyone care so much about what Putnam thought at each moment? Randall Auxier's moving preface gives an indication (xxii–xxiii): “It could not have been easy for Putnam to understand his own power,” but “a tiny ripple at Harvard can create a tsunami out in the Great Middle” where there is “tremendous pressure to conform to the models established by that upper echelon.” Auxier notes wistfully: “One thing that was clear to hungry waifs standing out in the cold was that Putnam was free to change his mind whenever he wanted to, and that seemed like the exercise of privilege. . . . Below these elite levels, changing one's view is a sign of weakness.” This makes damning testimony on the state of our profession. Regardless, what shines through is Putnam's ceaseless efforts to maintain the coherence of his thinking at each stage of his development. And that is an exemplar worth emulating.Many readers will find it difficult to read everything in the nearly one thousand pages of this book. Still, I think it is important to take the volume as a whole, and the preface and the autobiography are helpful for that purpose. I cannot seriously discuss the content of all of the papers in the volume. This reminds me of Putnam saying, with a benevolent grin: “Any philosophy that can be put in a nutshell, belongs there.” I will strive (and fail) to say something informative about the basic orientation and significance of each paper. The device I use for that purpose is to pull out two large themes running through Putnam's thought.The first is realism, a topic on which Putnam has generated great excitement, controversy, and confusion. As Frederick Stoutland says, “getting clear about his conception of realism . . . is a way to understand his overall philosophical views” (511). This volume certainly helps, by clarifying the vicissitudes of Putnam's thinking and also providing valuable insights about what is at stake in the realism debate. Putnam himself gives helpful markers and explanations about his changing views, and articulates them further. Stoutland divides Putnam's philosophical work “into three phases, each of which involves a version of realism” (metaphysical, internal, and commonsense), and gives a handy summary of each (511–18).Putnam is still routinely cited as the authority behind the ever-popular “no miracles” argument for scientific realism, which he remembers articulating in 1976 (552). Yet shortly after that he promulgated “internal realism,” rejecting metaphysical realism and denouncing standard scientific realism as a betrayal of the healthy quotidian realist instincts that it pretends to protect. By 1990 he went on to renounce internal realism, which he came to see as antirealist. He fell back to scientific (though not metaphysical) realism, now preferring to call it “natural realism,” anchoring his thinking in the commonsense confidence in statements such as “Squirrels are real, and so are the predators” (770). Putnam's discourse on natural realism can be found in The Threefold Cord (1999), and the present volume offers deeper insights into it.Various commentators have doubted that Putnam ever managed to find a stable position on realism. Those who want an exposition of what exactly Putnam intended may be disappointed by John McDowell's essay, “Putnam on Natural Realism,” but it offers a subtle discourse on the philosophy of perception, which surely has deep relevance here, concerning what Putnam in his reply calls the problem of Kantian, not Cartesian, skepticism (659). For a more direct commentary on natural realism, the last pages of Michael Dummett's essay (432–36) are quite instructive, including an unexpected comparison to Frege. Putnam's response notes that Dummett's essay is in fact “a major statement of [Dummett's] position” and “an extended transcendental argument for verificationism, an argument that will be studied for many years to come” (437).One subtle and puzzling aspect of Putnam's later view on realism is his take on the correspondence notion of truth. It is helpful to have Robert K. Shope's essay, focused on what he calls the “Minimal Assertion Thesis,” shared by the later Putnam and the deflationists, which provides a sense of correspondence but not the kind involved in the “classical” correspondence theory of truth. Putnam admits that he has not found an account of truth entirely satisfying to himself, but that Shope “comes as close to filling the lacuna as I can possibly imagine” (385). Some deep insights on this matter are also contained in Carl Posy's essay. Putnam's slogan “realism with a human face” may well describe Kant's position on knowledge. Posy argues that Kant and Putnam agree on the nature of reference, but disagree on truth. He also argues (567–79) that a revised Kantian “assertability account of truth” is defensible, and suggests that Putnam should accept it (Putnam declines).Tim Maudlin issues a blunt challenge to Putnam to accept metaphysical realism. He argues that “an operationally ideal theory, a theory ideal as far as we can tell, might actually be false” (490). For example, “suppose the universe as a whole began just six thousand years ago in exactly the physical state that actually obtained six thousand years ago.” In that situation, “reasonable people will conclude that the universe is much, much older than six thousand years” because that theory has “as much operational utility . . . and more elegance, plausibility, simplicity, etc., than the alternative ‘young universe’ theory.” So the “old universe” theory would be operationally ideal, but still false (491). A denial of metaphysical realism would make it impossible to acknowledge this obvious possibility. Maudlin's challenge is based on an insistence on the existence of truth-value for operationally inaccessible propositions, and Hartry Field notes a parallel set of issues concerning mathematics revolving around the question of whether “undecidable sentences in established branches of mathematics like set theory have determinate or objective truth value” (145). As Charles Parsons argues in his lucid discussion of Putnam's philosophy of mathematics, realism concerning science is not clearly separable from realism concerning mathematics (Putnam agrees; see also his reply to Field, 173–180).Putnam (503) admits that he is a metaphysical realist in Maudlin's sense. However, he declines to join Maudlin's self-described “hardcore unsophisticated metaphysical realism,” and instead proposes a “sophisticated metaphysical realism” based on an acceptance of ontological plurality: “the same state of affairs can sometimes admit of descriptions that have, taken at face value, incompatible ‘ontologies,’ in the familiar Quinian sense” (506). Dummett provides an insightful account of metaphysical realism (“hard realism”), which “regards the truth conditions of a statement as obtaining independently of our linguistic practice” (419, 426). Dummett says Putnam was successful in attacking hard realism, but remains skeptical that there is a plausible “soft realism” that Putnam can fall back on.Some other issues also have a direct bearing on realism. Yemima Ben-Menahem's instructive discourse on Putnam as a friendly yet powerful critic of conventionalism highlights Putnam's lasting denial of the “truth/convention dichotomy” (451). She raises significant points concerning Putnam's continuing defense of “conceptual relativity” (467–74), which deserve much further thought than Putnam gives in response here. Ian Hacking's illuminating discussion of natural kinds (with extended examples of measles-like diseases and two kinds of jade) stresses a view that he and Putnam share: “natural kinds not only lack essences . . . but also lack necessary and sufficient conditions” (341). There are some differences between Hacking and Putnam here, but I believe that they do converge in the pragmatist spirit in which they understand how natural kind terms function in practice.Pragmatism is the other large theme I want to highlight. It is also the poignant focus of Auxier's preface, constructed around the story of Putnam's 1991 lecture at Emory University defending the ideas of William James—the same James so derided by the early analytic philosophers, whom “no one bothered even to mock” any more in the next generation. Auxier says that Putnam made a “full conversion” to pragmatism and even became “the best and most faithful inheritor of the legacy of John Dewey,” thereby “making himself unacceptable to those who waited upon the slightest Harvard ripple” (xxiv–xxv). A member of the puzzled audience asked: “Are you saying that we wasted the last half century in philosophy?” Putnam answered: “I believe that people never waste their time when they are sincerely searching for the truth” (xxi, xxv).Putnam says that it has become “evident” to him that he is “more of a realist than a pragmatist” (768). This is in his reply to West's illuminating commentary on the “Third Enlightenment,” which West explains is “unabashedly fallibilist, unapologetically antiskeptical, and undeniably committed to the dignity of the everyday, familiar, commonsensical, quotidian, and democratic temperaments” (758). Putnam states that he is not a “card-carrying” pragmatist because he has “never agreed with the several pragmatist ‘theories of truth’ nor with the several grand metaphysical theories that James, Dewey, and Peirce proposed” (91). He adds: “the antirealist and/or verificationist views of the classical pragmatists are no part of what I admire in their philosophies” (773).So, what exactly was Putnam's relation to pragmatism? His debate with Richard Rorty, whom he mourns as “a truly unique philosopher and a ‘gadfly’ in the best tradition of the term” (882), would not be a bad place to start. Rorty says: “Whereas Putnam sees the so-called ‘classical’ pragmatists as helping us return to ‘the ordinary,’ I see them as heralding a new, and extraordinary, change in humanity's self-image . . . as hoping to change common sense by changing some of the images embedded in our picture of the world . . . inherited from Parmenides and Plato” (863). Rorty regards Putnam as “Deweyan enough to want to get rid of the notion of getting in touch with a superthing, but still Kantian enough to think that . . . we need fixed ends, regulative ideals, and lofty Grenzbegriffe” (878).Serious scholars of pragmatism will appreciate Putnam's exchange with Larry Hickman, whom he calls “the greatest living Dewey scholar” (788). Hickman details the “Deweyan deposit” in Putnam's thinking, and Putnam pushes back gently. Even more intriguing to me was Harvey Cormier's interpretation of Putnam as a Jamesian, and his diagnosis that Putnam was not able to fully embrace Jamesian pragmatism because he had not truly let go of what Dewey called “the spectator theory of knowledge” (802). Putnam manages to deny this charge, but only by giving an extreme reading of the “spectator view” as a claim “that we can know about the world by a priori reasoning, without interacting with it” (821).Marcin Kilanowski's is the only essay that directly addresses Putnam's work on ethics, which reach clearly back to Dewey. As Kilanowski summarizes it, Putnam's view is that “claims concerning evaluations of—and proposals for the resolution of—problematical situations can be more or less warranted without being absolute.” Ethics, and philosophy in general, is not the business of producing a system founded on a fixed set of rules and principles, but of working toward provisional and fallible solutions. Ethical thinking should not be based on “one single concern” (845–46). Kilanowski's criticism of this view elicits a rare robust rebuttal from Putnam. Pragmatists would perhaps agree that Putnam is sufficiently secure in his defense of judgment without absolute or universal foundations.The essays under the heading of “Philosopher of Practice” also address issues related to pragmatism. Pierre Hadot extols Putnam's view that philosophy is “education for grown-ups” and “to philosophize is to construct, to build up, a human being” rather than “an abstract theory” (669; see also Putnam's intellectual autobiography in this volume, 90). John Haldane's “Philosophy, Causality, and God” cannot be put in a nutshell. One main point there is similar to Hadot's: Putnam “has shown that the general point of engaging in science . . . is related to an understanding of human flourishing” (684). This humanist perspective is clearly linked to Putnam's contextualist, pluralist, and practice-based view on language and meaning, concerning in particular the notion of causality as discussed by Haldane. Concerning God and religion, Putnam's response to Haldane directs us to Ruth Anna Putnam's excellent introduction to Hilary Putnam's religious philosophy. She also gives an illuminating discussion of the three Jewish religious thinkers that he learned most from: Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber, and Emmanuel Levinas. Simon Blackburn also treats Putnam's philosophy of religion, focusing on Putnam's reading of Wittgenstein's lectures on religious belief; Blackburn also reminds the reader of his own quasi-realist expressivism.Cora Diamond's free-flowing essay also constitutes a reflection on pragmatism, examining Putnam's ideas in relation to many other philosophers, especially Ilham Dilman. She thinks that what Putnam expresses through his kinship with the pragmatists is “a philosophical practice of openness to the world” (634). Putnam's stance on pragmatism is closely connected with his engagement with Wittgenstein's philosophy, which is featured in his Pragmatism (1995). Stoutland goes deeply into the Wittgensteinian aspects of Putnam's commonsense realism (or natural realism), but Putnam declines Stoutland's “invitation” to consider himself a Wittgensteinian (547).Despite my best efforts, this rich and diverse book cannot be subsumed under just two themes. The papers that I have not mentioned yet could all be seen as revolving around the notion of necessity. Putnam himself remarks that the essays by Charles Travis, Gary Ebbs, and Felix Mühlhölzer would “make wonderful material for a seminar on the subject of necessity” (314). I would also add those by Alan Berger, Steven J. Wagner, and Geoffrey Hellman. Putnam's position on necessity was subtle and multi-faceted. In a contribution with which Putnam professes to agree “totally” (311), Travis points out that Putnam's arguments concerning the analytic/synthetic distinction were different from, and deeper than, Quine's; going well beyond synonymy and such, Putnam “showed in what way our thought is . . . under the control of the world” (283). Berger, revisiting Putnam's famous “Twin Earth” example, argues for “modified actualism”; a recognition of physical necessity renders the notion of metaphysical necessity superfluous. Building on Putnam's disagreement with Kripke on reference, Berger also argues that conceivability and possibility are distinct notions (316–17).Ebbs discusses the question of the “contextually a priori” in Putnam's philosophy (cf. Wittgensteinian “hinge” propositions), which one must accept because one cannot even see what it would mean for them to be false. Wagner distinguishes three versions of Putnam's modalism in the philosophy of mathematics, and the least of the also on Putnam's work in the philosophy of mathematics, which mathematics in a of instead of set theory, and goes on to that Putnam's was only one alternative can without any particular or Mühlhölzer his debate with Putnam concerning Wittgenstein's philosophy of Putnam to disagree about Wittgensteinian and remains critical of Wittgenstein's position as by “If thinks those descriptions are for . . . then is just a to how he can a of realism about mathematics anyone to gain a deeper understanding of Hilary Putnam's this volume is The and of his thought expressed and in these and are This also offers a and rich of the of philosophy and intellectual life many This is a book to be and a to return to time and It will be a lasting contribution to philosophical

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