Ideas from 'Representation and Reality' by Hilary Putnam [1988], by Theme Structure

[found in 'Representation and Reality' by Putnam,Hilary [MIT 1992,0-262-66074-1]].

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1. Philosophy / D. Nature of Philosophy / 5. Aims of Philosophy / a. Philosophy as worldly

2352	The job of the philosopher is to distinguish facts about the world from conventions

3. Truth / F. Semantic Truth / 2. Semantic Truth

2345	Semantic notions do not occur in Tarski's definitions, but assessing their correctness involves translation

3. Truth / H. Deflationary Truth / 1. Redundant Truth

2347	Asserting the truth of an indexical statement is not the same as uttering the statement

7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 2. Realism

2349	Realists believe truth is correspondence, independent of humans, is bivalent, and is unique

9. Objects / A. Existence of Objects / 1. Physical Objects

2351	Aristotle says an object (e.g. a lamp) has identity if its parts stay together when it is moved

17. Mind and Body / C. Functionalism / 2. Machine Functionalism

2331	Functionalism says robots and people are the same at one level of abstraction

17. Mind and Body / C. Functionalism / 8. Functionalism critique

2348	Is there just one computational state for each specific belief?

2332	Functionalism can't explain reference and truth, which are needed for logic

2071	If concepts have external meaning, computational states won't explain psychology

17. Mind and Body / E. Mind as Physical / 3. Eliminativism

2344	If we are going to eliminate folk psychology, we must also eliminate folk logic

18. Thought / A. Modes of Thought / 4. Folk Psychology

2074	Can we give a scientific, computational account of folk psychology?

18. Thought / C. Content / 5. Twin Earth

2343	Reference may be different while mental representation is the same

19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 1. Meaning

2346	Meaning and translation (which are needed to define truth) both presuppose the notion of reference

19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 6. Meaning as Use

2354	"Meaning is use" is not a definition of meaning

19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 7. Meaning Holism / b. Language holism

2336	Holism seems to make fixed definition more or less impossible

2334	Meaning holism tried to show that you can't get fixed meanings built out of observation terms

2335	Understanding a sentence involves background knowledge and can't be done in isolation

19. Language / B. Reference / 3. Direct Reference / a. Direct reference

2340	We should separate how the reference of 'gold' is fixed from its conceptual content

2341	Like names, natural kind terms have their meaning fixed by extension and reference

19. Language / B. Reference / 3. Direct Reference / c. Social reference

2339	Aristotle implies that we have the complete concepts of a language in our heads, but we don't

2338	Reference (say to 'elms') is a social phenomenon which we can leave to experts

26. Natural Theory / B. Natural Kinds / 5. Reference to Natural Kinds

2342	"Water" is a natural kind term, but "H2O" is a description