Hilary Putnam on Meaning and Externalism
From the video description:
Hilary Putnam was awarded The Rolf Schock Prize in Logic and Philosophy by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 2011 “for his contribution to the understanding of semantics for theoretical and ‘natural kind’ terms, and of the implications of this semantics for philosophy of language, theory of knowledge, philosophy of science, and metaphysics“. In this talk, Putnam describes the path which led to the work for which he was being honored.
Hilary Putnam (1926-2016) was an American philosopher, mathematician, and computer scientist, and a major figure in analytic philosophy in the second half of the 20th century. He made significant contributions to philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, philosophy of mathematics, and philosophy of science.
On gold being soluble in aqua regia, everybody who has read Swallows and Amazons knows that! See Pigeon Post, which is the sixth book in Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazons series of children's books, published in 1936. It won the first Carnegie Medal awarded for children's literature.
After days of prospecting, gold is found at Golden Gulch and they collect enough to melt down into an ingot in a blast furnace. Unfortunately it disappears when the crucible is broken and Dick Callum recalls that gold dissolves in aqua regia(PP30). Captain Flint returns, and explains to Dick that aqua regia will dissolve almost anything. The point about gold is that it won't dissolve in anything else.... and when he studies the dust says .... this looks to me like perfectly good copper pyrites (or copper ore, not gold) (PP33).
Putnam put me in mind of something I wrote once: see Aristotle: Bad Writer, but Good Philosopher?:
Of Aristotle’s writing, some readers were struck by the accuracy, some by the tone, others by the diligence, incision and insight of Aristotle’s words. Marcus Tulius Cicero, the most prominent man of letters of the late Roman Republic, even referred to Aristotle’s literary style as an ‘aureum flumen’, a ‘river of gold’.
When I asked my students "But what is gold?" I actually had in mind another far more Alchemical definition by proof, you might say. Let's just leave it that. See Revolution and Julie Nolke - Drinking Horse Piss.
On reference, listen to Searle's anectode about talking with Putnam "in some some awful town like Detroit", ... Hilary Putnam - Philosophy And Our Mental Life.
This whole lecture takes me back to a memorable canoe trip I once took up the Cam, that river of piss that flows out from under The Mill House at Grantchester, with Adrian Kent. And that takes me back to my application to St. John's College, Cambridge in 1992, to study neuroscience or something stupid like that. You need to look in Ron Snaith's admissions tutor papers. He's the one who sent me to The Open University to learn some maths, ...
Subscribe to Philosophy Overdose.
Maybe it's time time to Torch 🔥 The Open University, ... Remember CoSy? All that perl code I wrote to make it usable, ... Then that unmitigated pile of complete crap you replaced it with! See Michael Graig-Martin - "I'm Interested in Language".
Subscribe to David Lynch Theater.
Subscribe to Flying Lotus.
See CEART Noticias, Jade on The Flow of Time marzo 12, 2022 and David Lynch's Weather Report marzo 13, 2022.
Yesterday my friend Isabel asked me what I could do to make my money grow. Today, the Google doodle is Anne Frank, who I see was educated at a Montessori school. I don't want to waste my life growing money. Money is a waste of time. In fact, I think it is a measure of waste in general, and I don't need any more waste in my life! Except maybe stale cookies, ... as long as they're free in the dining car: David Lynch's Weather Report junio 25, 2022.
Comments
Post a Comment