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Portrait of Hilary Putnam

20th century · 1926–2016

Who influenced Hilary Putnam?

Influences

Twin earth, semantic externalism, and the collapse of the fact/value dichotomy.

Hilary Putnam was influenced by W. V. O. Quine. That is 1 line of the 448 documented lines of influence between the 279 thinkers on this map.

Read on Wikipedia Portrait: Unknown author, CC BY-SA 2.5 See the whole map

Who was Hilary Putnam?

Hilary Putnam worked in the philosophy of mind, language, mathematics and science, and also in mathematics and computer science, where he helped show that Hilbert's tenth problem is unsolvable. He tested his own views as hard as anyone else's, so he changed them often.

He argued that mental states can be realised in many physical ways and championed functionalism. With Saul Kripke he developed the causal theory of reference, and his Twin Earth thought experiment introduced semantic externalism. Throughout, he held to scientific realism, while later turning to pragmatism, Jewish philosophy and ethics.

Summarized from the lead of the Wikipedia article.

Who influenced Hilary Putnam?

1 direct influence on this map, earliest first.

The line of teachers behind Hilary Putnam

The longest documented line of influence ending at Hilary Putnam runs 28 generations back, to Thales of Miletus.

  1. Thales of Miletus
  2. Anaximenes of Miletus
  3. Anaxagoras
  4. Socrates
  5. Antisthenes
  6. Diogenes of Sinope
  7. Crates of Thebes
  8. Zeno of Citium
  9. Seneca
  10. Tertullian
  11. Augustine of Hippo
  12. Anselm of Canterbury
  13. Peter Lombard
  14. Thomas Aquinas
  15. René Descartes
  16. Thomas Hobbes
  17. Baruch Spinoza
  18. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
  19. Christian Wolff
  20. Immanuel Kant
  21. Johann Gottlieb Fichte
  22. F. W. J. Schelling
  23. Georg W. F. Hegel
  24. T. H. Green
  25. F. H. Bradley
  26. Bertrand Russell
  27. Rudolf Carnap
  28. W. V. O. Quine
  29. Hilary Putnam

Two steps away from Hilary Putnam

Indirect influences

Contemporaries of Hilary Putnam

Thinkers on this map born within 25 years of Hilary Putnam, with no direct line between them.

Hilary Putnam by the numbers

Direct influences
1
Direct followers
0
Thinkers upstream
107
Thinkers downstream
0
Wikipedia languages
46 — #54 of 84 among 20th-century philosophers
Card rarity
Rare

Questions about Hilary Putnam

Who influenced Hilary Putnam?
W. V. O. Quine.
Who did Hilary Putnam influence?
No later thinker on this map is recorded as drawing directly on Hilary Putnam.
When did Hilary Putnam live?
1926–2016. The map files Hilary Putnam under the 20th century.
How rare is the Hilary Putnam card?
Wikipedia carries an article on Hilary Putnam in 46 languages, which makes it a Rare card. Legendary starts at 100 languages, Epic at 50 and Rare at 25.

More 20th-century philosophers

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