Reading Putnam

Reading Putnam is an outstanding overview and assessment of Hilary Putnam’s work by a team of international contributors, and includes replies by Putnam himself. Divided into clear sections, it contains chapters on key aspects of Putnam’s large body of writing, including:

• Scientific realism and the changes that Putnam’s thought has undergone on this topic

• analyticity and ontology, including the important interconnections between the views of Putnam and Quine

• Putnam’s arguments concerning externalist views of meaning and reference, questions of conceptual relativity, and his preoccupation with ethics through a denial of the fact–value dichotomy

• Putnam’s developing views on perception.

Offering an excellent survey of Putnam’s work, Reading Putnam is essential for those studying philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and philosophy of science, as well as for anyone interested in contemporary philosophy.