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For Putnam, the working hypothesis represents a practical starting point in the design of an empirical research exploration. A contrasting example of this conception of the working hypothesis is illustrated by the brain-in-a-vat thought experiment. This experiment involves confronting the global skeptic position that we, in fact, are all just ...
Putnam has since expressed agreement with Burge's interpretation of the thought experiment. (See Putnam's introduction in Pessin and Goldberg 1996, xxi.) A number of philosophers have argued that "water" for both Oscar and Twin Oscar refers to anything that is sufficiently water-like (i.e. the term's extension includes both H 2 O and XYZ).
The unity of science is a thesis in philosophy of science that says that all the sciences form a unified whole. The variants of the thesis can be classified as ontological (giving a unified account of the structure of reality) and/or as epistemic/pragmatic (giving a unified account of how the activities and products of science work). [1]
Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community is a 2000 nonfiction book by Robert D. Putnam. It was developed from his 1995 essay entitled "Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital". Putnam surveys the decline of social capital in the United States since 1950. He has described the reduction in all the forms of in-person ...
Putnam (1988) and Searle (1992) argue that this simple mapping account (SMA) trivializes the empirical import of computational descriptions. [10] [17] As Putnam put it, "everything is a Probabilistic Automaton under some Description". [18] Even rocks, walls, and buckets of water—contrary to appearances—are computing systems.
Hilary Whitehall Putnam (/ ˈ p ʌ t n əm /; July 31, 1926 – March 13, 2016) was an American philosopher, mathematician, computer scientist, and figure in analytic philosophy in the second half of the 20th century.
A potential loophole in Putnam's reference theory is that a brain on Earth that is "kidnapped", placed into a vat, and subjected to a simulation could still refer to brains and vats which are real in the sense of Putnam, and thus correctly say it is a brain in a vat according to Putnamian reference theory. [18]
Paul Oppenheim and Hilary Putnam : "The Unity of Science as a Working Hypothesis". In: Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 1958; References.