Neha Singh
University of Lucknow
Hilary Putnam was one of the most influential figures among the philosophers of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. In his John Dewey lectures, published in 1999 as “The Threefold Cord Mind, Body, And World”, Putnam started advocating a form of direct/commonsense realism which he calls “natural realism”, abandoning “internal realism” which he endorsed and defended for almost a decade (1976-1988). He rejects “Metaphysical Realism” and it’s correspondence theory of truth in favour of Internal realism that links truth with “idealized rational acceptability.” Putnam’s recent work turns back to issues of perception and mind and his major concern is to argue against any view, such as his own earlier “functionalism”, that accepts a kind of interface between the intentional agent and its environment. Putnam mentioned that there is a problem with how we can have referential access to external things without postulating some kind of magic and there is equal problem as how we can have referential access to “sufficiently good epistemic situation” (Putnam, 1999). This paper aims to encapsulate the reasons that lead Putnam towards “natural realism” and it also intended to show Putnam’s shifts are rather seen as “changes of emphasis” than as a “wholesale rejection” of former views both in terms of content and of methodology.
Keywords: Hilary Putnam, Truth, Meaning, Reference, Metaphysical Realism, Internal realism, Natural realism, idealized rational acceptability.
Chair: Sanggu Lee
Time: September 8th, 12:00-12:30
Location: HS E.002
SOPhiA 2026 