Books by Hilary Putnam

Offers solutions to some of philosophy's vexing problems. This book examines the problem of realism: Is objective truth possible? It acknowledges the impasse between empirical and idealist approaches to this question, critiquing them both, however, by highlighting the false assumption they share, that we cannot perceive the world directly.

Hilary Putnam deals in this book with some of the most fundamental persistent problems in philosophy: the nature of truth, knowledge and rationality. His aim is to break down the fixed categories of thought which have always appeared to define and constrain the permissible solutions to these problems.

Hilary Putnam, one of America's most distinguished philosophers, surveys an astonishingly wide range of issues and proposes a new, clear-cut approach to philosophical questions-a renewal of philosophy. He discusses topics from artificial intelligence to natural selection.

Hilary Putnam has at last paused from philosophizing to collect his papers for publication-his first volume in almost two decades. Contributing to a broad range of philosophical inquiry, Putnam has been said to represent a "history of recent philosophy in outline." In this volume he suggests philosophy's possible future, as well.

Distinguished philosopher Hilary Putnam, who is also a practicing Jew, questions the thought of three major Jewish philosophers of the 20th century-Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber, and Emmanuel Levinas-to help him reconcile the philosophical and religious sides of his life. An additional presence in the book is Ludwig Wittgenstein, who, although not a practicing Jew, thought about religion in ways that Putnam juxtaposes to the views of Rosenzweig, Buber, and Levinas. Putnam explains the leading ideas of each of these great thinkers, bringing out what, in his opinion, constitutes the decisive intellectual and spiritual contributions of each of them. Although the religion discussed is Judaism, the depth and originality of these philosophers, as incisively interpreted by Putnam, make their thought nothing less than a guide to life.

Deals with the ontological problem in the philosophy of logic and mathematics, that is, the issue of whether the abstract entities spoken of in logic and mathematics really exist. This book also addresses the question of whether or not reference to these abstract entities is really indispensable in logic.

Offers a seminal philosophical work, that presents a conception of knowledge which makes ethics, practical knowledge and non-mathematic parts of the social sciences just as much parts of 'knowledge' as the sciences themselves.

One of America's great philosophers says the time has come to reform philosophy. Putnam calls upon philosophers to attend to the gap between the present condition of their subject and the human aspirations that philosophy should and once did claim to represent. His goal is to embed philosophy in social life.

Can ethical judgments properly be considered objective? Reviewing what he deems the disastrous consequences of ontology's influence on analytic philosophy-in particular, the contortions it imposes upon debates about the objective of ethical judgments-Putnam proposes abandoning the very idea of ontology.