Hilary Putnam

In "Putnam's BIV and The Disjunctive Argument", Brueckner breaks down what Hilary Putnam was trying to communicate. Putnam first establishes the setting of the "brains in a vat" hypothesis, which is a world filled with envatted brains and computers that stimulate the brains, and it turns out that you are a brain inside a vat. These brains go by the name of BIV, and then she goes on to state that she is not a BIV due to the considerations pertaining to meaning, which concerns reference and truth.…

Brains in a vat By Hilary Putnam* This story starts off with an ant crawling on a patch of sand, as it calls it traces a line in the sand. By pure chance the line that traces curves and redresses itself in such a way that it ends up looking like a recognizable caricature of Winston Churchill. And therefore, on these bases many people will say that on a little reflection that it has not. The ant after all had not seen the picture of Winston Churchill and it had no intentions of depicting…

In Hilary Putnam’s essay “Brains in a Vat”, he begins by mentioning an illustration of an ant making markings in the sand and how these markings depict Winston Churchill. He then goes on to mention whether or not one can consider that it is Churchill because the ant had no intention of replicating Churchill as it does not even know who he is (Putnam, 1981:1).”The argument is simple; what we said about the ant’s curve applies to any physical object. No physical object can, in itself, refer to one…

In his paper, The Nature of Mental States, Hilary Putnam advocates for functionalism, the idea that the mind is defined by what it does, rather than what it is composed of. The mind serves a purpose similar to that of a machine, taking various inputs, performing a function, and producing certain outputs. He contests the arguments of the brain-state theory which claims that mental processes and brain processes are the same. I will claim that Putnam’s argument for functionalism is successful…

but they all had different names. This could potentially create a barrier in communication. Hilary Putnam thought he could solve an issue like this by creating what he called natural kind terms. Even if you can buy into Putnam’s theory, as time evolves, our changing linguistic communities may reject natural kinds in favor of their own terminology. Before we can understand what natural kinds are, Putnam offers a thought experiment that sets up his argument on natural kinds. Imagine that there…

science into an understandable notion. He realizes that the values, standards ideas are all associated with one another and fail to arrange a base for ethics. Putnam further explains that there can be no common structure for knowledge in general, specifically ethics and scientific knowledge. Everything is in the course of renovation. Putnam discussed the theory of relativity and how events occur based under the theory. He claims that all things that exist at this moment are considered real. He…

1. Introduction Can Artificial Intelligence(AI) be conscious? This paper explores the possibility of consciousness in Artificial Intelligence by considering various positions from neuroscience, computer science and philosophy. 1.1 Consciousness in AI Artificial Intelligence refers to a machine or a program that is a flexible rational agent that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its chance of success at some goal. Searle argued that a conscious AI, or “Strong AI”, has a…

Student Name: Abdul Teniola Student Number: 8388577 Title: Socio-political conditions shaping how people organize social relations and moral order. Positive laws are human made laws that oblige or specify a distinct action. It also helps with the establishment of certain rights for a group of people or an individual. Positive law is very different from natural law which comprises of rights not made by man but by God, mother nature or reasoning. The positive law also describes the law of the…

You and Your Mind: The Relationship Between Mind and Body Is your mind part of your physical body? Or is the human mind something that scientists will never truly be able to understand? Although there are many ideas of how the body and mind work together, two major theories stand out. One theory, monism, claims that the mind and body are the same entity, suggesting that minds are just another part of our physical body (Descartes PowerPoint 34). The second theory, substance dualism, argues that…

Over the past centuries, the topics of realism and anti-realism have been on ongoing debate amongst philosophers. Both perspectives have been revisited time after time, citing different reasons for the existence of each belief. These two topics belong to the area of philosophy, more specifically, metaphysics. Metaphysics explores the nature of existence, exploring why things exist and how they came to exist in the first place. Philosophers argue that it is the foundation behind philosophy,…