Hilary Putnam

It would take at least two workaday philosophers to keep up with Hilary Putnam. Philosophy in an Age of Science is a case in point. It’s a collection of papers, most of them previously...

Hilary Putnam’s latest book collects two series of his lectures with two chapters of ‘afterwords’. Subsidiary topics go by faster than my eye was able to follow, but the main...

In a neglected passage in The Problems of Philosophy Bertrand Russell unapologetically writes: A priori knowledge is not all of the logical kind we have been hitherto considering. Perhaps the...

There is a wonderful passage in Nietzsche’s Daybreak, about the ageing philosopher. ‘Subject to the illusion of a great moral renewal and rebirth, he passes judgment on the work and...

Big issues and little issues: among established working philosophers there is none more gifted at making us think anew about both than Hilary Putnam. His latest book is motivated by large...

In theory, it is the highest virtue of the philosopher to be constantly receptive to criticism, always willing to abandon his own views upon hearing a better argument. In practice, students tend...

There is an odd experience that Plato may have had. If light filters into a room through a small enough aperture, anything moving on the street outside will cast its shadow on the ceiling and...