Reason, Truth and History

Introduction

A book of 1981 in which Putnam sets out his “internal realism”. The first chapter imagines that we are brains in a vat, fed experiences by a computer, and argues that the hypothesis refutes itself: if we were such brains, our words “brain” and “vat” would not refer to real brains and vats, so we could not even state it truly. Putnam rejects both metaphysical realism – the idea of a “God’s eye view” of a ready-made world – and relativism; truth is rational acceptability under idealised conditions. Later chapters extend the argument to ethics and reject a sharp distinction between facts and values. Putnam himself gave up internal realism in the 1990s.

Connections

Builds on

• The Meaning of “Meaning”1975 · Hilary Putnam

Criticizes

• Meditations on First Philosophy1641 · René Descartes

More works by Hilary Putnam

• 1975The Meaning of “Meaning”