關於
Hilary Putnam (1926–2016) was an American philosopher and one of the central figures in analytic philosophy of mind, spending most of his career as Cogan University Professor at Harvard. In the late 1960s he developed functionalism — the view that mental states are defined by their functional role, not their physical substrate — arguing via 'multiple realizability' that a mind could in principle be realized in silicon as well as neurons. It became the philosophical license for the whole idea that machines might think. Characteristically, he later became one of functionalism's most forceful critics, rejecting it in Representation and Reality (1988). He is equally known for semantic externalism — 'meaning ain't in the head' — and the Twin Earth thought experiment.
主要貢獻
- Developed functionalism and multiple realizability, the argument that mind is substrate-independent
- Later repudiated functionalism in Representation and Reality (1988), a rare public reversal
- Formulated semantic externalism and the Twin Earth thought experiment ('meaning ain't in the head')
- Contributed to the causal theory of reference alongside Saul Kripke
- Proved the Davis–Putnam foundations of automated theorem proving and worked on Hilbert's tenth problem
影片與訪談
The Philosophy of Science - Hilary Putnam & Bryan Magee
Putnam and Bryan Magee discuss the philosophy of science in the classic 1977 BBC 'Men of Ideas' series.
View Details
Hilary Putnam Interview - Mind, Truth & Science (1998)
A wide-ranging interview touching on functionalism, externalism, and the Turing Test.
View Details論文與出版物
思想連結
艾倫·圖靈
受其影響數學家與電腦科學先驅
普特南的機器狀態功能論，從〈心靈與機器〉（1960）發展到〈心理述詞〉（1967），以圖靈的抽象機器作為心智的模型：心理狀態就是機器表中的狀態，由它們與輸入、輸出以及彼此之間的關係來定義，不論它們由什麼材質構成。這一步把圖靈 1950 年那個關於行為的問題，變成了一套「心智是什麼」的理論，也成為所有「矽也能思考」主張背後的哲學許可。普特南後來放棄了它，但許可早已發出。
plato.stanford.edu · en.wikipedia.org
Rudolf Carnap
觀點交鋒Philosopher & Logician
在 1963 年 Schilpp 主編的卡納普專輯中，普特南把卡納普的歸納邏輯計畫讀成「設計一台通用學習機器」，並以對角線論證證明：卡納普那類可計算的確證函數，沒有一個能學會所有可計算的規律。卡納普的回應承認了一件實在的事：科學家如何接受假說，可能取決於實際上被提出了哪些假說，以及提出的順序。這場交鋒是一個早期而精確的陳述，說出了機器學習至今仍身處其中的界限：每個學習者都帶著歸納偏誤，沒有誰能學會一切。
plato.stanford.edu · Putnam, "'Degree of Confirmation' and Inductive Logic", in Schilpp (ed.), The Philosophy of Rudolf Carnap (Open Court, 1963), pp. 761–783 · Sterkenburg, "Putnam's Diagonal Argument and the Impossibility of a Universal Learning Machine", Erkenntnis (2019)
