Books

Short works

Books : reviews

Paul Benacerraf, Hilary Putnam.
Philosophy of Mathematics: selected readings: 2nd edn.
CUP. 1987

The twentieth century has witnessed an unprecedented “crisis in the foundations of mathematics,” featuring a world famous paradox (Russell’s Paradox), a challenge to “classical” mathematics from a world-famous mathematician (the “mathematical intuitionism” of Brouwer), a new foundational school (Hilbert’s Formalism), and the profound incompleteness results of Kurt Godel. In the same period, the cross-fertilization of mathematics and philosophy resulted in a new sort of “mathematical philosophy,” associated most notably (but in different ways) with Bertrand Russell, W. V. Quine, and Godel himself, and which remains at the focus of Anglo-Saxon philosophical discussion. The present collection brings together in a convenient form the seminal articles in the philosophy of mathematics by these and other major thinkers. It is a substantially revised version of the edition first published in 1964 and includes a revised bibliography. The volume will be welcomed as a major work of reference at this level in the field.

Hilary Putnam.
Representation and Reality.
MIT Press. 1988

Hilary Putnam, who may have been the first philosopher to advance the notion that the computer is an apt model for the mind, takes a radically new view of his own theory of functionalism in this book. Putnam argues that in fact the computational analogy cannot answer the important questions about the nature of such mental states as belief, reasoning, rationality, and knowledge that lie at the heart of the philosophy of mind.

Hilary Putnam.
Mathematics, Matter and Method: 2nd edn.
CUP. 1979

Professor Hilary Putnam has been one of the most influential and sharply original of recent American philosophers in a whole range of fields. His most important published work is collected here, together with several new and substantial studies, in two volumes. The first deals with the philosophy of mathematics and of science and the nature of philosophical and scientific enquiry; the second deals with the philosophy of language and mind. Volume one is now issued in a new edition, including an essay on the philosophy of logic first published in 1971.

Hilary Putnam.
Mind, Language and Reality.
CUP. 1975

Professor Hilary Putnam has been one of the most influential and sharply original of recent American philosophers in a whole range of fields. His most important published work is collected here, together with several new and substantial studies, in two volumes. The first deals with the philosophy of mathematics and of science and the nature of philosophical and scientific enquiry; the second deals with the philosophy of language and mind.