刚才在网上随意浏览,突然看到
Hilary Putnam 于2016年3月去世了。根据
这个 2015年的评估,他是当代“最伟大”的哲学家。当然这种排名存在很多主观因素,但如果不是“最伟大至少是前三名吧。
谁知道他呢?
下面是一段介绍:【
An account of the word-world relation (the relation between words and the things in the world they refer to or represent) is thus considered fundamental to contemporary philosophy. .. Moreover, truth and meaning are closely linked. To determine whether a certain sentence is true, one must be able to understand the sentence, to know what it means... Theories of truth and meaning are thus inherently interconnected. This connection is manifest in Putnam’s conception of meaning, first proposed in his classic paper “The Meaning of ‘Meaning’
” (1975), which construes meanings not as purely mental entities (e.g., mental images) or as purely conceptual constructs but as being anchored in external reality. This conception, known as semantic externalism, can therefore serve as a basis for an objective account of truth and knowledge. Consequently, it can also support realism—and was indeed employed by Putnam (and many others after him) to that end.】
翻译如下:【字词与事物的关系对于现代哲学来说是根本的。真与意紧密相连。为了确定一个句子是否真,人们必须理解这个句子,懂得其含义。真的理论与含义的理论因此存在固有的内在关联。这种关联在 Putnam 的经典论文“含义的含义”得到了充分的阐述,他将含义不是作为单纯的脑内印象或者纯粹的概念构造,而是基于外部现实。这一概念,被称为语义外部主义,因而可以作为真理与知识的客观基础。】
我在网上找到了“含义的含义”一文,有兴趣的可以看看。