Sunday, November 9, 2014

Stop Press
In 1976, when I delivered the John Locke Lectures at Oxford, I often spent time with Peter Strawson, and one day at lunch he made a remark I have never been able to forget. He said, "Surely half the pleasure of life is sardonic comment on the passing show".  This blog is devoted to comments, not all of them sardonic, on the passing philosophical show.
Hilary Putnam
Happily, what the Wiki entry on me says about my attitude towards metaphysical realism was updated within hours of today's previous post. The new PP, a little before a section titled "Neopragmatism and Wittgenstein", reads: 

Although he abandoned internal realism, Putnam still resists the idea that any given thing or system of things can only be described in exactly one complete and correct way. He thus accepts "conceptual relativity" - the view that it may be a matter of choice or convention, e.g., whether mereological sums exist, or whether space-time points are individuals or mere limits. In other words, having abandoned internal realism Putnam came to accept metaphysical realism in simply the broad sense of rejecting all forms of verificationism and all talk of our ‘making’ the world.

Grateful thanks to the updater!





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