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There are several matters on which I've found Hilary Putnam to shed a good deal _Daedalus,_ _ 
of light in his essay, "A Half Century ofPhilosophy, Viewed from Within," Daedalus, 
126, 1 \[Winter 1997\]: 175-208)._

One is how Wittgenstein's later philosophy is to

supplementary, way ofseeing the upshot ofWittgenstein's later philosophy. For Stanley

Cavell's Wittgenstein," he says, "philosophical confusions are not just matters of

language gone wrong, but an expression ofdeep human issues that also express

themselves in a variety ofother ways-political, theological, and literary" (194). In this

connection, Putnam remarks that "many ofthe problems Wittgenstein discusses have to

do with our uneasy relation to the normative."

2

need of a

speak, 'superscientific' explanation). Wittgenstein's response was to challenge

the idea that normative talk needs to be 'explained' in one ofthese ways, indeed,

to challenge the idea that there is a problem of 'explanation' here.

From the outset of

heading "the history of philosophy returns." Appealing here to the work ofCharles

Taylor, he takes up again the point that "certain ways of thinking seem obligatory to us."

With Taylor's support, he then argues that "without an investigation into the

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_that obligatoriness, an investigation that tries to uncover\[, for example,\] the genealogy of_

the conceptual changes that made Cartesianism (or Cartesianism


There are several matters on which I've found Hilary Putnam to shed a good deal of light in his essay, "A Half Century ofPhilosophy, Viewed from Within," Daedalus, 126, 1 \[Winter 1997\]: 175-208).

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One is how Wittgenstein's later philosophy is to be understood. On this he says:\[T\]he idea that some philosophical problems are illusory is not a new one in the history of philosophy; it plays a central role in as pivotal a work as Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. But for the most part the philosophers who find Wittgenstein's thought difficult to grasp are people who have little time for Immanuel Kant. In their memories, the idea that there are 'pseudo-problems in philosophy' is inextricably linked to the name of Rudolf Camap and to logical positivism. Thus, it is natural for them to suppose that the Wittgensteinians' denial of the intelligibility of certain philosophical issues must stem from a commitment to the positivist 'verifiability theory of meaning,' even if they deny that it does. That one can come to see that a philosophical issue is a pseudo-issue by working through the considerations that seem to make it not only genuine but somehow obligatory, and not by bringing a 'criterion of cognitive significance' to bear on it from the outside, is something that can take someone with training in analytic philosophy a long time to see (it certainly took me a long time to see) (193 f.). 

He then goes on to speak of"another, not incompatible but perhaps supplementary, way ofseeing the upshot ofWittgenstein's later philosophy. For Stanley Cavell's Wittgenstein," he says, "philosophical confusions are not just matters of language gone wrong, but an expression ofdeep human issues that also express themselves in a variety ofother ways-political, theological, and literary" (194). In this connection, Putnam remarks that "many ofthe problems Wittgenstein discusses have to do with our uneasy relation to the normative."

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By the 'normative' I do not mean just ethics. Consider the non-nativity involved in the notion of following a rule. That there is a right and a wrong way to follow a rule is what Wittgenstein would call a 'grammatical' truth; the notion of a rule goes with the notions of doing the right thing and doing the wrong thing, or giving the right answer and giving the wrong answer. But many philosophers feel that they have to reduce this normativity to something else; they seek, for example, to locate it in the brain, but then it turns out that if the structures in the brain lead us to follow rules correctly, some of the time they also lead us to follow them incorrectly .... In the past, philosophers who saw that reductive accounts of rule following did not work \[posited either\] mysterious mental powers or Platonic entities to which the mind was supposed to have a mysterious relation. Both in the case of the scientistic reductionist and the old-time metaphysician the impulse is the same: to treat normativity, that is, the rightness of going one way as opposed to another, as if it were a phenomenon standing in need of a causal explanation (either an ordinary scientific explanation or a, so to speak, 'superscientific' explanation). Wittgenstein's response was to challenge the idea that normative talk needs to be 'explained' in one of these ways, indeed, to challenge the idea that there is a problem of 'explanation' here. From the outset of Philosophical Investigations, comfort and discomfort with the normative arc associated with comfort and discomfort with the messiness 
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_the only{_}{_}be_ _understood. On this he says:_ _\[T\]he idea that some philosophical problems are illusory is not a new one in the history ofphilosophy;_{_}it_ _plays a central role in as pivotal a work as Kant's_ _Critique ofPure Reason._ _But for the most part the philosophers who find Wittgenstein's thought difficult to grasp are people who have little time for Immanuel Kant. In their memories, the idea that there are 'pseudoproblems in philosophy' is inextricably linked to the name ofRudolfCamap and to logical positivism. Thus, it is natural for them to suppose that the Wittgensteinians' denial ofthe intelligibility ofcertain philosophical issues must stem from a commitment to the positivist 'verifiability theory ofmeaning,' even ifthey deny that it does. That one can come to see that a philosophical issue is a pseudo-issue by working through the considerations that seem to make it not only genuine but somehow obligatory, and not by bringing a 'criterion ofcognitive significance' to bear on it from the outside, is something that can take someone with training in analytic philosophy a long time to see (it certainly took_ _me_ _a long time to see)_ _(193_ _f.)._ _He then goes on to speak of"another, not incompatible but perhaps{_}{_}By the 'normative' I do not mean just{_}{_}ethics._ _Consider the nonnativity involved in the notion offollowing a rule. That there is a right and a wrong way to follow a rule is what Wittgenstein would call a 'grammatical' truth; the notion ofa rule goes with the notions ofdoing the right thing and doing the wrong thing, or giving the right answer and giving the wrong answer. But many philosophers feel that they have to reduce this normativity to something else; they seek, for example, to locate it in the brain, but then_ _it_ _turns out that ifthe structures in the brain lead us to follow rules correctly, some ofthe time they also lead us to foHow them incorrectly .... In the past, philosophers who saw that reductive accounts ofrule following did not work \[posited either\] mysterious mental powers or Platonic entities to which the mind was supposed to have a mysterious relation. Both in the case ofthe scientistic reductionist and the_ _old~time_ _metaphysician, the impulse is the same: to treat normativity, that is, the rightness ofgoing one way as opposed to another, as if it were a_ _phenomenon_ _standing in_ _causal_ _explanation (either an ordinary scientific explanation or a, so to_ _Philosophical Investigations,_ _comfort and discomfort with the normative arc associated with comfort and discomfort with the messiness of language-with the fact that language that is perfectly useful in its context may  utterly fail to satisfY the standards of 'precision' and 'clarity' imposed by  philosophers and logicians; indeed, with our desire to dcny all this messiness, to  force language and thought to fit one or another_ _impo~sibly_ _ impossibly tidy representation.  . . . At the beginning of{_}{_}PhilosophicalofPhilosophical Investigations,_ _Wittgenstein emphasizes  that such words as 'believe,' 'question,' and 'command' represent (practically  speaking) many different things. The desire in contemporary scientific realism to  represent all questions as ofoneof one kind, as, in effect, empirical questions, and all  justifications as ofoneof one kind, as empirical justifications, is simply another  manifestation of the tendency to force a single representation on what is in no  sense one unified phenomenon. Wittgenstein wants not to clarify just our  concepts, but to clarify_ _us;_ _and, paradoxically, to clarify us by teaching us to live,  as we must live, with what is wlclearclear. On such a reading, a concern witll with Wittgenstein and a concern with personal and social transformation are not only  not incompatible, but they can reinforce one another (194_ _f)._ _ 

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Another related matter that Putnam helps to clarify is what he treats under the{_}{_}histOfY_ _of_ _cum_ _materialism) seem_ _possible_ _way of thinking about the mind, we can never come to see how_ _contingent_

see that, we will remain stuck in those problems" (199

Putnam's criticism of"the idea that 'philosophy is one thing and history of philosophy is

another,", I feel obliged to insist, as Hartshorne did, that the history of philosophy that

systematic philosophizing itself requires cannot be left to the "history of philosophy," as

it is ordinarily understood. Just as, on my view, the systematic theologian has to engage

in historical theological reflection in order to do

so the systematic philosopher has to engage in the history of philosophy in order to do

systematic philosophy. This means that

so to historians ofphilosophy properly so-called.some of the assumptions that generate our problems are; as long as we do not f.). As much as I welcome (not historical, but) systematic theology, sh~ or he cannot alienate the responsibility to do 3

Yet another matter that Putnam illuminates in a way closely convergent with my

own thinking is '''the meaning ofmeaning." What he had come to realize by 1966, he

says, is that "the whole image oflanguage as something that is entirely 'in the head' of

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_the individual speaker had to{_}{_}be_ _wrong."_ _\[T\]he familiar comparison of words to tools is wrong, ifthe 'tools' one has in mind are tools that one person could in principle use in isolation, such as a hammer or a screwdriver. Iflanguage is a tool, it is a tool like an ocean liner, which requires many people cooperating (and cooperating in a complex division oflabor) to use. What gives one's words the particular meanings they have is not just the state ofone's brain, but the relations one has to both one's non-human environment and to other speakers.... \[A\]ny complete account ofmeaning must include factors outside the head ofthe speaker (195 f.)._{_}Here again, I can only welcome Putnam's argument as confirming, in its way, a point that Hartshorne insisted on all along-namely, that, at least in "the real-world language" (Brummer), "the rules relating concepts to reality" require that "\[i\]fa concept refers neither to a producible positive entity nor to an inherent aspect ofthe ultimate productive power, then it does not refer and is void ofcoherent meaning. Ifits object is producible, then it mayor may not exist. If it is the ultimate productive power, then either the concept misconceives that power and is logically incoherent, or it correctly conceives it, and then certainly the object exists" ("John Hick on Logical and Ontological Necessity": 163)._

I also welcome, by the way, Putnam's comment on Quine'S view that there is no "'fact ofthe matter' about what our words refer to."

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_There are two other matters that Putnam helpfully clarifies. One is what he says about "good prose." "Good prose, whatever its subject, must communicate something worth communicating to a sensitive reader. If it seeks to persuade, the persuasion must not{_}_"It_ _has always seemed to mc," he says, "that a view that is so contrary to our whole sense ofbeing in intellectual and perceptual contact with the world_ _cannot_ _be right" (198)._ _be_ _irrational (which does not exclude the possibility that what is involved may be an appeal to_ _see_ _something one is refusing to see--say, the appeal ofa way oflife, or what actually goes on in our linguistic, or scientific, or ethical, or political practiccs\[-\]and not simply a deduction from already accepted premises, or the presentation ofevidence for an_ _4{_}{_}empirical hypothesis)" (201_

 heading "the history of philosophy returns." Appealing here to the work of Charles Taylor, he takes up again the point that "certain ways of thinking seem obligatory to us." With Taylor's support, he then argues that "without an investigation into the history of that obligatoriness, an investigation that tries to uncover\[, for example,\] the genealogy of the conceptual changes that made Cartesianism (or Cartesianism cum materialism) seem the only possible way of thinking about the mind, we can never come to see how contingent some of the assumptions that generate our problems are; as long as we do not see that, we will remain stuck in those problems" (199 f.). As much as I welcome Putnam's criticism of"the idea that 'philosophy is one thing and history of philosophy is another,", I feel obliged to insist, as Hartshorne did, that the history of philosophy that systematic philosophizing itself requires cannot be left to the "history of philosophy," as it is ordinarily understood. Just as, on my view, the systematic theologian has to engage in historical theological reflection in order to do (not historical, but) systematic theology, so the systematic philosopher has to engage in the history of philosophy in order to do systematic philosophy. This means that she or he cannot alienate the responsibility to do so to historians of philosophy properly so-called. 

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Yet another matter that Putnam illuminates in a way closely convergent with my own thinking is '''the meaning of meaning." What he had come to realize by 1966, he says, is that "the whole image of language as something that is entirely 'in the head' of the individual speaker had to be wrong." \[T\]he familiar comparison of words to tools is wrong, if the 'tools' one has in mind are tools that one person could in principle use in isolation, such as a hammer or a screwdriver. If language is a tool, it is a tool like an ocean liner, which requires many people cooperating (and cooperating in a complex division of labor) to use. What gives one's words the particular meanings they have is not just the state of one's brain, but the relations one has to both one's non-human environment and to other speakers.... \[A\]ny complete account of meaning must include factors outside the head of the speaker (195 f.)

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Here again, I can only welcome Putnam's argument as confirming, in its way, a point that Hartshorne insisted on all along-namely, that, at least in "the real-world language" (Brummer), "the rules relating concepts to reality" require that "\[i\]fa concept refers neither to a producible positive entity nor to an inherent aspect of the ultimate productive power, then it does not refer and is void of coherent meaning. If its object is producible, then it mayor may not exist. If it is the ultimate productive power, then either the concept misconceives that power and is logically incoherent, or it correctly conceives it, and then certainly the object exists" ("John Hick on Logical and Ontological Necessity": 163). 

I also welcome, by the way, Putnam's comment on Quine'S view that there is no "'fact of the matter' about what our words refer to." "It has always seemed to me," he says, "that a view that is so contrary to our whole sense of being in intellectual and perceptual contact with the world cannot be right" (198). 

There are two other matters that Putnam helpfully clarifies. One is what he says about "good prose." "Good prose, whatever its subject, must communicate something worth communicating to a sensitive reader. If it seeks to persuade, the persuasion must not be irrational (which does not exclude the possibility that what is involved may be an appeal to see something one is refusing to see--say, the appeal o fa way of life, or what actually goes on in our linguistic, or scientific, or ethical, or political practices and not simply a deduction from already accepted premises, or the presentation of evidence for an empirical hypothesis)" (201 11 November 2007 f.). The other matter is what he says about analytic philosophy analytic philosophy as a "movement." "Just as we can learn from Kant without calling ourselves Kantiansourselves Kantians, and from James and Dewey without calling ourselves pragmatists, and from Wittgenstein from Wittgenstein without calling ourselves Wittgensteinians, so we can learn from Frege and Russell and Russell and Carnap and Quine and Davidson without calling ourselves <analytic philosophers<analytic philosophers.' Why can we not just be 'philosophers' without an adjective?" (203). 

Exactly! 

11 November 2007 of light in his essay, "A Half Century ofPhilosophy, Viewed from Within,"