Hilary Putnam

“The meaning of a word is not in the head but in the world.”

“Cut the pie any way you like, 'meanings' just ain't in the head!”

“Philosophy is a field that has no undisputed results to show for itself.”

“Science is not a monolithic enterprise.”

“A brain in a vat is not thinking about a tree, because it has no causal connection to a tree.”

“The claim that 'there is no truth' is itself a truth claim.”

“What is wrong with the notion of 'magical' pictures of reality is that they prevent us from seeing that our world is a human world.”

“My own view is that the mind is not a thing, but a system of capacities.”

“The very fact that we speak of 'the world' is a product of our conceptual schemes.”

“The attempt to draw a sharp line between 'fact' and 'value' is a failure.”

“The idea that there is a ready-made world, with its objects and properties waiting to be discovered, is a myth.”

“To be a realist is to believe that there is a fact of the matter as to what is true and what is false, independently of what anyone thinks or says.”

“We don't have an unmediated grasp of the world.”

“The mind has a 'double aspect'; it is both a physical system and a system of intentional states.”

“Values are not just subjective preferences; they have a kind of objectivity.”