Título: Hilary Putnam
Seção: Multiple realizability
Background: Hilary Whitehall Putnam (; July 31, 1926 - March 13, 2016) was an American philosopher, mathematician, and computer scientist, and a major figure in analytic philosophy in the second half of the 20th century. He made significant contributions to philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, philosophy of mathematics, and philosophy of science. At the time of his death, Putnam was Cogan University Professor Emeritus at Harvard University. He was known for his willingness to apply an equal degree of scrutiny to his own philosophical positions as to those of others, subjecting each position to rigorous analysis until he exposed its flaws.

Conteúdo: Putnam's best-known work concerns philosophy of mind. His most noted original contributions to that field came in several key papers published in the late 1960s that set out the hypothesis of multiple realizability. In these papers, Putnam argues that, contrary to the famous claim of the type-identity theory, it is not necessarily true that "Pain is identical to C-fibre firing." Pain, according to Putnam's papers, may correspond to utterly different physical states of the nervous system in different organisms, and yet they all experience the same mental state of "being in pain".  Putnam cited examples from the animal kingdom to illustrate his thesis. He asked whether it was likely that the brain structures of diverse types of animals realize pain, or other mental states, the same way. If they do not share the same brain structures, they cannot share the same mental states and properties. The answer to this puzzle had to be that mental states were realized by different physical states in different species. Putnam then took his argument a step further, asking about such things as the nervous systems of alien beings, artificially intelligent robots and other silicon-based life forms. These hypothetical entities, he contended, should not be considered incapable of experiencing pain just because they lack the same neurochemistry as humans. Putnam concluded that type-identity theorists had been making an "ambitious" and "highly implausible" conjecture which could be disproven with 

user: What is multiple realizability?

assistant: implies that any low-level explanation of higher-level mental phenomena is insufficiently abstract and general.

user: Were there any notable people working on it?

assistant: Jerry Fodor, Putnam, and others

user: Did they differ in opinion?

assistant: CANNOTANSWER

user: What was said about the theory?

assistant: there are many functional kinds, such as mousetraps, software and bookshelves, which are multiply realized at the physical level.

user: Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?

assistant: Putnam cited examples from the animal kingdom to illustrate his thesis.

user: What were the examples?

assistant: mental states were realized by different physical states in different species.

user: How else did they experiment?

assistant: Putnam then took his argument a step further, asking about such things as the nervous systems of alien beings, artificially intelligent robots and other silicon-based life forms.