Skip to content

The Threefold Cord
Stock Photo: Cover May Be Different

The Threefold Cord Softcover - 2001

by Hilary Putnam

  • Used
  • Acceptable
  • Paperback

Description

Used - some highlighting otherwise good.
Used - Acceptable
NZ$28.30
NZ$8.31 Shipping to USA
Standard delivery: 4 to 14 days
More Shipping Options
Ships from Fredag Books (Massachusetts, United States)

Details

  • Title The Threefold Cord
  • Author Hilary Putnam
  • Binding Softcover
  • Edition Reprint
  • Condition Used - Acceptable
  • Pages 256
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher Columbia University Press, -
  • Date March 15, 2001
  • Features Index, Table of Contents
  • Bookseller's Inventory # 001-685
  • ISBN 9780231102872 / 0231102879
  • Weight 0.74 lbs (0.34 kg)
  • Dimensions 9 x 6 x 0.52 in (22.86 x 15.24 x 1.32 cm)
  • Themes
    • Chronological Period: 20th Century
  • Library of Congress Catalog Number 99038458
  • Dewey Decimal Code 128.2

About Fredag Books Massachusetts, United States

Biblio member since 2021
Seller rating: This seller has earned a 5 of 5 Stars rating from Biblio customers.

Book lover thinning out a few shelves.

Terms of Sale: 30 day return guarantee, with full refund including original shipping costs for up to 30 days after delivery if an item arrives misdescribed or damaged.

Browse books from Fredag Books

First line

The besetting sin of philosophers seems to be throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

From the rear cover

"One of the most exciting of contemporary philosophers" (Times Literary Supplement) illuminates and reconfigures a perennially intriguing problem: the relationship between our perceptions and reality. Putnam first examines the problem of realism: Is objective truth possible? He acknowledges the deep impasse between empirical and idealist approaches to this question, critiquing them both, however, by highlighting the false assumption they share -- that we cannot perceive the world directly. Drawing on the work of J. L. Austin and William James, Putnam develops a subtle and creative alternative, which he calls "natural realism".

The second part of the book explores the mind-body question: Is the mind independent of our interactions with the physical world? Again, Putnam critically assesses two sharply antithetical contemporary approaches and finds them both lacking. The Threefold Cord shows the entire mind-body debate to be miscast and draws on the later work of Wittgenstein, once more advancing original views on perception and thought and their relationship with both the body and the external world. Finally, Putnam takes up two related problems -- the role of causality in human behavior and whether or not thoughts and sensations have an "existence" all their own.

With Putnam's lucid prose and insightful examples, The Threefold Cord loosens the Gordian knot into which philosophy has bound itself over the issue of epistemology.

Categories

About the author

Hilary Putnam is Cogan University Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Harvard University. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a corresponding fellow of the British Academy. Among his many books are Philosophical Papers, Realism with a Human Face, Words and Life, Renewing Philosophy, and Pragmatism.