Abstract

Putnam’s John Locke Lectures and three related papers: "Literature, Science, and Reflection," which expands some of the "softer" portions of the Lectures, "Reference and Understanding," which defends a "use" or Wittgensteinian notion of understanding language, distinguishing this sharply from the role of truth and reference in explaining the success of our understanding within the broad context of our behavior and the world, and "Realism and Reason," Putnam’s APA Presidential Address, in which he puts the Kantianism or "antirealism" of the whole volume in sharpest focus. Here is an exciting, agreeable, and compact expression of a new departure in Putnam’s thought, one which he is happy to find convergent with Michael Dummett’s work.