PUTNAM’S NATURAL REALISM AND THE QUESTION OF A PERCEPTUAL INTERFACE

In his Dewey Lectures,1 Hilary Putnam argues that contemporary philosophy cannot solve nor see its way past the traditional problem of how language or thought hooks on to ‘external ’ or mind-independent reality. This ‘antinomy of realism ’ is generated, ultimately, by a broadly Cartesian picture of perception according to which, despite renouncin