Putnam's Reexamination Of Perception Issues

The problem of perception can be traced back to another,more fundamental problem of mind philosophy,the connection between the mind and the world.The philosophy of mind had always been one of the philosophical fields that Putnam had attached great importance to.The exploration of the connection between the mind and the world ran through Putnam’s philosophical career.The functionalism founded in the 1960 s and the internal realism in the1970 s were two important attempts for him to explore that relationship.Functionalism starts with the "mind",trying to explain the process of how the mind knows the world by studying the calculation process of the Turing machine;while the internal realism starts from the “world”,trying to find a balance between the descriptiveness and constructivity of the mind to the world..However,due to the limitations of the theory itself,functionalism and internal realism had successively been in trouble.The connection between the mind and the world was still a difficulty for Putnam.In the early 1990 s,Putnam finally realized the fundamental reason why his early exploration was in trouble was that both functionalism and internal realism were developed under the traditional dualistic thinking mode,which explored the connection between the mind and the world on the premise of dichotomizy.By tracing the philosophical history of the mind problem,Putnam discovered this thinking mode originated from regarding perception in the modern times as sense data,thus establishing an interface-like perception between the mind and the world.So the key to jumping out of the thinking mode,out of the dilemma of functionalism and internal realism,and to solve the problem of the relationship between the mind and the world lied in re-examining the problem of perception and clearing the interface.Putnam first combed the source of the interface-based perception theory and the arguments that supported this perception,thus demonstrating the outline of this theory.Then,Putnam refuted the argumentation of the theory and analyzed two wrong ways of thinking that led to the interface.Finally,after abandoning the interface-based perception theory and the binary-divided thinking mode,Putnam established a new interactive theory of perception based on the absorption of James and Dewey’s theory.This theory of perception holds that we can directly grasp the world in perception;concept is in perception;and perception is the interaction between man and the world.Re-examining the perceptual problem,clearing the interface,and establishing a new interactive theory of perception made Putnam get rid of the predicament of early functionalism and internal realism,establish a new mind outlook and worldview,and find the original relationship between the mind and the world.The mind and the world are not independent entities that oppose each other,but a whole that merges and penetrates each other in the process of constant interaction.The mind is not an isolated internal organ,but a system of capabilities in which people interact with the world;the world is real,which is not an independent entity that,as metaphysical realism says,has no relations to human beings,but an ordinary world that directly perceived by us and interacted with us who live in it.