ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Hilary Putnam

Hilary Putnam is a very smart person who thought and wrote many things about different topics, such as philosophy, mathematics, and even politics. He was an important philosopher who lived in the United States and taught at universities like Harvard and Princeton. People liked to listen to him talk and read the things he wrote because he had very interesting ideas.

One of the things Hilary talked about was something called "truth." This is a very important concept because it helps us understand what things are real and what things are not. Hilary said that truth is not just something that we can know for sure or something that is always the same. Truth is something that can change depending on who you ask, where you are, or what you believe.

He also talked about language and how we use words to communicate with each other. He said that words are not always just symbols for things or ideas, but they can also change the way we think about things. For example, if we use the word "tree" to talk about a plant, we think of it in a certain way. But if we use the word "wood" to talk about the same thing, we think about it in a different way. So, words can have a big impact on how we see the world.

Hilary had many other interesting ideas about things like the mind and the nature of reality. Even though some of his ideas were very complicated, he tried to explain them in a way that everyone could understand. That's why people still talk about him and his ideas today, even though he is no longer alive.