ABSTRACT
In his Dewey Lectures (published as Putnam 1999), Hilary Putnam argues eloquently against a picture according to which in perception our minds relate to the world outside our skins only at an interface constituted by our sensory receptors. This picture can seem compulsory if we identify our minds with machinery inside us: our nervous systems, or parts of them. But Putnam urges that we should not make that identification. We should understand talk of minds as a way of talking about minded beings qua minded. And to be minded – to “have” a mind – is (among other things) to have cognitive capacities that reach beyond our sensory surfaces, all the way to the things we perceive or think about.
