I do wonder about Putnam's research though. Has it been looked into by experts in the field more recently? The article doesn't really give an answer to this.
Regarding the point about current research, I found in the article:
"Gary Aston-Jones, head of the Brain Health Institute at Rutgers University, told me he was inspired by Putnam to go into neuroscience after Clarke gave him one of Putnam’s papers.
“Putnam’s nervous system model presaged by decades stuff that’s very cutting edge in neuroscience,” Aston-Jones said, and yet, “in the field of neuroscience, I don’t know anybody that’s ever heard of him.”"