Verificationism has had a bad press for many years. The view that the meaning of our words is bound up with the discernible difference it would make if what we say, think or write were true or false, nowadays is scorned as “positivist” though it was shared by eminent empiricists and pragmatists. This paper seeks to sort through some of the complexities of what is often portrayed as an unduly simplistic conception. I begin with an overview of its main logical (...) empiricist varieties before considering which aspects of it fall victim to which of the three major types of objection that have been raised against it. I will conclude that what is left standing is a modest proposal that seems worth further investigation. (shrink)

Mi objetivo es discutir las principales dificultades que Frank P. Ramsey encontró en Principia Mathematica y la solución que, vía el Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, propuso al respecto. Sostengo que las principales dificultades que Ramsey encontró en Principia Mathematica están, todas, relacionadas con que Russell y Whitehead desatendieron la forma lógica de las proposiciones matemáticas, las cuales, según Ramsey, deben ser tautológicas.

No chance of seeing her for another fortnight and it is 11 days since I saw her. Went solitary walk felt miserable but to some extent staved it off by reflecting on |$\langle$|Continuum Problem|$\rangle$|1The occasion for this review article on the life and accomplishments of Frank Ramsey is the publication in the last eight years of three important books: a biography of Frank Ramsey by his sister, Margaret Paul, a book by Steven Methven on aspects of Ramsey’s philosophy, and the (...) recent biography of Ramsey written by Cheryl Misak. In a companion piece [Mancosu, 2020] I discuss Ramsey’s contacts with logicians in continental Europe and publish previously unpublished letters from Ramsey to Abraham Fraenkel and to Heinrich Behmann.1. INTRODUCTIONFrank Plumpton Ramsey (1903–1930) will be well known to the readers of this journal. His contributions to philosophy, mathematics, and economics have left a lasting legacy. In mathematical logic and philosophy of mathematics, Ramsey’s solution to the paradoxes by means of a simple theory of types [1926a] and Ramsey’s theorem in combinatorics (both finite and infinite [1930]) are among Ramsey’s most celebrated contributions. Ramsey is a key presence in accounts of Wittgenstein’s, Russell’s, and Moore’s lives and work. It is well known that it was Ramsey who translated the Tractatus into English and wrote what is still considered a very insightful review [1923] of the Tractatus. Wittgenstein mentioned the importance of his conversations with Ramsey in 1929 in Cambridge as having influenced his transition to the views presented in the Philosophical Investigations. Ramsey also contributed, in 1924, to the second edition of Principia Mathematica (see [Linsky, 2011]). While Ramsey’s friendship with Moore does not have an analogous concrete precipitate as the work on the Tractatus or Principia Mathematica, it is evident from the correspondence and other documents that Ramsey’s work in philosophy (truth, propositions, universals, etc.) influenced Moore. Of course, the direction of influence goes also the other way around. Wittgenstein, Russell, and Moore, among others, were essential in shaping Ramsey’s approach to philosophy. (shrink)

Wittgenstein's paradoxical theses that unproved propositions are meaningless, proofs form new concepts and rules, and contradictions are of limited concern, led to a variety of interpretations, most of them centered on rule-following skepticism. We argue, with the help of C. S. Peirce's distinction between corollarial and theorematic proofs, that his intuitions are better explained by resistance to what we call conceptual omniscience, treating meaning as fixed content specified in advance. We interpret the distinction in the context of modern epistemic logic (...) and semantic information theory, and show how removing conceptual omniscience helps resolve Wittgenstein's paradoxes and explain the puzzle of deduction, its ability to generate new knowledge and meaning. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore Wittgenstein’s conception of a hypothesis as articulated in Chapters XII and XXII of ‘Philosophical Remarks’. First, I argue that in Chapter XII, Wittgenstein draws on his account of infinity to begin to challenge the view that all hypotheses can be proven by empirical evidence. I then argue that in Chapter XXII that Wittgenstein sharpens this conception of hypotheses claiming that no hypotheses can be verified. Finally, I suggest that Wittgenstein’s conception of a hypothesis relates to (...) his practical view of how language functions. (shrink)

Frank Plumpton Ramsey (1903–30) made seminal contributions to philosophy, mathematics and economics. Whilst he was acknowledged as a genius by his contemporaries, some of his most important ideas were not appreciated until decades later; now better appreciated, they continue to bear an influence upon contemporary philosophy. His historic significance was to usher in a new phase of analytic philosophy, which initially built upon the logical atomist doctrines of Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein, raising their ideas to a new level of (...) sophistication, but ultimately he became their successor rather than remain a mere acolyte. (shrink)