Is a logicist bound to the claim that as a matter of analytic truth there is an actual infinity of objects? If Hume’s Principle is analytic then in the standard setting the answer appears to be yes. Hodes’s work pointed to a way out by offering a modal picture in which only a potential infinity was posited. However, this project was abandoned due to apparent failures of cross-world predication. We re-explore this idea and discover that in the setting of the (...) potential infinite one can interpret first-order Peano arithmetic, but not second-order Peano arithmetic. We conclude that in order for the logicist to weaken the metaphysically loaded claim of necessary actual infinities, they must also weaken the mathematics they recover. (shrink)

Though the divide between reason-based and causal-explanatory approaches in psychiatry and psychopathology is old and deeply rooted, current trends involving multi-factorial explanatory models and evidence-based approaches to interpersonal psychotherapy, show that it has already been implicitly bridged. These trends require a philosophical reconsideration of how reasons can be causes. This paper contributes to that trajectory by arguing that Donald Davidson’s classic paradigm of 1963 is still a valid option.

Frege claims that the laws of logic are characterized by their “generality,” but it is hard to see how this could identify a special feature of those laws. I argue that we must understand this talk of generality in normative terms, but that what Frege says provides a normative demarcation of the logical laws only once we connect it with his thinking about truth and science. He means to be identifying the laws of logic as those that appear in every (...) one of the scientific systems whose construction is the ultimate aim of science, and in which all truths have a place. Though an account of logic in terms of scientific systems might seem hopelessly antiquated, I argue that it is not: a basically Fregean account of the nature of logic still looks quite promising. (shrink)

This essay examines Frege's reaction to Russell's Paradox and his views about the grounding of existence claims in mathematics. It is argued that Frege's strict requirements on existential proofs would rule out the attempt to ground arithmetic in. It is hoped that this discussion will help to clarify the ways in which Frege's position is both coherent and significantly different from the neo-logicist position on the issues of: what's required for proofs of existence; the connection between models, consistency, and existence; (...) and the prospects for a logical grounding of arithmetic in the wake of the paradox. (shrink)

This paper contains a close analysis of Frege's proofs of the axioms of arithmetic §§70-83 of Die Grundlagen, with special attention to the proof of the existence of successors in §§82-83. Reluctantly and hesitantly, we come to the conclusion that Frege was at least somewhat confused in those two sections and that he cannot be said to have outlined, or even to have intended, any correct proof there. The proof he sketches is in many ways similar to that given in (...) Grundgesetze der Arithmetik, but fidelity to what Frege wrote in Die Grundlagen and in Grundgesetze requires us to reject the charitable suggestion that it was this (beautiful) proof that he had in mind in §§82-83. (shrink)

As is well-known, the formal system in which Frege works in his Grundgesetze der Arithmetik is formally inconsistent, Russell’s Paradox being derivable in it.This system is, except for minor differ...

Øystein Linnebo has recently shown that the existence of successors cannot be proven in predicative Frege arithmetic, using Frege’s definitions of arithmetical notions. By contrast, it is shown here that the existence of successor can be proven in ramified predicative Frege arithmetic.

According to the species of neo-logicism advanced by Hale and Wright, mathematical knowledge is essentially logical knowledge. Their view is found to be best understood as a set of related though independent theses: (1) neo-fregeanism-a general conception of the relation between language and reality; (2) the method of abstraction-a particular method for introducing concepts into language; (3) the scope of logic-second-order logic is logic. The criticisms of Boolos, Dummett, Field and Quine (amongst others) of these theses are explicated and assessed. (...) The issues discussed include reductionism, rejectionism, the Julius Caesar problem, the Bad Company objections, and the charge that second-order logic is set theory in disguise. (shrink)

We examine George Boolos's proposed abstraction principle for extensions based on the limitation-of-size conception, New V, from several perspectives. Crispin Wright once suggested that New V could serve as part of a neo-logicist development of real analysis. We show that it fails both of the conservativeness criteria for abstraction principles that Wright proposes. Thus, we support Boolos against Wright. We also show that, when combined with the axioms for Boolos's iterative notion of set, New V yields a system equivalent to (...) full Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory with a principle of global choice. This advances Boolos's longstanding interest in the foundations of set theory. (shrink)

Let me start with a well-known story. Kant held that logic and conceptual analysis alone cannot account for our knowledge of arithmetic: “however we might turn and twist our concepts, we could never, by the mere analysis of them, and without the aid of intuition, discover what is the sum [7+5]” (KrV, B16). Frege took himself to have shown that Kant was wrong about this. According to Frege’s logicist thesis, every arithmetical concept can be defined in purely logical terms, and (...) every theorem of arithmetic can be proved using only the basic laws of logic. Hence, Kant was wrong to think that our grasp of arithmetical concepts and our knowledge of arithmetical truth depend on an extralogical source—the pure intuition of time (Frege 1884, §89, §109). Arithmetic, properly understood, is just a part of logic. (shrink)

Frege Arithmetic (FA) is the second-order theory whose sole non-logical axiom is Hume’s Principle, which says that the number of F s is identical to the number of Gs if and only if the F s and the Gs can be one-to-one correlated. According to Frege’s Theorem, FA and some natural definitions imply all of second-order Peano Arithmetic. This paper distinguishes two dimensions of impredicativity involved in FA—one having to do with Hume’s Principle, the other, with the underlying second-order logic—and (...) investigates how much of Frege’s Theorem goes through in various partially predicative fragments of FA. Theorem 1 shows that almost everything goes through, the most important exception being the axiom that every natural number has a successor. Theorem 2 shows that the Successor Axiom cannot be proved in the theories that are predicative in either dimension. (shrink)

On the neo-Fregean approach to the foundations of mathematics, elementary arithmetic is analytic in the sense that the addition of a principle wliich may be held to IMJ explanatory of the concept of cardinal number to a suitable second-order logical basis suffices for the derivation of its basic laws. This principle, now commonly called Hume's principle, is an example of a Fregean abstraction principle. In this paper, I assume the correctness of the neo-Fregean position on elementary aritlunetic and seek to (...) explain one way in which it may be extended to encompass the theory of real numbers, introducing the reals, by means of suitable further abstraction principles, as ratios of quantities. (shrink)

In this paper, the authors discuss Frege's theory of "logical objects" and the recent attempts to rehabilitate it. We show that the 'eta' relation George Boolos deployed on Frege's behalf is similar, if not identical, to the encoding mode of predication that underlies the theory of abstract objects. Whereas Boolos accepted unrestricted Comprehension for Properties and used the 'eta' relation to assert the existence of logical objects under certain highly restricted conditions, the theory of abstract objects uses unrestricted Comprehension for (...) Logical Objects and banishes encoding formulas from Comprehension for Properties. The relative mathematical and philosophical strengths of the two theories are discussed. Along the way, new results in the theory of abstract objects are described, involving: the theory of extensions, the theory of directions and shapes, and the theory of truth values. (shrink)

What makes certain definitions fruitful? And how can definitions play an explanatory role? The purpose of this paper is to examine these questions via an investigation of Frege’s treatment of definitions. Specifically, I pursue this issue via an examination of Frege’s views about the scientific unification of logic and arithmetic. In my view, what interpreters have failed to appreciate is that logicism is a project of unification, not reduction. For Frege, unification involves two separate steps: (1) an account of the (...) content expressed by arithmetical claims and (2) the justification of that content. The distinction between these steps allows us to see that there are two notions of definition at play in Frege’s logicist work, viz., one concerned with conceptual analysis, the other concerned with the construction of gap-free proof. I then use this discussion to explain how Frege employs his definitions to defend an epistemological thesis about arithmetic, and to clarify Grundlagen’s fruitfulness condition of definitions, and thereby address two interpretive puzzles from the recent literature. (shrink)

Frege regarded Hume's Principle as insufficient for a logicist account of arithmetic, as it does not identify the numbers; it does not tell us which objects the numbers are. His solution, generally regarded as a failure, was to propose certain sets as the referents of numerical terms. I suggest instead that numbers are properties of pluralities, where these properties are treated as objects. Given this identification, the truth-conditions of the statements of arithmetic can be obtained from logical principles with the (...) help of definitions, just as the logicist thesis maintains. (shrink)

The pluralist sheds the more traditional ideas of truth and ontology. This is dangerous, because it threatens instability of the theory. To lend stability to his philosophy, the pluralist trades truth and ontology for rigour and other ‘fixtures’. Fixtures are the steady goal posts. They are the parts of a theory that stay fixed across a pair of theories, and allow us to make translations and comparisons. They can ultimately be moved, but we tend to keep them fixed temporarily. Apart (...) from considering rigour of proof as a fixture, I discuss fixed models, invariant notions and fixed information about objects across theories. There are other fixtures, but it is enough to start with these. (shrink)

In this paper I examine the prospects for a successful neo–logicist reconstruction of the real numbers, focusing on Bob Hale's use of a cut-abstraction principle. There is a serious problem plaguing Hale's project. Natural generalizations of this principle imply that there are far more objects than one would expect from a position that stresses its epistemological conservativeness. In other words, the sort of abstraction needed to obtain a theory of the reals is rampantly inflationary. I also indicate briefly why this (...) problem is likely to reappear in any neo–logicist reconstruction of real analysis. (shrink)

A number of formal constraints on acceptable abstraction principles have been proposed, including conservativeness and irenicity. Hume’s Principle, of course, satisfies these constraints. Here, variants of Hume’s Principle that allow us to count concepts instead of objects are examined. It is argued that, prima facie, these principles ought to be no more problematic than HP itself. But, as is shown here, these principles only enjoy the formal properties that have been suggested as indicative of acceptability if certain constraints on the (...) size of the continuum hold. As a result, whether or not these higher-order versions of Hume’s Principle are acceptable seems to be independent of standard (ZFC) set theory. This places the abstractionist in an uncomfortable dilemma: Either there is some inherent difference between counting objects and counting concepts, or new criteria for acceptability will need to be found. It is argued that neither horn looks promising. (shrink)

According to the species of neo‐logicism advanced by Hale and Wright, mathematical knowledge is essentially logical knowledge. Their view is found to be best understood as a set of related though independent theses: (1) neo‐fregeanism—a general conception of the relation between language and reality; (2) the method of abstraction—a particular method for introducing concepts into language; (3) the scope of logic—second‐order logic is logic. The criticisms of Boolos, Dummett, Field and Quine (amongst others) of these theses are explicated and assessed. (...) The issues discussed include reductionism, rejectionism, the Julius Caesar problem, the Bad Company objections, and the charge that second‐order logic is set theory in disguise.The irresistible metaphor is that pure abstract objects […] are no more than shadows cast by the syntax of our discourse. And the aptness of the metaphor is enhanced by the reflection that shadows are, after their own fashion, real. (Crispin Wright [1992], p. 181–2)But I feel conscious that many a reader will scarcely recognise in the shadowy forms which I bring before him his numbers which all his life long have accompanied him as faithful and familiar friends; (Richard Dedekind [1963], p. 33)1 Introduction2 Logical‐historical preliminaries3 The linguistic turn4 Reductionism5 Rejectionism6 The ‘Julius Caesar’ problem7 Second‐order logic8 Bad company objections9 Conclusion. (shrink)

Frege's work was largely devoted to an attempt to argue that the'basic laws of arithmetic' are truths of logic. That attempt had both philosophical and formal aspects. The present note offers an introduction to both of these, so that readers will be able to appreciate contemporary discussions of the philosophical significance of 'Frege's Theorem'.

Neo-Fregean logicism seeks to base mathematics on abstraction principles. But the acceptable abstraction principles are surrounded by unacceptable ones. This is the "bad company problem." In this introduction I first provide a brief historical overview of the problem. Then I outline the main responses that are currently being debated. In the course of doing so I provide summaries of the contributions to this special issue.

In this paper, I develop a new defense of logicism: one that combines logicism and nominalism. First, I defend the logicist approach from recent criticisms; in particular from the charge that a cruciai principie in the logicist reconstruction of arithmetic, Hume's Principle, is not analytic. In order to do that, I argue, it is crucial to understand the overall logicist approach as a nominalist view. I then indicate a way of extending the nominalist logicist approach beyond arithmetic. Finally, I argue (...) that a nominalist can use the resulting approach to provide a nominalization strategy for mathematics. In this way, mathematical structures can be introduced without ontological costs. And so, if this proposal is correct, we can say that ultimately all the nominalist needs is logic (and, rather loosely, ali the logicist needs is nominalism). (shrink)

We see no grounds for insisting that, because the concept natural number is abstract, its foundations must be innate. It is possible to specify domain general learning processes that feed into more abstract concepts of numerical infinity. By neglecting the messiness of children's slow acquisition of arithmetical concepts, Rips et al. present an idealized, unnecessarily insular, view of number development.

Rips et al. argue that the construction of math schemas roughly similar to the Dedekind/Peano axioms may be necessary for arriving at arithmetical skills. However, they neglect the neo-Fregean alternative axiomatization of arithmetic, based on Hume's principle. Frege arithmetic is arguably a more plausible start for a top-down approach in the psychological study of mathematical cognition than Peano arithmetic.

This article treats three aspects of Frege's discussions of definitions. First, I survey Frege's main criticisms of definitions in mathematics. Second, I consider Frege's apparent change of mind on the legitimacy of contextual definitions and its significance for recent neo-Fregean logicism. In the remainder of the article I discuss a critical question about the definitions on which Frege's proofs of the laws of arithmetic depend: do the logical structures of the definientia reflect the understanding of arithmetical terms prevailing prior to (...) Frege's analyses? Unless they do, it is unclear how Frege's proofs demonstrate the analyticity of the arithmetic in use before logicism. Yet, especially in late writings, Frege characterizes definitions as arbitrary stipulations of the senses or references of expressions unrelated to pre-definitional understanding. I conclude by examining some options for conceiving of the status of Frege's logicism in light of this apparent tension, and outline a suggestion for a philosophically fruitful way of resolving this tension. (shrink)

In this paper, the author derives the Dedekind-Peano axioms for number theory from a consistent and general metaphysical theory of abstract objects. The derivation makes no appeal to primitive mathematical notions, implicit definitions, or a principle of infinity. The theorems proved constitute an important subset of the numbered propositions found in Frege's *Grundgesetze*. The proofs of the theorems reconstruct Frege's derivations, with the exception of the claim that every number has a successor, which is derived from a modal axiom that (...) (philosophical) logicians implicitly accept. In the final section of the paper, there is a brief philosophical discussion of how the present theory relates to the work of other philosophers attempting to reconstruct Frege's conception of numbers and logical objects. (shrink)

In 1902 there arrived in Jena a letter from Russell laying out a proof that shattered Frege’s confidence in logicism, which is widely taken to be the doctrine according to which every truth of arithmetic is re-expressible without relevant loss as a provable truth about a purely logical object. Frege was persuaded that Russell had exposed a pathology in logicism, which faced him with the task of examining its symptoms, diagnosing its cause, assessing its seriousness, arriving at a treatment option, (...) and making an estimate of future prospects. The symptom was the contradiction that had crept into naïve set theory in the form of the set that provably is and is not its own member. The diagnosis was that it is caused by Basic Law V of the Grundgesetze (Frege, In: Grundgesetze der Arithmetik: Begrifsschriftlich abgeleitet, Jena: Herman Pohle, 1893/1903. Translated into English as Basic Laws of Arithmetic, also edited by Philip A. Ebert and Marcus Rossberg, with Crispin Wright, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). Triage answers the question, “How bad is it?” The answer was that the contradiction irreparably destroys the logicist project. The treatment option was nil. The disease was untreatable. In due course, the prognosis turned out to be that a scaled-down Fregean logic could have an honourable life as a theory inference for various domains of mathematical discourse, but not for domains containing the logical objects required for logicism. Since there aren’t such objects, there aren’t such domains. On the face of it, Frege’s logicist collapse is astonishing. Why wouldn’t he have repaired the fault in Law V and gone back to the business of bringing logicism to an assured realization? In the course of our reflections, we will have nice occasion to consider the good it might have done Frege to have booked some time with Aristotle had he been able to. By the time we’re finished, we’ll have cause to think that in the end the Russell might well have begged the question against Frege. (shrink)

This paper presents new constructions of models of Hume's Principle and Basic Law V with restricted amounts of comprehension. The techniques used in these constructions are drawn from hyperarithmetic theory and the model theory of fields, and formalizing these techniques within various subsystems of second-order Peano arithmetic allows one to put upper and lower bounds on the interpretability strength of these theories and hence to compare these theories to the canonical subsystems of second-order arithmetic. The main results of this paper (...) are: (i) there is a consistent extension of the hyperarithmetic fragment of Basic Law V which interprets the hyperarithmetic fragment of second-order Peano arithmetic, and (ii) the hyperarithmetic fragment of Hume's Principle does not interpret the hyperarithmetic fragment of second-order Peano arithmetic, so that in this specific sense there is no predicative version of Frege's Theorem. (shrink)

Foundational projects disagree on whether pure and applied mathematics should be explained together. Proponents of unified accounts like neologicists defend Frege’s Constraint (FC), a principle demanding that an explanation of applicability be provided by mathematical definitions. I reconsider the philosophical import of FC, arguing that usual conceptions are biased by ontological assumptions. I explore more reasonable weaker variants — Moderate and Modest FC — arguing against common opinion that ante rem structuralism (and other) views can meet them. I dispel doubts (...) that such constraints are ‘toothless’, showing they both assuage Frege’s original concerns and accommodate neo-logicist intents by dismissing ‘arrogant’ definitions. (shrink)

Many experiments with infants suggest that they possess quantitative abilities, and many experimentalists believe that these abilities set the stage for later mathematics: natural numbers and arithmetic. However, the connection between these early and later skills is far from obvious. We evaluate two possible routes to mathematics and argue that neither is sufficient: (1) We first sketch what we think is the most likely model for infant abilities in this domain, and we examine proposals for extrapolating the natural number concept (...) from these beginnings. Proposals for arriving at natural number by (empirical) induction presuppose the mathematical concepts they seek to explain. Moreover, standard experimental tests for children's understanding of number terms do not necessarily tap these concepts. (2) True concepts of number do appear, however, when children are able to understand generalizations over all numbers; for example, the principle of additive commutativity (a+b=b+a). Theories of how children learn such principles usually rely on a process of mapping from physical object groupings. But both experimental results and theoretical considerations imply that direct mapping is insufficient for acquiring these principles. We suggest instead that children may arrive at natural numbers and arithmetic in a more top-down way, by constructing mathematical schemas. (shrink)

This volume will be of particular interest to researchers working in the history, and in the philosophy, of logic and mathematics, and more generally, to ...

O objetivo do presente artigo é apresentar a correlação entre o programa logicista fregeano de fundamentação da aritmética, o neologicismo de Crispin Wright e os chamados princípios de abstração. Minha tese é que uma análise geral de princípios de abstração, do ponto de vista lógico e explanatório, é mais basilar que o projeto de fundamentação da aritmética na forma como ele foi proposto pelo logicismo. Isso fica evidente através do fato de que o fracasso do programa logicista esteve intimamente ligado (...) à imprecisão e inconsistência no uso de procedimento de abstração. (shrink)

Evidence is drawn together to connect sources of inconsistency that Frege discerned in his foundations for arithmetic with the origins of the paradox derived by Russell in "Basic Laws" I and then with antinomies, paradoxes, contradictions, riddles associated with modal and intensional logics. Examined are: Frege's efforts to grasp logical objects; the philosophical arguments that compelled Russell to adopt a description theory of names and a eliminative theory of descriptions; the resurfacing of issues surrounding reference, descriptions, identity, substitutivity, paradox in (...) the debates concerning modal and intensional logics; the development of the New Theory of Reference. I consider this to be the philosophical ground upon which the debates regarding that theory should take place. (shrink)

Wright claims that his and Hale’s abstractionist neologicist project is primarily epistemological in aim. Its epistemological aims include establishing the possibility of a priori mathematical knowledge, and establishing the possibility of reference to abstract mathematical objects. But, as Wright acknowledges, there is a question of how neologicist epistemology applies to actual, ordinary mathematical beliefs. I take up this question, focusing on arithmetic. Following a suggestion of Hale and Wright, I consider the possibility that the neologicist account provides an idealised reconstruction (...) of how people acquire cognition of numbers or arithmetical knowledge. I conclude that it is unlikely that this account can be used to reconstruct even idealised answers to pressing questions about our actual epistemology. (shrink)

Frege's main contributions to logic and the philosophy of mathematics are, on the one hand, his introduction of modern relational and quantificational logic and, on the other, his analysis of the concept of number. My focus in this paper will be on the latter, although the two are closely related, of course, in ways that will also play a role. More specifically, I will discuss Frege's logicist reconceptualization of the natural numbers with the goal of clarifying two aspects: the motivations (...) for its core ideas; the step-by-step development of these ideas, from Begriffsschrift through Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik and Grundgesetze der Arithmetik to Frege's very last writings, indeed even beyond those, to a number of recent "neo-Fregean" proposals for how to update them. One main development, or break, in Frege's views occurred after he was informed of Russell's antinomy. His attempt to come to terms with this antinomy has found some attention in the literature already. It has seldom been analyzed in connection with earlier changes in his views, however, partly because those changes themselves have been largely ignored. Nor has it been discussed much in connection with Frege's basic motivations, as formed in reaction to earlier positions. Doing both in this paper will not only shed new light on his response to Russell's antinomy, but also on other aspects of his views. In addition, it will provide us with a framework for comparing recent updates of these views, thus for assessing the remaining attraction of Frege's general approach. I will proceed as follows: In the first part of the paper (§1.1 and §1.2), I will consider the relationship of Frege's conception of the natural numbers to earlier conceptions, in particular to what I will call the "pluralities conception", thus bringing into sharper focus his core ideas and their motivations. In the next part (§2.1 and §2.2), I will trace the order in which these ideas come up in Frege's writings, as well as the ways in which his position gets modified along the way, both before and after Russell's antinomy.. (shrink)

Frege proved an important result, concerning the relation of arithmetic to second-order logic, that bears on several issues in linguistics. Frege’s Theorem illustrates the logic of relations like PRECEDES(x, y) and TALLER(x, y), while raising doubts about the idea that we understand sentences like ‘Carl is taller than Al’ in terms of abstracta like heights and numbers. Abstract paraphrase can be useful—as when we say that Carl’s height exceeds Al’s—without reflecting semantic structure. Related points apply to causal relations, and even (...) grammatical relations like DOMINATES(x, y). Perhaps surprisingly, Frege provides the resources needed to recursively characterize labelled expressions without characterizing them as sets. His theorem may also bear on questions about the meaning and acquisition of number words. (shrink)

Hume's Principle, dear to neo-Logicists, maintains that equinumerosity is both necessary and sufficient for sameness of cardinal number. All the same, Whitehead demonstrated in Principia Mathematica's logic of relations that Cantor's power-class theorem entails that Hume's Principle admits of exceptions. Of course, Hume's Principle concerns cardinals and in Principia's ‘no-classes’ theory cardinals are not objects in Frege's sense. But this paper shows that the result applies as well to the theory of cardinal numbers as objects set out in Frege's Grundgesetze. (...) Though Frege did not realize it, Cantor's power-theorem entails that Frege's cardinals as objects do not always obey Hume's Principle. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to shed new light on the logical roots of arithmetic by presenting a logical framework that takes seriously ordinary locutions like ‘at least n Fs’, ‘n more Fs than Gs’ and ‘n times as many Fs as Gs’, instead of paraphrasing them away in terms of expressions of the form ‘the number of Fs’. It will be shown that the basic concepts of arithmetic can be intuitively defined in the language of ALA, and the (...) Dedekind–Peano axioms can be derived from those definitions by logical means alone. It will also be shown that some fundamental facts about cardinal numbers expressed using singular terms of the form ‘the number of Fs’, including Hume’s Principle, can be derived solely from definitions. (shrink)

Øystein Linnebo has recently shown that the existence of successors cannot be proven in predicative Frege arithmetic, using Frege's definitions of arithmetical notions. By contrast, it is shown here that the existence of successor can be proven in ramified predicative Frege arithmetic.

In “Function and Concept” and “On Concept and Object”, Frege argued that certain differences between dependent and independent meanings were inviolable and “founded deep in the nature of things” but, in those articles, he was not explicit about the actual consequences of violating such differences. However, since by creating a law that permitted one to pass from a concept to its extension, he himself mixed dependent and independent meanings, we are in a position to study some of the actual consequences (...) of his having done so. To make certain of Frege’s ideas about the inviolability of logical form more tangible, I describe a string of very interrelated consequences that his attempt to transform dependent meanings into independent meanings actually brought in its wake. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:176 Reviews c:\users\ken\documents\type3402\rj 3402 050 red.docx 2015-02-04 9:19 PM THE GRUNDGESETZE Nicholas Griffin Russell Research Centre / McMaster U. Hamilton, on, Canada l8s 4l6 [email protected] Gottlob Frege. Basic Laws of Arithmetic. Derived Using Concept-script. Volumes i and ii. Translated and edited by Philip A. Ebert and Marcus Rossberg with Crispin Wright. Oxford: Oxford U. P., 2013. Pp. xxxix + xxxii + 253 + xv + 285 + A–42 + (...) i–11. isbn 978-0-19-928174-9. £60; us$110. iven the steadily rising interest in Frege’s work since the 1950s, it is surprising that his Grundgesetze der Arithmetik, the work he thought would be the crowning achievement of his career, has not previously been fully translated into English. Other Frege works have long been available in English. The earlier Grundlagen der Arithmetik was nicely, if not always entirely accurately, translated by J. L. Austin and published in 1950.1 Translations of Frege’s other philosophical writings began to appear in influential editions about the same time,2 initially a small corpus that has been gradually added to over the years to include works from his Nachlass and letters from his correspondence.3 Somewhat later, the Begriffsschrift, Frege’s momentous first 1 The Foundations of Arithmetic (Oxford: Blackwell, 1950; 2nd edn. 1953). The later translation under the same title by Dale Jacquette (London: Longman, 2007) is much less satisfactory. 2 The first importance source for these was Peter Geach and Max Black’s Translations from the Philosophical Writing of Gottlob Frege (1952; 2nd edn. 1960; 3rd edn. 1980), though it included reprints of some much earlier translations. 3 The two most comprehensive English sources for the shorter writings are now Brian d= Reviews 177 c:\users\ken\documents\type3402\rj 3402 050 red.docx 2015-02-04 9:19 PM contribution to modern logic, the work which Quine 4 said had made logic a great subject, was translated in full despite the difficulties of Fregean notation.5 But through all this the Grundgesetze remained largely (though not entirely ) untranslated. The view seems, for a long time, to have been that Frege’s contributions to logic were to be found in the Begriffsschrift and his contributions to philosophy in the Grundlagen and a small number of seminal articles. The Grundgesetze, on the other hand, was widely thought not to have added much to these magni ficent achievements, but to have employed them in a project that was doomed by the discovery of Russell’s paradox; namely, the attempt to show that arithmetic could be rigorously derived from purely logical principles. In the bleak aftermath of Russell’s paradox it came to seem as if whatever was of value in the Grundgesetze had already been published elsewhere, while what was new in it was mistaken.6 That assessment of the book’s value, combined with the huge difficulties of typesetting Frege’s idiosyncratic two-dimensional notation, and the sheer scale of the work (even without the anticipated third volume, which was abandoned in the face of Russell’s paradox, it was, by far, Frege’s largest work) made it seem as though a translation of the whole Grundgesetze was not only a prohibitively large undertaking, but also one which was not really necessary. And so, through much of the twentieth century, the Grundgesetze vied with Principia Mathematica as the world’s bestknown but least-read philosophical book. But this understanding of the Grundgesetze’s importance could not withstand the development of neo-logicism, brought to prominence by Crispin Wright’s Frege’s Conception of Numbers as Objects.7 The key insight of neoMcGuinness, ed., Frege, Collected Papers on Mathematics, Logic, and Philosophy (1984); and Michael Beaney, ed., The Frege Reader (1997). 4 At least in early editions of Mathematical Logic. The remark was removed in later ones in deference to Boole. 5 By Stefan Bauer-Mengelberg in Jean van Heijenoort, ed., From Frege to Gödel (1967), pp. 5–82. 6 Not surprisingly the one part of the Grundgesetze which has appeared most frequently in translation is the “Nachwort” responding to Russell’s paradox which Frege added as the book was in press. Geach... (shrink)

The aim of this article is to contribute to a better understanding of Frege’s views on semantics and metatheory by looking at his take on several themes in nineteenth century geometry that were significant for the development of modern model-theoretic semantics. I will focus on three issues in which a central semantic idea, the idea of reinterpreting non-logical terms, gradually came to play a substantial role: the introduction of elements at infinity in projective geometry; the study of transfer principles, especially (...) the principle of duality; and the use of counterexamples in independence arguments. Based on a discussion of these issues and how nineteenth century geometers reflected about them, I will then look into Frege’s take on these matters. I conclude with a discussion of Frege’s views and what they entail for the debate about his stance towards semantics and metatheory more generally. (shrink)

This paper raises and then discusses a puzzle concerning the ontological commitments of mathematical principles. The main focus here is Hume's Principle—a statement that, embedded in second-order logic, allows for a deduction of the second-order Peano axioms. The puzzle aims to put pressure on so-called epistemic rejectionism, a position that rejects the analytic status of Hume's Principle. The upshot will be to elicit a new and very basic disagreement between epistemic rejectionism and the neo-Fregeans, defenders of the analytic status of (...) Hume's Principle, which will provide a new angle from which properly to assess and re-evaluate the current debate. (shrink)

My purpose in this talk is to give an overview of the rediscovery of Frege's theorem together with certain of the issues that this rediscovery has raised concerning the evaluation of Frege's logicism—the ‘old doctrine’ of my title.The contextual definition of the cardinality operator, suggested in §63 ofGrundlagen— what, after George Boolos, has come to be known as Hume's principle—assertsThe number of Fs = the number of Gs if, and only if, F ≈ G,where F ≈ G (the Fs and (...) the Gs are in one-to-one correspondence) has its usual, second order, explicit definition. The importance of this principle for the derivation of Peano's second postulate (‘Every natural number has a successor’) was emphasized by Crispin Wright (1983, §xix) who presented an extended argument showing that, in the context of the system of second-order logic of Frege'sBegriffsschrift,Peano's second postulate is derivable from Hume's principle. (shrink)