Abstraction principles and grounding can be combined in a natural way Modality: metaphysics, logic, and epistemology, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 109–136, 2010; Schwartzkopff in Grazer philosophische studien 82:353–373, 2011). However, some ground-theoretic abstraction principles entail that there are circles of partial ground :775–801, 2017). I call this problem auto-abstraction. In this paper I sketch a solution. Sections 1 and 2 are introductory. In Sect. 3 I start comparing different solutions to the problem. In Sect. 4 I contend that the (...) thesis that the right-hand side of an abstraction principle is prior to its left-hand side motivates an independence constraint, and that this constraint leads to predicative restrictions on the acceptable instances of ground-theoretic abstraction principles. In Sect. 5 I argue that auto-abstraction is acceptable unless the left-hand side is essentially grounded by the right-hand side. In Sect. 6 I highlight several parallelisms between auto-abstraction and the puzzles of ground. I finally compare my solution with the strategies listed in Sect. 3. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Is it possible to effect singular reference to mathematical objects in the abstractionist framework? I will argue that even if mathematical expressions pass the relevant syntactic and inferential tests to qualify as singular terms, that does not mean that their semantic function is to refer to a particular object. I will defend two arguments leading to this claim: the permutation argument for the referential indeterminacy of mathematical terms, and the argument from the semantic idleness of the terms introduced by (...) abstraction principles. (shrink)

In his paper in the same volume, Sider argues that, of maximalism and quantifier variance, the latter promises to let us make better sense of neo-Fregeanism. I argue that neo-Fregeans should, and seemingly do, reject quantifier variance. If they must choose between these two options, they should choose maximalism.

Kripke’s notion of groundedness plays a central role in many responses to the semantic paradoxes. Can the notion of groundedness be brought to bear on the paradoxes that arise in connection with abstraction principles? We explore a version of grounded abstraction whereby term models are built up in a ‘grounded’ manner. The results are mixed. Our method solves a problem concerning circularity and yields a ‘grounded’ model for the predicative theory based on Frege’s Basic Law V. However, the method is (...) poorly behaved unless the background second-order logic is predicative. (shrink)

Neo-Fregeans need their stipulation of Hume's Principle — $NxFx=NxGx \leftrightarrow \exists R (Fx \,1\hbox {-}1_R\, Gx)$ — to do two things. First, it must implicitly define the term-forming operator ‘Nx…x…’, and second it must guarantee that Hume's Principle as a whole is true. I distinguish two senses in which the neo-Fregeans might ‘stipulate’ Hume's Principle, and argue that while one sort of stipulation fixes a meaning for ‘Nx…x…’ and the other guarantees the truth of Hume's Principle, neither does both.

A crucial part of the contemporary interest in logicism in the philosophy of mathematics resides in its idea that arithmetical knowledge may be based on logical knowledge. Here an implementation of this idea is considered that holds that knowledge of arithmetical principles may be based on two things: (i) knowledge of logical principles and (ii) knowledge that the arithmetical principles are representable in the logical principles. The notions of representation considered here are related to theory-based and structure-based notions of representation (...) from contemporary mathematical logic. It is argued that the theory-based versions of such logicism are either too liberal (the plethora problem) or are committed to intuitively incorrect closure conditions (the consistency problem). Structure-based versions must on the other hand respond to a charge of begging the question (the circularity problem) or explain how one may have a knowledge of structure in advance of a knowledge of axioms (the signature problem). This discussion is significant because it gives us a better idea of what a notion of representation must look like if it is to aid in realizing some of the traditional epistemic aims of logicism in the philosophy of mathematics. (shrink)

Neo-logicism is, not least in the light of Frege’s logicist programme, an important topic in the current philosophy of mathematics. In this essay, I critically discuss a number of issues that I consider to be relevant for both Frege’s logicism and neo-logicism. I begin with a brief introduction into Wright’s neo-Fregean project and mention the main objections that he faces. In Sect. 2, I discuss the Julius Caesar problem and its possible Fregean and neo-Fregean solution. In Sect. 3, I raise (...) what I take to be a central objection to the position of neo-logicism. In Sect. 4, I attempt to clarify how we should understand Frege’s stipulation that the two sides of an abstraction principle qua contextual definition of a term-forming operator shall be “gleichbedeutend”. In Sect. 5, I consider the options that Frege might have had to establish the analyticity of Hume’s Principle: The number that belongs to the concept F is equal to the number that belongs to the concept G if and only if F and G are equinumerous. Section 6 is devoted to Frege’s two criteria of thought identity. In Sects. 7 and 8, I defend the position of the neo-logicist against an alleged “knock-down argument”. In Sect. 9, I comment on Frege’s description of abstraction in Grundlagen, §64 and the use of the terms “recarving” and “reconceptualization” in the relevant literature on Fregean abstraction and neo-logicism. I argue that Fregean abstraction has nothing to do with the recarving of a sentence content or its decomposition in different ways. I conclude with remarks on global logicism versus local logicisms. (shrink)

The period in the foundations of mathematics that started in 1879 with the publication of Frege's Begriffsschrift and ended in 1931 with Gödel's Über formal unentscheidbare Sätze der Principia Mathematica und verwandter Systeme I can reasonably be called the classical period. It saw the development of three major foundational programmes: the logicism of Frege, Russell and Whitehead, the intuitionism of Brouwer, and Hilbert's formalist and proof-theoretic programme. In this period, there were also lively exchanges between the various schools culminating in (...) the famous Hilbert-Brouwer controversy in the 1920s. -/- The purpose of this anthology is to review the programmes in the foundations of mathematics from the classical period and to assess their possible relevance for contemporary philosophy of mathematics. What can we say, in retrospect, about the various foundational programmes of the classical period and the disputes that took place between them? To what extent do the classical programmes of logicism, intuitionism and formalism represent options that are still alive today? These questions are addressed in this volume by leading mathematical logicians and philosophers of mathematics. (shrink)

Neo-Fregeanism contends that knowledge of arithmetic may be acquired by second-order logical reflection upon Hume's principle. Heck argues that Hume's principle doesn't inform ordinary arithmetical reasoning and so knowledge derived from it cannot be genuinely arithmetical. To suppose otherwise, Heck claims, is to fail to comprehend the magnitude of Cantor's conceptual contribution to mathematics. Heck recommends that finite Hume's principle be employed instead to generate arithmetical knowledge. But a better understanding of Cantor's contribution is achieved if it is supposed that (...) Hume's principle really does inform arithmetical practice. More generally, Heck's arguments misconceive the epistemological character of neo-Fregeanism. (shrink)

Wright claims that “the epistemology of good abstraction principles should be assimilated to that of basic principles of logical inference”. In this paper I follow Wright’s recommendation, but I consider a different epistemology of logic, namely anti-exceptionalism. Anti-exceptionalism’s main contention is that logic is not a priori, and that the choice between rival logics should be based on abductive criteria such as simplicity, adequacy to the data, strength, fruitfulness, and consistency. This paper’s goal is to lay down the foundations for (...) an application of the anti-exceptionalist methodology to abstraction principles. In Sect. 1 I outline my strategy. I show that anti-exceptionalism has a bearing on the so-called Bad Company problem (Sect. 2), and explore some versions of anti-exceptionalism about abstraction (Sect. 3). I then consider new criteria for choosing between rival abstraction principles, and, in particular, between consistent revisions of Frege’s Basic Law V (Sect. 4). I finally consider how the abstractionist can compare between competing criteria (Sect. 5), and argue that anti-exceptionalists should be pluralists about abstraction (Sect. 6). (shrink)

This paper discusses the neo-logicist approach to the foundations of mathematics by highlighting an issue that arises from looking at the Bad Company objection from an epistemological perspective. For the most part, our issue is independent of the details of any resolution of the Bad Company objection and, as we will show, it concerns other foundational approaches in the philosophy of mathematics. In the first two sections, we give a brief overview of the "Scottish" neo-logicist school, present a generic form (...) of the Bad Company objection and introduce an epistemic issue connected to this general problem that will be the focus of the rest of the paper. In the third section, we present an alternative approach within philosophy of mathematics, a view that emerges from Hilbert's Grundlagen der Geometrie (1899, Leipzig: Teubner; Foundations of geometry (trans.: Townsend, E.). La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1959.). We will argue that Bad Company-style worries, and our concomitant epistemic issue, also affects this conception and other foundationalist approaches. In the following sections, we then offer various ways to address our epistemic concern, arguing, in the end, that none resolves the issue. The final section offers our own resolution which, however, runs against the foundationalist spirit of the Scottish neo-logicist program. (shrink)

According to the sortal conception of the universe of individuals every individual falls under a highest sortal, or category. It is argued here that on this conception the identity relation is defined between individuals a and b if and only if a and b fall under a common category. Identity must therefore be regarded as a relation of the form \, with three arguments x, y, and Z, where Z ranges over categories, and where the range of x and y (...) depends on the value of Z. An identity relation of this kind can be made good sense of in Martin-Löf’s type theory. But identity so construed requires a reformulation of Hume’s Principle that makes this principle unfit for explaining the sortal concept of cardinal number. The Neo-Logicist can therefore not appeal to the sortal conception in tackling the Julius Caesar problem, as proposed by Hale and Wright. (shrink)

The topic of this paper is our knowledge of the natural numbers, and in particular, our knowledge of the basic axioms for the natural numbers, namely the Peano axioms. The thesis defended in this paper is that knowledge of these axioms may be gained by recourse to judgements of probability. While considerations of probability have come to the forefront in recent epistemology, it seems safe to say that the thesis defended here is heterodox from the vantage point of traditional philosophy (...) of mathematics. So this paper focuses on providing a preliminary defense of this thesis, in that it focuses on responding to several objections. Some of these objections are from the classical literature, such as Frege's concern about indiscernibility and circularity, while other are more recent, such as Baker's concern about the unreliability of small samplings in the setting of arithmetic. Another family of objections suggests that we simply do not have access to probability assignments in the setting of arithmetic, either due to issues related to the~$\omega$-rule or to the non-computability and non-continuity of probability assignments. Articulating these objections and the responses to them involves developing some non-trivial results on probability assignments, such as a forcing argument to establish the existence of continuous probability assignments that may be computably approximated. In the concluding section, two problems for future work are discussed: developing the source of arithmetical confirmation and responding to the probabilistic liar. (shrink)

Logic is usually thought to concern itself only with features that sentences and arguments possess in virtue of their logical structures or forms. The logical form of a sentence or argument is determined by its syntactic or semantic structure and by the placement of certain expressions called “logical constants.”[1] Thus, for example, the sentences Every boy loves some girl. and Some boy loves every girl. are thought to differ in logical form, even though they share a common syntactic and semantic (...) structure, because they differ in the placement of the logical constants “every” and “some”. By contrast, the sentences Every girl loves some boy. and Every boy loves some girl. are thought to have the same logical form, because “girl” and “boy” are not logical constants. Thus, in order to settle questions about logical form, and ultimately about which arguments are logically valid and which sentences logically true, we must distinguish the “logical constants” of a language from its nonlogical expressions. (shrink)

The neo-logicist argues tliat standard mathematics can be derived by purely logical means from abstraction principles—such as Hume's Principle— which are held to lie 'epistcmically innocent'. We show that the second-order axiom of comprehension applied to non-instantiated properties and the standard first-order existential instantiation and universal elimination principles are essential for the derivation of key results, specifically a theorem of infinity, but have not been shown to be epistemically innocent. We conclude that the epistemic innocence of mathematics has not been (...) established by the neo-logicist. (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. (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)

ABSTRACTAccording to a famous argument by Dummett, the concept of set is indefinitely extensible, and the logic appropriate for reasoning about the instances of any such concept is intuitionistic, not classical. But Dummett's argument is widely regarded as obscure. This note explains how the final chapter of Rumfitt's important new book advances our understanding of Dummett's argument, but it also points out some problems and unanswered questions. Finally, Rumfitt's reconstruction of Dummett's argument is contrasted with my own preferred alternative.

This article concerns the ongoing neo-logicist program in the philosophy of mathematics. The enterprise began life, in something close to its present form, with Crispin Wright’s seminal [1983]. It was bolstered when Bob Hale [1987] joined the fray on Wright’s behalf and it continues through many extensions, objections, and replies to objections . The overall plan is to develop branches of established mathematics using abstraction principles in the form: Formula where a and b are variables of a given type , (...) Σ is a higher-order operator denoting a function from items of the given type to objects in the range of the first-order variables, and E is an equivalence relation over items of the given type. In what follows, I will sometimes omit the initial quantifiers.Frege [1884, 1893] himself employed three abstraction principles. One of them, used for illustration, comes from geometry: "The direction of l1 is identical to the direction of l2 if and only if l1 is parallel to l2."Call this the direction principle. The second was dubbed N= in [Wright, 1983] and is now called Hume’s principle: Formula where F≈G is an abbreviation of the second-order statement that there is a one-to-one relation mapping the F’s onto the G’s. In words, states that the number of F is identical to the number of G if and only if F is equinumerous with G. Unlike the direction-principle, the relevant variables, F, G here are second-order. Georg Cantor …. (shrink)