Description
Book SynopsisBob Hale and Crispin Wright draw together here the key writings in which they have worked out their distinctive neo-Fregean approach to the philosophy of mathematics. The two main components in Frege''s mathematical philosophy were his platonism and his logicism -- the claims, respectively, that mathematics is a body of knowledge about independently existing objects, and that this knowledge may be acquired on the basis of general logical laws and suitable definitions. The central thesis of this collection is that Frege was -- his own eventual recantation notwithstanding -- substantially right in both claims. Where neo-Fregeanism principally differs from Frege is in taking a more optimistic view of the kind of contextual explanation (proceeding via what are now commonly called abstraction principles) of the fundamental concepts of arithmetic and analysis which Frege considered and rejected. On this basis, neo-Fregeanism promises defensible and attractive answers to some of the most impo
Table of ContentsI. ONTOLOGY AND ABSTRACTION PRINCIPLES ; II. RESPONSES TO CRITICS ; III. HUME'S PRINCIPLE ; IV. ON THE DIFFERENTIATION OF ABSTRACTA ; V. BEYOND NUMBER-THEORY
