Widespread interest in Frege's general philosophical writings is, relatively speaking, a fairly recent phenomenon. But it is only very recently that his philosophy of mathematics has begun to attract the attention it now enjoys. This interest has been elicited by the discovery of the remarkable mathematical properties of Frege's contextual definition of number and of the unique character of his proposals for a theory of the real numbers.
This collection of essays addresses three main developments in recent work on Frege's philosophy of mathematics: the emerging interest in the intellectual background to his logicism; the rediscovery of Frege's theorem; and the reevaluation of the mathematical content of The Basic Laws of Arithmetic. Each essay attempts a sympathetic, if not uncritical, reconstruction, evaluation, or extension of a facet of Frege's theory of arithmetic. Together they form an accessible and authoritative introduction to aspects of Frege's thought that have, until now, been largely missed by the philosophical community.
Edited by:
William Demopoulos
Imprint: Harvard University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Edition: New edition
Dimensions:
Height: 235mm,
Width: 162mm,
Spine: 26mm
Weight: 626g
ISBN: 9780674319431
ISBN 10: 0674319435
Pages: 480
Publication Date: 25 March 1997
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Professional and scholarly
,
Professional & Vocational
,
A / AS level
,
Further / Higher Education
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Preface Introduction William Demopoulos Appendix John L. Bell 1. The Intellectual Background to flege's Logicism 1. Kant, Bolzano and the Emergence of Logicism Alberto Coffa 2. Frege: The Last Logicist Paul Benacerraf 3. Frege and the Rigorization of Analysis William Demopoulos 4. Frege and Arbitrary Functions John P. Burgess 5. Frege: The Royal Road from Geometry Postscript Mark Wilson 2. The Mathematical Content of Begriffsschrift and Grundlagen 6. Reading the Begriffsschrift George Boolos 7. Frege's Theory of Number Postscript Charles Parsons 8. The Consistency of Frege's Foundations of Arithmetic George Boolos 9. The Standard of Equality of Numbers George Boolos 3. Grundgesetze der Arithmetik 10. The Development of Arithmetic in Frege's Grundgesetze der Arithmetik Postscript Richard C. Heck, Jr. 11. Definition by Induction in Frege's Grundgesetze der Arithmetik, Richard C. Heck, Jr. 12. Eudoxus and Dedekind: On the Ancient Greek Theory of Ratios and its Relation to Modern Mathematics Howard Stein 13. Frege's Theory of Real Numbers Peter M. Simons 14. Frege's Theory of Real Numbers Michael Dummett 15. On a Question of Frege's about Right-ordered Groups Postscript Peter M. Neumann, S. A. Adeleke and Michael Dumrnett 16. On the Consistency of the First-order Portion of Frege's Logical System Terence Parsons 17. Fregean Extensions of First-order Theories John L. Bell 18. Saving Frege from Contradiction George Boolos Index of Frege's Writings General Index
William Demopoulos (1943–2017), editor of Frege’s Philosophy of Mathematics and author of Logicism and Its Philosophical Legacy, spent nearly four decades as Professor of Philosophy at the University of Western Ontario.
Reviews for Frege’s Philosophy of Mathematics
Scholarly, thorough, and well presented...This collection presents material that has important philosophical implications. -- Gordon Baker Times Higher Education Supplement This is clearly the best collection of articles on Frege's philosophy of mathematics in existence today. It is also (unlike many collections of articles that are published these days) practically very useful. It serves as an excellent introduction to what is the liveliest part of Frege scholarship today, and to what has become an important sub-field of contemporary philosophy of mathematics, namely the understanding and assessment of the logistic project. -- Leon Horsten Zentralblatt MATH
