Dear all, This Thursday (the 20th) Fiona Doherty will be speaking at the Serious Metaphysics Group, on 'Frege As Against The Neo-Logicist'(abstract below). We'll meet at the regular time of 1:00 - 2:30pm, in the Faculty Board Room.
This week a team from Cambridge English Language Assessment will be filming the seminar, to collect material for use in a teaching course they're developing. A photographer will also be taking some still shots, for use at open days, etc. Apparently the film crew is very unobtrusive, so it shouldn't make a difference to the running of the seminar, but if you have any questions or concerns, please let me know. (It's possible to come to the seminar (and take part in the discussion), but not be included in the video, so if you would prefer that, also just let me know). Hope to see you there, Georgie Frege As Against The Neo-Logicist The driving insight behind Frege's logicist project was to show that arithmetic truths are a special species of logical truths, and that as such their objects of study (the numbers) are logical objects. The neo-logicist tries to circumvent the inconsistency in Frege's attempt to establish this thesis by using Hume's Principle as the means by which numbers are to be given to us. A question arises regarding the status of this principle which the neo-logicist settles by claiming that Hume's Principle should be understood as an implicit definition. I will argue that as soon as the neo-logicist makes this move, they leave themselves vulnerable to a powerful objection which Frege makes to Hilbert's use of implicit definitions. Broadly; if Hume's Principle is understood as an implicit definition then, at best, it defines a different concept than the one which the neo-logicist needs to secure the numbers as logical objects. -- Georgie Statham PhD Candidate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge _____________________________________________________ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
