Philip A. Ebert

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

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

Guillermo E. Rosado Haddock's critical introduction to the philosophy of Gottlob Frege is based on twenty-five years of teaching Frege's philosophy at the University of Puerto Rico. It developed from an earlier publication by Rosado Haddock on Frege's philosophy which was, however, available only in Spanish. This introduction to Frege is meant to steer a path between the two main approaches to Frege studies: on the one hand, we have interpretations of Frege which portray him as a neo-Kantian and thus as some kind of idealist; on the other, we have writings like those of Dummett in which Frege is portrayed as a type of ‘philosophical Adam’, i.e., as completely separated from his philosophical tradition. Rosado Haddock succeeds in placing Frege's thinking into a broader philosophical context — mainly by reference to his contemporary Edmund Husserl — while also avoiding a Kantian reading of Frege's work.The structure of the book follows Frege's writing chronologically. In this way, Rosado Haddock leads the reader through the whole of Frege's philosophy while highlighting important changes and developments in Frege's thought from the Begriffsschrift to his Grundgesetze and other later writings. Chapter 1 introduces us to the core philosophical themes of Frege's Begriffsschrift with a special emphasis on Frege's notions of ‘conceptual content’ and ‘judgeable content’. Here, Rosado Haddock anticipates further discussion and points towards changes and developments of Frege's core notions of ‘identity’, ‘function’, and ‘content’. Chapters 2 and 3 focus on Frege's Grundlagen der Arithmetik. Chapter 2 discusses Frege's methodological principles as outlined in Frege's introduction and his criticisms of psychological, naturalistic, and Kantian approaches to the philosophy of mathematics. Chapter 3 focuses exclusively on Frege's own logicist account of arithmetic while emphasizing differences between Frege's views and Kantian …

In this paper I will argue that Boghossian's explanation of how we can acquire a priori knowledge of logical principles through implicit definitions commits a transmission of warrant-failure. To this end, I will briefly outline Boghossian's account, followed by an explanation of what a transmission of warrant-failure consists in. I will also show that this charge is independent of the worry of rule-circularity which has been raised concerning the justification of logical principles and of which Boghossian is fully aware. My argument comes in two steps: firstly, I will argue for the insufficiency of Boghossian's template which is meant to explain how a subject can acquire a warrant for logical principles. I will show however that this insufficiency of his template can be remedied by adopting what I call the Disquotational Step. Secondly, I will argue that incorporating this further step makes his template subject to a transmission of warrant-failure, assuming that certain rather basic and individually motivated principles hold. Thus, Boghossian's account faces a dilemma: either he adopts the Disquotational Step and subjects his account to the charge of a transmission of warrant-failure, or he drops this additional step leaving the account confronted with explaining the gap that has previously been highlighted. I will then suggest various rejoinders that Boghossian might adopt but none of which - I will argue - can resolve the dilemma. Lastly, I will raise and briefly discuss the question whether this worry generalizes to other accounts, such as Hale and Wright's that aim to explain our knowledge of logic and/or mathematics in virtue of implicit definitions.

In this paper, we present a formal recipe that Frege followed in his magnum opus “Grundgesetze der Arithmetik” when formulating his definitions. This recipe is not explicitly mentioned as such by Frege, but we will offer strong reasons to believe that Frege applied it in developing the formal material of Grundgesetze. We then show that a version of Basic Law V plays a fundamental role in Frege’s recipe and, in what follows, we will explicate what exactly this role is and explain how it differs from the role played by extensions in his earlier book “Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik”. Lastly, we will demonstrate that this hitherto neglected yet foundational aspect of Frege’s use of Basic Law V helps to resolve a number of important interpretative challenges in recent Frege scholarship, while also shedding light on some important differences between Frege’s logicism and recent neo-logicist approaches to the foundations of mathematics.

The paper challenges a widely held interpretation of Frege's conception of logic on which the constituent clauses of basic law V have the same sense. I argue against this interpretation by first carefully looking at the development of Frege's thoughts in Grundlagen with respect to the status of abstraction principles. In doing so, I put forth a new interpretation of Grundlagen §64 and Frege's idea of ‘recarving of content’. I then argue that there is strong evidence in Grundgesetze that Frege did not hold the relevant sense-identity claim regarding basic law V