The Logical Basis of Metaphysics.

DUMMETT, Michael (1925-2011):

ISBN 10: 0674537858 / ISBN 13: 9780674537859

Edité par Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991., 1991

A propos de cet article

xi, 1 leaf, 355 pp. Original cloth. Near Fine, in very good+ dust jacket (a few small closed tears along edges). The William James Lectures 1976. 'Dummett's program for the assessment of metaphysical claims and logical principles, alongside his landmark interpretation of Frege, is his most enduring contribution to philosophy. The specific significance of this approach for the philosophies of mathematics and of logic consists in Dummett's application of it to a defense of intuitionism. The general outlines of the approach are familiar; but a number of questions have remained about how exactly Dummett's arguments work. The present text is a detailed elaboration of the philosophical framework underlying Dummett's program; thus one naturally looks to it to clear up the puzzles of earlier presentations and applications of the program' (Sanford Shieh, review for The Journal of Symbolic Logic, Vol. 58, No. 3, Sept., 1993, pp. 1086-1090). 'Michael Dummett's new book is the greatly expanded and recently revised version of his distinguished William James Lectures, delivered in 1976. Dummett regards the construction of a satisfactory theory of meaning as the most pressing task of contemporary analytical philosophy. He believes that the successful completion of this difficult assignment will lead to a resolution of problems before which philosophy has been stalled, in some instances for centuries. These problems turn on the correctness or incorrectness of a realistic view of one or another realm--the physical world, the mind, the past, mathematical reality, and so forth. Rejection of realism amounts to adoption of a variant semantics, and often of a variant logic, for the statements in a certain sector of our language. Dummett does not assume the correctness of any one logical system but shows how the choice between different logics arises at the level of the theory of meaning and depends upon the choice of one or another general form of meaning-theory. In order to determine the correct shape for a meaning-theory, we must attain a clear conception of what a meaning-theory can be expected to do. Such a conception, says Dummett, will form 'a base camp for an assault on the metaphysical peaks: I have no greater ambition in this book than to set up a base camp' ' (Harvard University Press Web site).

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Détails bibliographiques

• Titre: The Logical Basis of Metaphysics.
• Éditeur: Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991.
• Date de parution: 1991
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN à 10 chiffres: 0674537858
• ISBN à 13 chiffres: 9780674537859
• Reliure: Hardcover
• Édition: 1st Edition
• État de l'article: Near Fine
• État de la jaquette: Near Fine

A propos de ce titre

Présentation de l'éditeur

Michael Dummett's new book is the greatly expanded and recently revised version of his distinguished William James Lectures, delivered in 1976. Dummett regards the construction of a satisfactory theory of meaning as the most pressing task of contemporary analytical philosophy. He believes that the successful completion of this difficult assignment will lead to a resolution of problems before which philosophy has been stalled, in some instances for centuries. These problems turn on the correctness or incorrectness of a realistic view of one or another realm-the physical world, the mind, the past, mathematical reality, and so forth. Rejection of realism amounts to adoption of a variant semantics, and often of a variant logic, for the statements in a certain sector of our language. Dummett does not assume the correctness of any one logical system but shows how the choice between different logics arises at the level of the theory of meaning and depends upon the choice of one or another general form of meaning-theory. In order to determine the correct shape for a meaning-theory, we must attain a clear conception of what a meaning-theory can be expected to do. Such a conception, says Dummett, will form "a base camp for an assault on the metaphysical peaks: I have no greater ambition in this book than to set up a base camp.