Invited Talks

Title: Linear Time and the Shared Language

Abstract: TBC

Title: Is Speaking a Language a Rational Activity?

Abstract: TBC

Title: Dummett's Argument that the Concept of Natural Number is Inherently Vague

Abstract: TBC

Title: Reconceiving Proof and the a priori: a Fourth Way

Abstract: TBC

Title: Is there any such thing as Fregean Ontology?

Abstract: In Chapter 14 of Frege: Philosophy of Language Dummett observed that when we pose the fundamental question of ontology, ‘What is there?’, our intention is to ask, ‘What kinds of thing are there?’; and from this he inferred that any approach to the question must be informed by an understanding of what the relevant kinds are.  Dummett then suggested that Frege set a new course for ontological enquiry by establishing that the central ontological kinds are the logical categories that constitute the Fregean hierarchy, the categories of object, first-level concept, and so on.  I will hold that this suggestion is mistaken.  Moreover, that it is mistaken is, I will suggest, a consequence of a distinctive feature of Dummett’s own interpretation of Frege, namely the contrast he draws between simple and complex predicates, or more generally between expressions which contribute their meanings to the meanings of sentences they help to constitute, and those whose meaning is derivative from that of sentences in which they might be discerned.  Dummett acknowledges that this distinction remains implicit in Frege’s works, essential for a correct understanding of his thought but hardly emphasized – indeed scarcely mentioned – by Frege himself.  Although it is also discernible, in various half-formed guises, in Russell and the early Wittgenstein, it became fully explicit only in Ramsey.  His treatment of it makes clear that the Fregean logical categories are not ontological categories at all, in that there is no stable, context-independent answer to the question of what falls under them.  A consequence of this is that logical principles have a kind of generality distinct from that possessed by what Wittgenstein called ‘material generalizations’, generalizations over kinds of entities; and it is surely those to which ontology must attend.  

Title: Recognitional Capacities and their Uses

Abstract: TBC