The Reason's Proper Study: Essays towards a Neo-Fregean Philosophy of Mathematics

Here, Bob Hale and Crispin Wright assemble the key writings that lead to their distinctive neo-Fregean approach to the philosophy of mathematics. In addition to fourteen previously published papers, the volume features a new paper on the Julius Caesar problem; a substantial new introduction mapping out the program and the contributions made to it by the various papers; a section explaining which issues most require further attention; and bibliographies of references and further useful sources. It will be recognized as the most powerful presentation yet of a neo-Fregean program.

Politics & Social Sciences

Wright, Crispin

Hale, Bob

Philosophy

Oxford University Press

Necessary Beings is concerned with two central areas of metaphysics: modality--the theory of necessity, possibility, and other related notions; and ontology--the general study of what kinds of entities there are. Bob Hale's overarching purpose is to develop and defend two quite general theses about what is required for the existence of entities of various kinds: that questions about what kinds of things there are cannot be properly understood or adequately answered without recourse to considerations about possibility and necessity, and that, conversely, questions about the nature and basis of necessity and possibility cannot be satisfactorily tackled without drawing on what might be called the methodology of ontology. Taken together, these two theses claim that ontology and modality are mutually dependent upon one another, neither more fundamental than the other. Hale defends a broadly Fregean approach to metaphysics, according to which ontological distinctions among different kinds of things (objects, properties, and relations) are to be drawn on the basis of prior distinctions between different logical types of expression. The claim that facts about what kinds of things exist depend upon facts about what is possible makes little sense unless one accepts that at least some modal facts are fundamental, and not reducible to facts of some other, non-modal, sort. He argues that facts about what is absolutely necessary or possible have this character, and that they have their source or basis, not in meanings or concepts nor in facts about alternative 'worlds', but in the natures or essences of things.

Necessary Beings: An Essay on Ontology, Modality, and the Relations Between Them

Essence and Existence presents a series of writings - including several previously unpublished - by Bob Hale on the topics of ontology and modality. The essays develop and consolidate a number of themes central to his work and to contemporary metaphysics, logic, and philosophy of language.They display Hale's innovative approach to some of the most fundamental issues in philosophy, in dialogue (and, in some cases, in collaboration) with other leading philosophers. The notion of a definition is examined as it applies both to words - verbal definitions-and to things - realdefinitions--and the relations between these are brought out in order to address problems in the metaphysics of necessity and the semantics and epistemology of modality. Hale argues for an essentialist theory of the source of necessity and our knowledge of it, and provides rigorous and inventiveresponses to problems such a theory might face. This theoretical framework is applied to the recently influential truthmaking approach to semantics and logic, developing an exact truthmaker account of universal quantification and modal statements. Other topics covered include the Fregean theory ofontological categories, the status of second-order logic, the metaphysics of numbers, and the nature of analytic propositions. The volume opens with a substantial introduction by Kit Fine, providing a critical examination of Hale's philosophy, and closes with a complete bibliography of Hale'swritings.

Essence and Existence (Firefly)

Clarendon Press

The case for believing that there are abstract objects of various kinds, including those most discussed by philosophers, for example numbers and sets, is, in essence, very simple: we believe to be true many statements whose truth requires the existence of objects which, on any reasonable construal of the abstract/concrete distinction, are abstract. Familiar and plausible views concerning thought, reference and knowledge seem to leave no room for understanding abstract objects. Bob Hale develops the case for a broadly Fregean Platonism in this defence of a new view of abstract objects.

Abstract Objects (Philosophical Theory)

Blackwell Pub.

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Books by Hale, Bob

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Hale, Bob. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Reason's Proper Study: Essays towards a Neo-Fregean Philosophy of Mathematics

Necessary Beings: An Essay on Ontology, Modality, and the Relations Between Them

Essence and Existence (Firefly)

The Reason's Proper Study: Essays towards a Neo-Fregean Philosophy of Mathematics

Necessary Beings: An Essay on Ontology, Modality, and the Relations Between Them

Abstract Objects (Philosophical Theory)