Kursinformation

Course description: This advance seminar will focus on the philosophy of Gottlob Frege (1848-1925), the founding father and inventor of modern logic. Frege was a German mathematician who worked at the University of Jena and was responsible for developing what we now call ‘quantificational logic’, namely the logic of ’there exists’ and 'for all’.  In fact, the logical system invented by Frege is studied here, at the University of Greifswald, in our 'introduction to logic’ courses, as well as all over the world in departments of mathematics, philosophy, computer science, linguistics, etc. Frege’s work is therefore highly influential. The main logical and technical innovations proposed by Frege, including, for example, the logical analysis of quantifiers and the formal notion of ‘proof’, appear in the context of his grand project of showing that the fundamental laws of arithmetic are in fact logical truths, and so that arithmetic is ultimately reducible to logic. Frege's project, known as ‘logicism’, nevertheless failed due to a problem with Frege’s original system. This problem is known as ‘Russell’s paradox’; it was discovered by Bertrand Russell, who communicated it to Frege on a letter in 1902. Frege could never find a solution to Russell’s paradox, and consequently abandoned his project. Nevertheless, Frege’s work, as already mentioned, remained largely influential. Not only are his technical innovations universally studied, his philosophical work on the foundations of mathematics, meaning, language, and logic influenced generations of philosophers and are still much discussed today. In this seminar we will read Frege’s main works, including fragments of his books on logic and the foundations of mathematics, as well as his classical articles with long-standing influence on the philosophy of language. The articles and book chapters will be made available on the course website. This course is recommended for students that already took introductory classes in logic, in particular, propositional and quantificational logic, though having taken such classes is not a requirement for this course. This course will be in English, though most readings (i.e. all texts by Frege) will be available in German, too.