Michael Dummett
Sir Michael Anthony Eardley Dummett (* June 27, 1925 in London, England; † 27 December 2011) was a British philosopher and logician.
He has provided significant contributions to the philosophy of mathematics to logic, the philosophy of language, to metaphysics and the history of analytic philosophy. In addition, Michael Dummett has an electoral procedure developed and published basic scientific work on the Tarot card game family. His interest also aliens legislation and the style of the English language.
Life
Michael Dummett visited the Sandroyd School in Wiltshire, before attending secondary school Winchester College in Winchester.
Towards the end of World War II Dummett worked for the British secret service Secret Intelligence Service in India and Malaya.
He studied from 1947 in Oxford at Christ Church College, Philosophy, Political Science and Economics, where he became in 1950 a Fellow of All Souls College.
From 1962 to 1974 he was professor of philosophy and mathematics.
From 1979 to 1992 he was at Oxford - as the successor of Alfred Ayer - Wykeham Professor of Logic at the same time he was a Fellow at New College.
Services
Work on Frege
Dummett's first major work was " Frege: Philosophy of language", in which he interprets the philosophical position of Gottlob Frege in his own way. The script, which can now lay claim to the status of a classic, is controversial to this day. Dummett has not written further works to Frege and can be predicted as the most important artist.
Philosophy of Language
Dummett has no objection against the truth-conditional theory of meaning by Donald Davidson, that truth is only relevant for the speaker if it can recognize them also. With Davidson and Noam Chomsky he also led a discussion on the question whether the idiolect or the shared language of a speech community should be given priority to philosophical analysis.
Anti-realism
In his book " Truth and other enigmas " Dummett developed in discussion with classic realistic positions an anti- realistic attitude. This contributes his opinion significantly to the solution of the mind-body problem. The decision for the anti-realism falls into conflict with the consideration of truth as bivalent and independent of human cognition. In his last work, " Truth and the Past " (Eng. truth and the past ) is dedicated to Dummett the problem of how anti-realism about the past can be reconciled with true sentences.
History of analytic philosophy
Dummett's third major work " Origins of analytic Philosophy" (German origins of analytical philosophy ) is devoted to the attempt to show that in addition to Frege especially Brentano and Husserl should be regarded as a pioneer of analytic philosophy. This represented a break in the consideration of the recent history of philosophy as divided into two parts in British and continental European dar.
Effect
Under Dummett students protrude especially Crispin Wright, Timothy Williamson, Gareth Evans, Hans Sluga and Christopher Peacocke forth. However, only Wright are in the narrower sense, as an Orthodox students. Outside the circle of his students Dummett has in particular acting on the neo-pragmatism.
Awards
Works
Philosophy
- Frege: Philosophy of Language ( London 1973/1981 )
- Truth. Five philosophical essays, trans. and ed. v. Joachim Schulte (Stuttgart [ Reclam ], 1982) [ out of print in bookstores. Contains the anti Wittgenteinsche the later philosophy programmatic essay: Can and should the analytical philosophy be systematic? (P. 185 ff ) ]
- Frege: Philosophy of Mathematics ( London, 1991)
- Elements of Intuitionism (Oxford 1977, 2000)
- The Logical Basis of Metaphysics (London 1991)
- Origins of Analytical Philosophy (London 1993) ( German origins of analytic philosophy, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1997)
- The Seas of Language (Oxford 1993)
- Truth and Other Enigmas (London 1978)
- Truth and the Past ( Oxford, 2004) (German truth and the past, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2005 )
- Thought and Reality ( Oxford, 2006)
- Voting Procedures ( Oxford 1984)
- Principles of Electoral Reform (New York 1997)
Tarot and Tarot
- Game of Tarot (1980 )
- Visconti - Sforza Tarot Cards ( 1986)