Neo-Fregean logicism attempts to base mathematics on abstraction principles. Since not all abstraction principles are acceptable, the neo-Fregeans need an account of which ones are. One of the most promising accounts is in terms of the notion of stability; roughly, that an abstraction principle is acceptable just in case it is satisfiable in all domains of sufficiently large cardinality. We present two counterexamples to stability as a sufficient condition for acceptability and argue that these counterexamples can (...) be avoided only by major departures from the existing neo-Fregean programme. (shrink)

This article improves two existing theorems of interest to neologicist philosophers of mathematics. The first is a classification theorem due to Fine for equivalence relations between concepts definable in a well-behaved second-order logic. The improved theorem states that if an equivalence relation E is defined without nonlogical vocabulary, then the bicardinal slice of any equivalence class—those equinumerous elements of the equivalence class with equinumerous complements—can have one of only three profiles. The improvements to Fine’s theorem allow for an analysis of (...) the well-behaved models had by an abstraction principle, and this in turn leads to an improvement of Walsh and Ebels-Duggan’s relative categoricity theorem. (shrink)

In this paper, I present a class of ‘structural’ abstraction principles, and describe how they are suggested by some features of Cantor's and Dedekind's approach to abstraction. Structural abstraction is a promising source of mathematically tractable new axioms for the neo-logicist. I illustrate this by showing, first, how a theorem of Shelah gives a sufficient condition for consistency in the structural setting, solving what neo-logicists call the ‘bad company’ problem for structural abstraction. Second, I show how, (...) in the structural setting, we can measure the logical strength of abstraction principles using categories of interpretations between theories. (shrink)

The logical status of abstraction principles, and especially Hume’s Principle, has been long debated, but the best currently availeble tool for explicating a notion’s logical character—permutation invariance—has not received a lot of attention in this debate. This paper aims to fill this gap. After characterizing abstraction principles as particular mappings from the subsets of a domain into that domain and exploring some of their properties, the paper introduces several distinct notions of permutation invariance for such principles, assessing (...) the philosophical significance of each. (shrink)

Frege's views regarding analysis and synomymy have long been the subject of critical discussion. Some commentators, led by Dummett, have argued that Frege was committed to the view that each thought admits of a unique ultimate analysis. However, this interpretation is in apparent conflict with Frege's criterion of synonymy, according to which two sentence express the same thought if one cannot understand them without regarding them as having the same truth–value. In a recent article in this journal, Drai attempts to (...) reconcile Frege's criterion of synonymy with unique ultimate analysis by holding that, for Frege, if two sentences satisfy the criterion without being intensionally isomorphic, at most one of them is a privileged representation of the thought expressed. I argue that this proposal fails, because it conflicts not only with Frege's views of abstraction principles but also with slingshot arguments (including one presented by Drai herself) that accurately reflect Frege's commitment to the view that sentences alike in truth–value have the same Bedeutung. While Drai helpfully connects Frege's views of abstraction principles with such slingshot arguments, this connection cannot become fully clear until we recognise that Frege rejects unique ultimate analysis. (shrink)

Many recent writers in the philosophy of mathematics have put great weight on the relative categoricity of the traditional axiomatizations of our foundational theories of arithmetic and set theory. Another great enterprise in contemporary philosophy of mathematics has been Wright's and Hale's project of founding mathematics on abstraction principles. In earlier work, it was noted that one traditional abstraction principle, namely Hume's Principle, had a certain relative categoricity property, which here we term natural relative categoricity. In (...) this paper, we show that most other abstraction principles are not naturally relatively categorical, so that there is in fact a large amount of incompatibility between these two recent trends in contemporary philosophy of mathematics. To better understand the precise demands of relative categoricity in the context of abstraction principles, we compare and contrast these constraints to stability-like acceptability criteria on abstraction principles, the Tarski-Sher logicality requirements on abstraction principles studied by Antonelli and Fine, and supervaluational ideas coming out of Hodes' work. (shrink)

This brief note aims to reply to a comment made by Menno Rol abou...

I extend theorems due to Roy Cook on third- and higher-order versions of abstraction principles and discuss the philosophical importance of results of this type. Cook demonstrated that the satisfiability of certain higher-order analogues of Hume's Principle is independent of ZFC. I show that similar analogues of Boolos's new v and Cook's own ordinal abstraction principle soap are not satisfiable at all. I argue, however, that these results do not tell significantly against the second-order versions of (...) these principles. (shrink)

Kripke’s notion of groundedness plays a central role in many responses to the semantic paradoxes. Can the notion of groundedness be brought to bear on the paradoxes that arise in connection with abstraction principles? We explore a version of grounded abstraction whereby term models are built up in a ‘grounded’ manner. The results are mixed. Our method solves a problem concerning circularity and yields a ‘grounded’ model for the predicative theory based on Frege’s Basic Law V. However, the (...) method is poorly behaved unless the background second-order logic is predicative. (shrink)

In the history of philosophy, philosophers have defined philosophy based on their own perspectives. This situation shows that it is a difficult and meaningless endeavor to put forward an understanding of philosophy that has clear boundaries and is accepted by everyone. However, despite these differences in definitions, there are some common points. Perhaps the most important of these common points is that philosophy is a stance, a positioning activity in the face of truth. In this positioning, William James tried to (...) find the moderate path between the currents of rationalism and empiricism and took a stance based on concrete differences in life. Like the empiricists, he tried to keep people's relations with facts alive, but at the same time, he did not exclude religion by adopting a rationalist attitude. However, James argued that abstract concepts cannot have meaning unless they find their counterpart in life. According to James, a life based only on abstract principles would not be qualified. In this study, I will try reconciling William James’ attitude towards abstract principles with practical life. (shrink)

Introduction to a special issue on abstraction principles.

Since Carol Gilligan's analysis of the “Heinz dilemma,” many philosophers working on care have articulated critiques of abstraction and principles in ethics. Their objections to abstraction and principles have not always been systematically set out. In this paper, I try to clarify the debate. I begin by distinguishing several aspects of the care critique. I then consider the strengths of each from a Kantian perspective. I conclude that, although some of these objections point out potential misuses of (...) class='Hi'>abstraction and principle, and in doing so, suggest strategies and cautions for their correct and careful use in ethics, they do not present a successful challenge to abstraction or principles as such. (shrink)

Recent literature in experimental philosophy has postulated the existence of the abstract/concrete paradox : the tendency to activate inconsistent intuitions depending on whether a problem to be analyzed is framed in abstract terms or is described as a concrete case. One recent study supports the thesis that this effect influences judicial decision-making, including decision-making by professional judges, in areas such as interpretation of constitutional principles and application of clear-cut rules. Here, following the existing literature in legal theory, we argue that (...) the susceptibility to such an effect might depend on whether decision-makers operate in a legal system characterized by the formalist or particularist approach to legal interpretation, with formalist systems being less susceptible to the effect. To test this hypothesis, we compare the results of experimental studies on ACP run on samples from two countries differing in legal culture: Poland and Brazil. The lack of significant differences between those results suggests that ACP is a robust effect in the legal context. (shrink)

A standard understanding of abstraction principles elicits two opposite readings: Intolerant Reductionism, where abstractions are seen as reducing talk of abstract objects to talk about non-problematic domains, and Robustionism, where newly introduced terms genuinely refer to abstract objects. Against this dichotomy between such “austere” and “robust” readings, Dummett suggested ways to steer intermediate paths. We explore different options for intermediate stances, by reviewing metaontological strategies and semantic ones. Based on Dummett’s and Picardi’s understanding of the Context Principle, the (...) paper acknowledges that Frege’s Grundlagen are open to several interpretations of contextual definitions, and argues that the prospects for broadly Fregean intermediate views are all but foreclosed. (shrink)

Human participants and recurrent (“connectionist”) neural networks were both trained on a categorization system abstractly similar to natural language systems involving irregular (“strong”) classes and a default class. Both the humans and the networks exhibited staged learning and a generalization pattern reminiscent of the Elsewhere Condition (Kiparsky, 1973). Previous connectionist accounts of related phenomena have often been vague about the nature of the networks’ encoding systems. We analyzed our network using dynamical systems theory, revealing topological and geometric properties that can (...) be directly compared with the mechanisms of non-connectionist, rule-based accounts. The results reveal that the networks “contain” structures related to mechanisms posited by rule-based models, partly vindicating the insights of these models. On the other hand, they support the one mechanism (OM), as opposed to the more than one mechanism (MOM), view of symbolic abstraction by showing how the appearance of MOM behavior can arise emergently from one underlying set of principles. The key new contribution of this study is to show that dynamical systems theory can allow us to explicitly characterize the relationship between the two perspectives in implemented models. (shrink)

The neo-Fregean program in the philosophy of mathematics seeks a foundation for a substantial part of mathematics in abstraction principles—for example, Hume’s Principle: The number of Fs D the number of Gs iff the Fs and Gs correspond one-one—which can be regarded as implicitly definitional of fundamental mathematical concepts—for example, cardinal number. This paper considers what kind of abstraction principle might serve as the basis for a neo- Fregean set theory. Following a brief review of the (...) main difficulties confronting the most widely discussed proposal to date—replacing Frege’s inconsistent Basic Law V by Boolos’s New V which restricts concepts whose extensions obey the principle of extensionality to those which are small in the sense of being smaller than the universe—the paper canvasses an alternative way of implementing the limitation of size idea and explores the kind of restrictions which would be required for it to avoid collapse. (shrink)

Neologicists have sought to ground mathematical knowledge in abstraction. One especially obstinate problem for this account is the bad company problem. The leading neologicist strategy for resolving this problem is to attempt to sift the good abstraction principles from the bad. This response faces a dilemma: the system of ‘good’ abstraction principles either falls foul of the Scylla of inconsistency or the Charybdis of being unable to recover a modest portion of Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory with its intended (...) generality. This article argues that the bad company problem is due to the ‘static’ character of abstraction on the neologicist's account and develops a ‘dynamic’ account of abstraction that avoids both horns of the dilemma. 1 Introduction2ion Reconstructed3 From Bad to Worse4 Abstraction Reconceived5 Bad Company Made GoodA AppendixA.1SemanticsA.2LogicA.3ConsistencyA.4Strength. (shrink)

The idea that some objects are metaphysically “cheap” has wide appeal. An influential version of the idea builds on abstractionist views in the philosophy of mathematics, on which numbers and other mathematical objects are abstracted from other phenomena. For example, Hume’s Principle states that two collections have the same number just in case they are equinumerous, in the sense that they can be correlated one-to-one: (HP) #xx=#yy iff xx≈yy. The principal aim of this article is to use the notion (...) of grounding to develop this sort of abstractionism. The appeal to grounding enables a unified response to the two main challenges that confront abstractionism. First, we must explicate the metaphor of meta- physical “cheapness.” Second, we must rebut the “bad company” objection, which rejects abstraction principles like (HP) as tarnished by their similarity to inconsistent principles like Frege’s Basic Law V. By enforcing a simple requirement that all abstraction be properly grounded, we propose a unified solution to these two hard, and prima facie unrelated, problems. On our view, grounded abstraction simultaneously ensures “cheap” abstracta and permissible abstraction. (shrink)

Paolo Mancosu provides an original investigation of historical and systematic aspects of the notions of abstraction and infinity and their interaction. A familiar way of introducing concepts in mathematics rests on so-called definitions by abstraction. An example of this is Hume's Principle, which introduces the concept of number by stating that two concepts have the same number if and only if the objects falling under each one of them can be put in one-one correspondence. This principle (...) is at the core of neo-logicism. In the first two chapters of the book, Mancosu provides a historical analysis of the mathematical uses and foundational discussion of definitions by abstraction up to Frege, Peano, and Russell. Chapter one shows that abstraction principles were quite widespread in the mathematical practice that preceded Frege's discussion of them and the second chapter provides the first contextual analysis of Frege's discussion of abstraction principles in section 64 of the Grundlagen. In the second part of the book, Mancosu discusses a novel approach to measuring the size of infinite sets known as the theory of numerosities and shows how this new development leads to deep mathematical, historical, and philosophical problems. The final chapter of the book explore how this theory of numerosities can be exploited to provide surprisingly novel perspectives on neo-logicism. (shrink)

The paper takes thePrincipal Principle to be a norm demanding that subjective degrees of belief of a Bayesian agent be equal to the objective probabilities once the agent has conditionalized his subjective degrees of beliefs on the values of the objective probabilities, where the objective probabilities can be not only chances but any other quantities determined objectively. Weak and strong consistency of the Abstract Principal Principle are defined in terms of classical probability measure spaces. It is proved that (...) the Abstract Principal Principle is weakly consistent and that it is strongly consistent in the category of probability measure spaces where the Boolean algebra representing the objective random events is finite. It is argued that it is desirable to strengthen the Abstract Principal Principle by adding a stability requirement to it. Weak and strong consistency of the resulting Stable Abstract Principal Principle are defined, and the strong consistency of the Abstract Principal Principle is interpreted as necessary for a non-omniscient Bayesian agent to be able to have rational degrees of belief in all epistemic situations. It is shown that the Stable Abstract Principal Principle is weakly consistent, but the strong consistency of the Stable Abstract Principal principle remains an open question. We conclude that we do not yet have proof that Bayesian agents can have rational degrees of belief in every epistemic situation. (shrink)

Neo-Fregeans such as Bob Hale and Crispin Wright seek a foundation of mathematics based on abstraction principles. These are sentences involving a relation called the abstraction relation. It is usually assumed that abstraction relations must be equivalence relations, so reflexive, symmetric and transitive. In this article I argue that abstraction relations need not be reflexive. I furthermore give an application of non-reflexive abstraction relations to restricted abstraction principles.

This paper presents a formalization of first-order arithmetic characterizing the natural numbers as abstracta of the equinumerosity relation. The formalization turns on the interaction of a nonstandard cardinality quantifier with an abstraction operator assigning objects to predicates. The project draws its philosophical motivation from a nonreductionist conception of logicism, a deflationary view of abstraction, and an approach to formal arithmetic that emphasizes the cardinal properties of the natural numbers over the structural ones.

We develop a functional abstraction principle for the type-free algorithmic logic introduced in our earlier work. Our approach is based on the standard combinators but is supplemented by the novel use of evaluation trees. Then we show that the abstraction principle leads to a Curry fixed point, a statement C that asserts C ⇒ A where A is any given statement. When A is false, such a C yields a paradoxical situation. As discussed in our earlier (...) work, this situation leaves one no choice but to restrict the use of a certain class of implicational rules including modus ponens. (shrink)

George Berkeley's arguments have attracted a good deal of attention, but the account of abstraction has been often treated as if it were an entirely independent piece of writing. Berkeley links Locke's use of abstract general ideas to a belief in the possibility of an idea of existence abstracted from perception, that is, to the central issue of the Principles of Human Knowledge. The mistake Berkeley has been pointing to, the reliance on abstract general ideas, is a philosophical mistake, (...) but here it is clear Berkeley takes this mistake to have far‐reaching consequences, diverting the search for knowledge from what would be useful to know into trivial byways. Having identified the consequences of a mistaken belief in abstract ideas, Berkeley returns to his earlier claim, that it is language that leads us into this error. (shrink)

In precisely 33 paragraphs that begin his Principles of Human Knowledge George Berkeley lays out the argument that establishes his position. There are strong reasons for adopting “immaterialism” as the name for Berkeley's theory. Another term frequently used in connection with Berkeley is “idealism”. This term too has a lengthy pedigree: Kant referred to Berkeley as a Dogmatic Idealist. Berkeley does go on to offer an elucidation of what it means to say that spirit is the only substance, but he (...) does not do so right away. The only argument that he has offered rests on the anti‐abstraction claim. Berkeley has not, for example, argued that the reason sensible qualities exist only in the mind is because there is no material substance for them to exist in. Anti‐abstractionism also turns out to be central to his argument that ideas cannot resemble mind‐independent real things. (shrink)

Neo-Fregeans have been troubled by the Nuisance Principle, an abstraction principle that is consistent but not jointly satisfiable with the favored abstraction principle HP. We show that logically this situation persists if one looks at joint consistency rather than satisfiability: under a modest assumption about infinite concepts, NP is also inconsistent with HP.

On the neo-Fregean approach to the foundations of mathematics, elementary arithmetic is analytic in the sense that the addition of a principle wliich may be held to IMJ explanatory of the concept of cardinal number to a suitable second-order logical basis suffices for the derivation of its basic laws. This principle, now commonly called Hume's principle, is an example of a Fregean abstraction principle. In this paper, I assume the correctness of the neo-Fregean position on (...) elementary aritlunetic and seek to explain one way in which it may be extended to encompass the theory of real numbers, introducing the reals, by means of suitable further abstraction principles, as ratios of quantities. (shrink)

Most of the arguments usually appealed to in order to support the view that some abstraction principles are analytic depend on ascribing to them some sort of existential parsimony or ontological neutrality, whereas the opposite arguments, aiming to deny this view, contend this ascription. As a result, other virtues that these principles might have are often overlooked. Among them, there is an epistemic virtue which I take these principles to have, when regarded in the appropriate settings, and which I (...) suggest to call ‘epistemic economy’. My purpose is to isolate and clarify this notion by appealing to some examples concerning the definition of natural and real numbers. (shrink)

Kant’s subject as source of universality and necessity in human understanding is Modern Philosophy's solution to the old problem of the universals, a solution which appeared to supersede once and for all the Aristotelian theory of abstraction. The present paper intends to show how Aquinas's Aristotelian doctrine on abstraction may stand the Kantian challenge and resolve the old problem when three principles are brought into play: 1) the same perfection can subsist in two different modes of being, and (...) thus the universal content of knowledge can be present in the particular reality (Summa, I, 84, 1); 2) things which are really distinct between themselves can be known in their distinction, even when they cannot exist separately (metaphysical distinction justifies gnoseological separation); 3) as Cornelio Fabro suggests, it is artificial to separate in the object of experience the object’s different levels of objectivity (quality, configuration and meaning) and, as a result, human experience could be considered the source not only of sensible content but also of intelligible content. This “defense” of Thomistic abstraction intends to offer an account of knowledge which reunites again epistemology with common sense experience, so that philosophy may no longer be a Platonic abstraction but a meaningful explanation of life. (shrink)

A famous passage in Section 64 of Frege’s Grundlagen may be seen as a justification for the truth of abstraction principles. The justification is grounded in the procedureofcontent recarvingwhich Frege describes in the passage. In this paper I argue that Frege’sprocedure of content recarving while possibly correct in the case of first-order equivalencerelations is insufficient to grant the truth of second-order abstractions. Moreover, I propose apossible way of justifying second-order abstractions by referring to the operation of contentrecarving and I (...) show that the proposal relies to a certain extent on the Basic Law V. Therefore,if we are to justify the truth of second-order abstractions by invoking the content recarvingprocedure we are committed to a special status of some instances of the Basic Law V and thusto a special status of extensions of concepts as abstract objects. (shrink)

Which abstraction principles are acceptable? A variety of criteria have been proposed, in particular irenicity, stability, conservativeness, and unboundedness. This note charts their logical relations. This answers some open questions and corrects some old answers.

In this book, Zalta attempts to lay the axiomatic foundations of metaphysics by developing and applying a (formal) theory of abstract objects. The cornerstones include a principle which presents precise conditions under which there are abstract objects and a principle which says when apparently distinct such objects are in fact identical. The principles are constructed out of a basic set of primitive notions, which are identified at the end of the Introduction, just before the theorizing begins. The main (...) reason for producing a theory which defines a logical space of abstract objects is that it may have a great deal of explanatory power. It is hoped that the data explained by means of the theory will be of interest to pure and applied metaphysicians, logicians and linguists, and pure and applied epistemologists. (shrink)

Berkeley and Hume object to Locke's account of abstraction. Abstraction is separating in the mind what cannot be separated in reality. Their objection is that if a is inseparable in reality from b, then the idea of a is inseparable from the idea of b. The former inseparability is the reason for the latter. In most interpretations, however, commentators leave the former unexplained in explaining the latter. This article assumes that Berkeley and Hume present a unified front against (...) Locke. Hume supplements Berkeley's argument just where there are gaps. In particular, Hume makes explicit something Berkeley leaves implicit: The argument against Locke depends on the principle that things are inseparable if and only if they are identical. Abstraction is thinking of one of an inseparable pair while not thinking of the other. But doing so entails thinking of something while not thinking of it. This is the fundamental objection. (shrink)

Fine and Antonelli introduce two generalizations of permutation invariance — internal invariance and simple/double invariance respectively. After sketching reasons why a solution to the Bad Company problem might require that abstraction principles be invariant in one or both senses, I identify the most fine-grained abstraction principle that is invariant in each sense. Hume’s Principle is the most fine-grained abstraction principle invariant in both senses. I conclude by suggesting that this partially explains the success of (...) Hume’s Principle, and the comparative lack of success in reconstructing areas of mathematics other than arithmetic based on non-invariant abstraction principles. (shrink)

In this now-classic work, he clearly and systematically formulates what others thought impossible_a principle of fairness that specifies a set of conditions which grounds existing political obligations and bridges the gap between the abstract accounts of political principles and the actual beliefs of political actors. Brought up-to-date with a new introduction, this new edition will be of great interest to all interested in political thought.

Wright claims that “the epistemology of good abstraction principles should be assimilated to that of basic principles of logical inference”. In this paper I follow Wright’s recommendation, but I consider a different epistemology of logic, namely anti-exceptionalism. Anti-exceptionalism’s main contention is that logic is not a priori, and that the choice between rival logics should be based on abductive criteria such as simplicity, adequacy to the data, strength, fruitfulness, and consistency. This paper’s goal is to lay down the foundations (...) for an application of the anti-exceptionalist methodology to abstraction principles. In Sect. 1 I outline my strategy. I show that anti-exceptionalism has a bearing on the so-called Bad Company problem, and explore some versions of anti-exceptionalism about abstraction. I then consider new criteria for choosing between rival abstraction principles, and, in particular, between consistent revisions of Frege’s Basic Law V. I finally consider how the abstractionist can compare between competing criteria, and argue that anti-exceptionalists should be pluralists about abstraction. (shrink)

It is widely thought that the acceptability of an abstraction principle is a feature of the cardinalities at which it is satisfiable. This view is called into question by a recent observation by Richard Heck. We show that a fix proposed by Heck fails but we analyze the interesting idea on which it is based, namely that an acceptable abstraction has to “generate” the objects that it requires. We also correct and complete the classification of proposed criteria (...) for acceptable abstraction. (shrink)

David Hume is the greatest and also one of the most provocative philosophers to have written in the English language. No philosopher is more important for his careful, critical, and deeply perceptive examination of the grounds for belief in divine powers and for his sceptical accounts of the causes and consequences of religious belief, expressed most powerfully in the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion and The Natural History of Religion. The Dialogues ask if belief in God can be inferred from the (...) nature of the universe or whether it is even consistent with what we know about the universe. The Natural History of Religion investigates the origins of belief, and follows its development from harmless polytheism to dogmatic monotheism. Together they constitute the most formidable attack upon the rationality of religious belief ever mounted by a philosopher. This edition also includes Section XI of The Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding and a letter concerning the Dialogues, as well as particularly helpful critical apparatus and abstracts of the main texts, enabling the reader to locate or relocate key topics. (shrink)

Berkeley's critique of abstract ideas in the Introduction to Principles of Human Knowledge has provoked a great deal of commentary of various sorts. This anthology, first published in 1989, presents a selection of historically important and philosophically interesting discussions on Berkeley's theories.

Berkeley begins his discussion of the consequences of his principles negatively, by identifying a rival principle, one that has adverse consequences for human knowledge. About natural philosophers, Berkeley wants it to be known that they are the worst offenders when it comes to encouraging scepticism. This is because they have added what amounts to a new principle to a general mistrust of the senses engendered by the twofold existence principle. Berkeley attributes the error philosophers have fallen into (...) a belief in abstract ideas, linking the issue of external existence with that of abstraction. Berkeley's refutation of scepticism together with his positive account of the knowledge of nature constitutes his evidence for his proof that we have knowledge of God. Understanding the nature of knowledge that is actual allows us to identify the agent of that knowledge as a wise and good spirit, that is to say, as God. (shrink)

Frege's theorem says that second-order Peano arithmetic is interpretable in Hume's Principle and full impredicative comprehension. Hume's Principle is one example of an abstraction principle, while another paradigmatic example is Basic Law V from Frege's Grundgesetze. In this paper we study the strength of abstraction principles in the presence of predicative restrictions on the comprehension schema, and in particular we study a predicative Fregean theory which contains all the abstraction principles whose underlying equivalence relations (...) can be proven to be equivalence relations in a weak background second-order logic. We show that this predicative Fregean theory interprets second-order Peano arithmetic. (shrink)