Repository | Journal | Volume | Article
The aim of Russell's early logicism
a reinterpretation
pp. 1493-1510
Abstract
I argue that three main interpretations of the aim of Russell’s early logicism in The Principles of Mathematics (1903) are mistaken, and propose a new interpretation. According to this new interpretation, the aim of Russell’s logicism is to show, in opposition to Kant, that mathematical propositions have a certain sort of complete generality which entails that their truth is independent of space and time. I argue that on this interpretation two often-heard objections to Russell’s logicism, deriving from Gödel’s incompleteness theorem and from the non-logical character of some of the axioms of Principia Mathematica respectively, can be seen to be inconclusive. I then proceed to identify two challenges that Russell’s logicism, as presently construed, faces, but argue that these challenges do not appear unanswerable.
Publication details
Published in:
(2014) Synthese 191 (7).
Pages: 1493-1510
DOI: 10.1007/s11229-013-0342-9
Full citation:
Kraal Anders (2014) „The aim of Russell's early logicism: a reinterpretation“. Synthese 191 (7), 1493–1510.