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Neologicism, Frege's Constraint, and the Frege-Heck Condition
, R. Samuels, S. Shapiro
Published in Blackwell Publishing Ltd
2020
Volume: 54
   
Issue: 1
Pages: 54 - 77
Abstract
One of the more distinctive features of Bob Hale and Crispin Wright's neologicism about arithmetic is their invocation of Frege's Constraint – roughly, the requirement that the core empirical applications for a class of numbers be “built directly into” their formal characterization. In particular, they maintain that, if adopted, Frege's Constraint adjudicates in favor of their preferred foundation – Hume's Principle – and against alternatives, such as the Dedekind-Peano axioms. In what follows we establish two main claims. First, we show that, if sound, Hale and Wright's arguments for Frege's Constraint at most establish a version on which the relevant application of the naturals is transitive counting – roughly, the counting procedure by which numerals are used to answer “how many”-questions. Second, we show that this version of Frege's Constraint fails to adjudicate in favor of Hume's Principle. If this is the version of Frege's Constraint that a foundation for arithmetic must respect, then Hume's Principle no more – and no less – meets the requirement than the Dedekind-Peano axioms do. © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
About the journal
JournalNous
PublisherBlackwell Publishing Ltd
ISSN00294624