Michael Dummett

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Sir Michael Dummett 2004

Sir Michael Anthony Eardley Dummett (born June 27, 1925 in London , England , † December 27, 2011 in Oxford ) was a British philosopher and logician .

He has made significant contributions to the philosophy of mathematics , logic , the philosophy of language , metaphysics and the history of analytical philosophy . Furthermore, Michael Dummett has developed a voting process and published fundamental scientific work on the Tarock family of cards . He was also interested in immigration law and the style of the English language .

Life

Michael Dummett attended Sandroyd School in Wiltshire and then Winchester College in Winchester . Towards the end of World War II , Dummett worked for the British Secret Intelligence Service in India and Malaya . He then studied philosophy, political science and economics at Christ Church College in Oxford from 1947 , where he became a fellow of All Souls College in 1950 .

From 1962 to 1974 he was a lecturer in philosophy and mathematics. From 1979 to 1992 he was Wykeham Professor of Logic in Oxford - as successor to Alfred Ayer - and at the same time he was a fellow at New College .

Services

Working on Frege

Dummett's first important work was "Frege: Philosophy of language", in which he interprets the philosophical position of Gottlob Frege in his own way. The font, which can now claim the status of a classic, is still controversial today. Dummett wrote other works on Frege and can probably be considered his most important interpreter.

Philosophy of language

Dummett has against the truth- meaning theory of Donald Davidson objection that truth is only relevant for the speaker when it can also detect. He also held a discussion with Davidson and Noam Chomsky on the question of whether the idiolect or the shared language of a linguistic community should have priority in the philosophical analysis.

Anti-realism

In his work “Truth and other enigmas” Dummett develops an anti-realistic stance in dealing with classical realistic positions. In his opinion, this contributes significantly to solving the mind-body problem. The decision in favor of anti-realism comes from dealing with the consideration of truth as two-valued and independent of human knowledge. In his last work, "Truth and the Past", Dummett addresses the problem of how anti-realism can be reconciled with true sentences about the past.

History of Analytical Philosophy

Dummett's third major work "Origins of analytic Philosophy" is devoted to the attempt to show that, alongside Frege, above all Franz Brentano and Edmund Husserl should be viewed as pioneers of analytic philosophy. This represented a break in the view of the recent history of philosophy as divided into British and Continental European.

effect

Crispin Wright , Timothy Williamson , Gareth Evans , Hans Sluga and Christopher Peacocke stand out among Dummett's students . However, only Wright in the narrower sense can be considered an Orthodox student. Outside the circle of his students Dummett has in particular the neo-pragmatism acted.

Awards

Works

philosophy

  • Frege: Philosophy of Language (London 1973/1981)
  • Truth. Five philosophical essays , trans. and ed. v. Joachim Schulte (Stuttgart [Reclam] 1982) [unfortunately out of print in bookshops. Contains the programmatic essay directed against Wittgenstein's late philosophy: Can and should analytic 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 analytical 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 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)

literature

For the introduction

  • Christoph Demmerling / Thomas Blume: Basic Problems of the Analytical Philosophy of Language , Schöningh / UTB, Paderborn 1998, ISBN 3-8252-2052-4 .
  • Daniel Isaacson, Ian Rumfitt: Michael Anthony Eardley Dummett, June 27, 1925 - December 27, 2011 . In: Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the British Academy . tape XVII , 2018, p. 191-228 ( thebritishacademy.ac.uk [PDF]).

To deepen

  • McGuinness, Brian [Eds.]: The Philosophy of Michael Dummett , 1994. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
  • Brandl, Johannes L. and Sullivan, Peter [Eds.]: New essays on the philosophy of Michael Dummett , 1998. Amsterdam: Rodopi, ISBN 90-420-0466-5 .
  • Richard G. Heck (Ed.) Language, Thought, and Logic: Essays in Honor of Michael Dummett . Oxford University Press, 1998, ISBN 0-19-823920-3 .
  • Karen Green. Dummett: Philosophy of Language . Polity, 2001, ISBN 0-7456-2295-X .
  • Bernhard Weiss. Michael Dummett . Princeton University Press, 2002, ISBN 0-691-11330-0 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Obituary: Professor Sir Michael Dummett at telegraph.co.uk, accessed December 29, 2011
  2. ↑ AW Moore: Sir Michael Dummett obituary ( en ) In: The Guardian . December 28, 2011. Retrieved December 6, 2015.
personal data
SURNAME Stupid, Michael
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Dummett, Michael Anthony Eardley
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British philosopher and logician
DATE OF BIRTH June 27, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH London
DATE OF DEATH December 27, 2011
Place of death Oxford