On Nov. 12th (10am-12am) at the Logic Seminar of Philosophy Disciplines
docent Panu Raatikainen presents a paper `Neo-Logicism and its Logic'.
Venue: Metsätalo (House of Forestry), Unioninkatu 40A, seminar room A110 [Helsinki].
Panu Raatikainen:
Neo-Logicism and its Logic
ABSTRACT.
The larger part of the philosophical discussion related to the neo-logicist
program has focused on the status of Hume’s Principle and other abstraction
principles. Much less attention has been paid to the rather undisturbed use of
second order logic in the program. I shall demonstrate beyond dispute that there
is a definite sense in which Hume’s Principle does very little in the derivation
of Frege’s theorem, which is the core of the neo-logicist program, and that it
is the background logic assumed that in fact does most of the mathematical work;
it turns out that the latter smuggles in certain quite strong set-existence
postulates. And that is obviously very problematic, if the project is to
vindicate logicism in some sense.
The Logic Seminar of Philosophy Disciplines is chaired by professors Jan
von Plato and Gabriel Sandu.