Mind Association Frege on Knowing the Foundation Author(s): Tyler Burge Source: Mind, Vol. 107, No. 426 (Apr., 1998), pp. 305-347 Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the Mind Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2659879 Accessed: 11-04-2017 02:10 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact
[email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms Mind Association, Oxford University Press are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Mind This content downloaded from 128.97.244.236 on Tue, 11 Apr 2017 02:10:28 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Frege on Knowing the Foundation TYLER BURGE The paper scrutinizes Frege's Euclideanism-his view of arithmetic and ge- ometry as resting on a small number of self-evident axioms from which non- self-evident theorems can be proved. Frege's notions of self-evidence and axiom are discussed in some detail. Elements in Frege's position that are in apparent tension with his Euclideanism are considered-his introduction of axioms in The Basic Laws of Arithmetic through argument, his fallibilism about mathematical understanding, and his view that understanding is closely associated with inferential abilities.