History of Analytic Philosophy Series Editor: Michael Beaney, University of York, UK Titles include: Stewart Candlish THE RUSSELL/BRADLEY DISPUTE AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE FOR TWENTIETH-CENTURY PHILOSOPHY Siobhan Chapman SUSAN STEBBING AND THE LANGUAGE OF COMMON SENSE Annalisa Coliva MOORE AND WITTGENSTEIN Scepticism, Certainty and Common Sense Giuseppina D’Oro and Constantine Sandis (editors) REASONS AND CAUSES Causalism and Non-Causalism in the Philosophy of Action George Duke DUMMETT ON ABSTRACT OBJECTS Mauro Engelmann WITTGENSTEIN’S PHILOSOPHICAL DEVELOPMENT Phenomenology, Grammar, Method, and the Anthropological View Sébastien Gandon RUSSELL’S UNKNOWN LOGICISM A Study in the History and Philosophy of Mathematics Jolen Gallagher RUSSELL’S PHILOSOPHY OF LOGICAL ANALYSIS: 1898–1905 Anssi Korhonen LOGIC AS UNIVERSAL SCIENCE Russell’s Early Logicism and Its Philosophical Context Gregory Landini FREGE’S NOTATIONS What They Are and What They Mean Sandra Lapointe BOLZANO’S THEORETICAL PHILOSOPHY An Introduction Sandra Lapointe and Clinton Tolley (editors and translators) THE NEW ANTI-KANT Omar W. Nasim BERTRAND RUSSELL AND THE EDWARDIAN PHILOSOPHERS Constructing the World Ulrich Pardey FREGE ON ABSOLUTE AND RELATIVE TRUTH Douglas Patterson ALFRED TARSKI PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE AND LOGIC Erich Reck (editor r) THE HISTORIC TURN IN ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY Graham Stevens THE THEORY OF DESCRIPTIONS Mark Textor ( editorr) JUDGEMENT AND TRUTH IN EARLY ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGY Maria van der Schaar G.F. STOUT AND THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ORIGINS OF ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY Nuno Venturinha (editorr) WITTGENSTEIN AFTER HIS NACHLASS Pierre Wagner ( editorr) CARNAP’S LOGICAL SYNTAX OF LANGUAGE Pierre Wagner ( editorr) CARNAP’S IDEAL OF EXPLICATION AND NATURALISM Forthcoming: Rosalind Carey RUSSELL ON MEANING The Emergence of Scientific Philosophy from the 1920s to the 1940s Consuelo Preti THE METAPHYSICAL BASIS OF ETHICS The Early Philosophical Development of G. E. Moore History of Analytic Philosophy Series Standing Order ISBN 978–0–230–55409–2 (hardcover) Series Standing Order ISBN 978–0–230–55410–8 (paperback) (outside North America only) You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and one of the ISBNs quoted above. Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England Frank Ramsey and the Realistic Spirit S. J. Methven Worcester College, University of Oxford, UK © S. J. Methven 2015 A ll rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2015 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-56123-0 ISBN 978-1-137-35108-1 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9781137351081 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data S. J. Methven, 1978– Frank Ramsey and the realistic spirit / Steven Methven, Worcester College, University of Oxford, UK. pages cm.—(History of analytic philosophy) Includes bibliographical references. 1. Ramsey, Frank Plumpton, 1903–1930. I. Title. B1649.R254M48 2015 92—dc23 2015018588 For Romilly Contents Series Editors’ Foreword x Michael Beaney Acknowledgements xiii List of Abbreviations xv Introduction 1 Part I The Realistic Spirit 1 The Realistic Spirit 15 1.1 Realism and the realistic 17 1.2 Playing not-bridge 23 1.2.1 Three contrasts 24 1.2.2 Playing and contravention 26 1.2.3 The comfort of pretence 31 1.2.4 Parsimony and pretending 35 2 Empiricism, Solipsism and the Realistic 39 2.1 Empiricism and the Realistic 39 2.1.1 Berkeley, Russell and the language of God 40 2.1.2 The Given 44 2.2 Solipsism and the Realistic 49 3 Pragmatism and the Realistic 53 3.1 Probabilityy 54 3.1.1 Degrees of belieff 55 3.1.2 Peirce and probabilityy 58 3.1.3 Rationality, enquiry and reasonableness 61 3.2 Truth 66 3.2.1 On truth 66 3.2.2 Truth and enquiryy 69 3.3 Ramsey as pragmatist 72 Part II Meaning 4 Ramsey and Wittgenstein: First Encounters 77 4.1 Pictures 78 vii viii Contents 4.1.1 Representation and sense 80 4.1.2 Pictorial and logical form 85 4.2 Propositions 98 4.2.1 Type and token 98 4.2.2 Truth and meaning 105 5 The Mystical 116 5.1 Ramsey and the mystical 116 5.1.1 Internal properties 117 5.1.2 Making clear 119 5.2 Ramsey and nonsense 120 5.2.1 Existential statements 121 5.2.2 Identity statements 121 5.2.3 Logical and semantic properties 123 5.2.4 Mathematical statements 124 5.2.5 Ramsey and semantics 128 6 Truth and Meaning 132 6.1 Facts and judgement 135 6.2 Judgement 142 6.2.1 Chicken-Beliefs 142 6.2.2 Beliefs, private states and representation 145 6.3 Belief and representation 147 6.3.1 Names, objects and antirealism 147 6.3.2 Mental signs 150 6.3.3 Belief and causation 151 6.3.4 Belief, language and forms of life 156 6.4 Objections 159 6.4.1 Judging nonsense 159 6.4.2 What is squiggle? 161 6.4.3 Realism and the realistic 164 Part III Mathematics 7 The Foundations of Mathematics 171 7.1 Tractarian logicism 173 7.2 Identity in the Tractatu s 176 7.2.1 Wittgenstein on identityy 176 7.2.2 The Tractarian convention 180 7.3 Ramsey’s definition of ‘=’ 183 7.3.1 The problem of essential classes 183 7.3.2 Identity in Principia 184 Contents ix 7.3.3 Propositional functions in extension 187 7.3.4 What could a PFE be? 190 8 Logical Revolt 198 8.1 Ramsey and Hilbert 199 8.1.1 Generalisation 200 8.1.2 The ^-operator 203 8.2 The Entscheidungsproblem 207 8.2.1 Decidability and the logic of the Tractatus 209 Part IV Influence 9 Generality, Rules and Normativityy 217 9.1 Generalityy 217 9.1.1 Quantification in the Tractatus 218 9.1.2 Ramsey’s criticisms 220 9.1.3 Ramsey and the infinite 223 9.1.4 Wittgenstein and the infinite 225 9.2 Rules and normativityy 230 9.2.1 Philosophical Investigations §81 230 9.2.1 Rules and games 232 9.2.3 Normativityy 235 Notes 238 References 255 Index 265 Series Editors’ Foreword During the first half of the 20th century, analytic philosophy gradually established itself as the dominant tradition in the English-speaking world, and over the last few decades, it has taken firm root in many other parts of the world. There has been increasing debate over just what ‘analytic philosophy’ means, as the movement has ramified into the complex tradition that we know today, but the influence of the concerns, ideas and methods of early analytic philosophy on contem- porary thought is indisputable. All this has led to greater self-conscious- ness among analytic philosophers about the nature and origins of their tradition, and scholarly interest in its historical development and philo- sophical foundations has blossomed in recent years, with the result that the history of analytic philosophy is now recognised as a major field of philosophy in its own right. The main aim of the series in which the present book appears, the first series of its kind, is to create a venue for work on the history of analytic philosophy, consolidating the area as a major field of phil- osophy and promoting further research and debate. The ‘history of analytic philosophy’ is understood broadly as covering the period from the last three decades of the 19th century to the start of the 21st century, beginning with the work of Frege, Russell, Moore and Wittgenstein, who are generally regarded as its main founders, and the influences upon them, and going right up to the most recent developments. In allowing the ‘history’ to extend to the present, the aim is to encourage engagement with contemporary debates in philosophy – for example, in showing how the concerns of early analytic philosophy relate to current concerns. In focusing on analytic philosophy, the aim is not to exclude comparisons with other – earlier or contemporary – traditions or consid- eration of figures or themes that some might regard as marginal to the analytic tradition but which also throw light on analytic philosophy. Indeed, a further aim of the series is to deepen our understanding of the broader context in which analytic philosophy developed, by looking, for example, at the roots of analytic philosophy in neo-Kantianism or British idealism, or the connections between analytic philosophy and phenomenology, or by discussing the work of philosophers who were important in the development of analytic philosophy but who are now often forgotten.