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How completely obnoxious article. Frege was a tragic figure in philosophy, his work was recognized only through Russel and he is still very much ignored by the

How completely obnoxious article. Frege was a tragic figure in philosophy, his work was recognized only through Russel and he is still very much ignored by the tradition he created. He answered the Russel paradox in the same way modern theory does, by introducing types, but instead of learning from him, especially the epistemological parts that are a relevant connection of analytical philosophy to kantianism, he was ignored and is for some reason ridiculed by the anglosphere tradition that know him only through Russel (the most overrated philosopher in history).

denton-scratch 4y ago
I'm inclined to agree that Russell was overrated. His most influential work was a mistake. > he is still very much ignored by the tradition he created Really? When I studied philosophy[0], reading at least some Frege was required for Philosophy of Logic and Philosophy of Language. Frege wasn't treated as obscure or unimportant; quite the reverse. Have things changed? [0] University of London, early 80's. Philosophical tastes vary rather widely from one institution to another.
- yung_steezy 4y ago
  I studied philosophy 10 years ago and we did several weeks on Sense and Reference in one of the modules. He also was discussed in other classes in relation to Kripke and other more modern philosophers.
  - ofrzeta 4y ago
    Yeah, he is discussed in seminars as a kind of proto analytical philosopher.
    - brownbat 4y ago
      We studied him too, he kicks off most of the major anthologies. Seems he's almost universally considered an overlooked founder of analytic philosophy. (There's the famous story about how Wittgenstein showed up on his doorstep to move in and study and Frege said, "no just go to Russell," he even underrated himself.) So he is partly famous for not being famous, a paradox he would hopefully appreciate.
- nathias 4y ago
  I meant analytic philosophy, that hardly ever includes Frege.
- vehemenz 4y ago
  I read The Foundations of Arithmetic and On Sense and Reference for my analytic philosophy course. This was in the U.S. fifteen years ago. I agree that he was not treated as obscure at all. We wouldn't have Carnap (the analytic philosopher) without Frege.
- ogogmad 4y ago
  > His most influential work was a mistake. Why? I think you're referring to Principia, which is a predecessor to Coq and Lean. While Coq and Lean don't use Principia's formalism, they do try and tackle the same problem. What did Principia fail at? [edit] Or are you referring to the programme of using formal logic to understand language and reliable everyday reasoning?
  - denton-scratch 4y ago
    Principia was destroyed by Gödel, within about two years of its publication. That's what I'm referring to.
    - ogogmad 4y ago
      No, it wasn't. I'm sometimes not sure if philosophers understand Goedel's incompleteness theorem. What do you base your claim on? GIT is more a statement about the limitations of the proof-driven approach to mathematics than it is about any formalisation of mathematics like Principia's. It shows that whatever assumptions proofs are based on cannot be shown consistent except by assuming something even stronger. Principia is affected to exactly the same degree as all proof-driven mathematics, and no more. I'm not sure whether there has ever been a satisfactory answer to the 2nd GIT among the mathematical establishment. I guess mathematicians just assume that everything is consistent, and go about proving theorems as normal. It seems that almost no mathematician understands - let alone cares about - these foundational concerns. Principia is the predecessor to modern software like Lean, Coq and Agda. Nothing got destroyed.
      - denton-scratch 4y ago
        Well, I'm out of my depth. I didn't study Principia or Gödel at school, and I've never really looked into Principia. My understanding is that Principia was an effort to prove that (a) mathematics was logic; and (b) that mathematics was self-consistent. And that Gödel proved that this goal couldn't be achieved. Is that wrong? If I've got that wrong, I have a big attitude adjustment coming down the track towards me.
      - 4y ago
voidhorse 4y ago
As others have said, I do think Frege gets a fair shake in academia, but he definitely could be studied more. He certainly doesn’t have the near pop-philosophical status of a Russel. I would also agree that Russel is overrated. For some reason, the public seems to love experts of narrow technical or scientific fields that proffer, usually inadequate, takes of other areas like morals all whilst ignoring the experts in fields like morality (I can think of some other situations in which the political opinions of e.g. cosmologists are venerated on the basis of their expertise in cosmology, which of course makes absolutely no sense but seems to be something people love to do. Apparently deeply specialized expertise means you’re “smart” and therefore anything you say even on subjects you don’t know a lick about must also be “smart”) Aside from Wittgenstein, Frege is the “analytic” philosopher I most admire. There’s a certain creative genius that shines through his work that I feel is absent from the work of many other analytic philosophers. His short Foundations of Mathematics text quite literally changed my life by making math interesting to me for the first time. I was lucky enough to read a copy of the Begriffs chrift since my school’s library had it, it’s a work of beauty!
- rrwo 4y ago
  There's too much focus on Frege (as well as Russell and Wittgenstein) in analytic philosophy. You would think people such as Boole, Peirce, Łukaiewicz, Tarski, Brouwer, Heyting, Gentzen, Prawitz, Girard, and Martin-Löf are mere footnotes in the history of logic. Yet their work is more relevant and used by working mathematicians and computer scientists.
  - ogogmad 4y ago
    This is a brilliant comment. Thank you. Each in turn: Boole invented propositional logic. Peirce supposedly invented a lot, but got overlooked. Łukaiewicz, I'm not sure. Tarski employed quantifier elimination to prove the decidability of various theories like Euclidean geometry. Brouwer invented intuitionistic logic, and a(n arguably) viable approach to doing analysis and topology intuitionistically. Heyting provided semantics to intuitionistic logic. Gentzen created the proof calculus Natural Deduction which resembles informal proofs (as well as the closely related proof calculus Sequent Calculus). Prawitz I don't know. Girard, I don't know. Martin-Löf derived Dependently Typed Lambda Calculus using the Curry-Howard correspondence. I guess all this stuff gets overlooked because Russell's goal was very ambitious: He wanted to connect formal logic with everyday language, and how to perform sound everyday reasoning. In that sense, his ambition was similar to the Stoics. The above stuff mostly doesn't address this use-case.
mellosouls 4y ago
I'm not sure that Russell is overrated by non-philosophers - his unusual popular fame for his field is down to his brilliance as a writer and communicator, and charisma and social engagement as a human being. Those are valuable qualities and he is rated accordingly for them.
pfkurtz 4y ago
Frege is all over analaytic philosophy, as I experienced it as an undergraduate in a top department. Many of the most important papers and books (Dummett, Kripke, Evans, etc) in philosophy of language, logic, mathematics take various of his positions as starting points. I would describe Frege as the philosopher I had never heard of before showing up at a philosophy department whom I then heard the most about. His insights were "forgotten" for a time, but have been central to discussions for several decades.

denton-scratch 4y ago

I'm inclined to agree that Russell was overrated. His most influential work was a mistake. > he is still very much ignored by the tradition he created Really? When I studied philosophy[0], reading at least some Frege was required for Philosophy of Logic and Philosophy of Language. Frege wasn't treated as obscure or unimportant; quite the reverse. Have things changed? [0] University of London, early 80's. Philosophical tastes vary rather widely from one institution to another.

yung_steezy 4y ago
I studied philosophy 10 years ago and we did several weeks on Sense and Reference in one of the modules. He also was discussed in other classes in relation to Kripke and other more modern philosophers.
- ofrzeta 4y ago
  Yeah, he is discussed in seminars as a kind of proto analytical philosopher.
  - brownbat 4y ago
    We studied him too, he kicks off most of the major anthologies. Seems he's almost universally considered an overlooked founder of analytic philosophy. (There's the famous story about how Wittgenstein showed up on his doorstep to move in and study and Frege said, "no just go to Russell," he even underrated himself.) So he is partly famous for not being famous, a paradox he would hopefully appreciate.
nathias 4y ago
I meant analytic philosophy, that hardly ever includes Frege.
vehemenz 4y ago
I read The Foundations of Arithmetic and On Sense and Reference for my analytic philosophy course. This was in the U.S. fifteen years ago. I agree that he was not treated as obscure at all. We wouldn't have Carnap (the analytic philosopher) without Frege.
ogogmad 4y ago
> His most influential work was a mistake. Why? I think you're referring to Principia, which is a predecessor to Coq and Lean. While Coq and Lean don't use Principia's formalism, they do try and tackle the same problem. What did Principia fail at? [edit] Or are you referring to the programme of using formal logic to understand language and reliable everyday reasoning?
- denton-scratch 4y ago
  Principia was destroyed by Gödel, within about two years of its publication. That's what I'm referring to.
  - ogogmad 4y ago
    No, it wasn't. I'm sometimes not sure if philosophers understand Goedel's incompleteness theorem. What do you base your claim on? GIT is more a statement about the limitations of the proof-driven approach to mathematics than it is about any formalisation of mathematics like Principia's. It shows that whatever assumptions proofs are based on cannot be shown consistent except by assuming something even stronger. Principia is affected to exactly the same degree as all proof-driven mathematics, and no more. I'm not sure whether there has ever been a satisfactory answer to the 2nd GIT among the mathematical establishment. I guess mathematicians just assume that everything is consistent, and go about proving theorems as normal. It seems that almost no mathematician understands - let alone cares about - these foundational concerns. Principia is the predecessor to modern software like Lean, Coq and Agda. Nothing got destroyed.
    - denton-scratch 4y ago
      Well, I'm out of my depth. I didn't study Principia or Gödel at school, and I've never really looked into Principia. My understanding is that Principia was an effort to prove that (a) mathematics was logic; and (b) that mathematics was self-consistent. And that Gödel proved that this goal couldn't be achieved. Is that wrong? If I've got that wrong, I have a big attitude adjustment coming down the track towards me.
    - 4y ago

voidhorse 4y ago

As others have said, I do think Frege gets a fair shake in academia, but he definitely could be studied more. He certainly doesn’t have the near pop-philosophical status of a Russel. I would also agree that Russel is overrated. For some reason, the public seems to love experts of narrow technical or scientific fields that proffer, usually inadequate, takes of other areas like morals all whilst ignoring the experts in fields like morality (I can think of some other situations in which the political opinions of e.g. cosmologists are venerated on the basis of their expertise in cosmology, which of course makes absolutely no sense but seems to be something people love to do. Apparently deeply specialized expertise means you’re “smart” and therefore anything you say even on subjects you don’t know a lick about must also be “smart”) Aside from Wittgenstein, Frege is the “analytic” philosopher I most admire. There’s a certain creative genius that shines through his work that I feel is absent from the work of many other analytic philosophers. His short Foundations of Mathematics text quite literally changed my life by making math interesting to me for the first time. I was lucky enough to read a copy of the Begriffs chrift since my school’s library had it, it’s a work of beauty!

rrwo 4y ago
There's too much focus on Frege (as well as Russell and Wittgenstein) in analytic philosophy. You would think people such as Boole, Peirce, Łukaiewicz, Tarski, Brouwer, Heyting, Gentzen, Prawitz, Girard, and Martin-Löf are mere footnotes in the history of logic. Yet their work is more relevant and used by working mathematicians and computer scientists.
- ogogmad 4y ago
  This is a brilliant comment. Thank you. Each in turn: Boole invented propositional logic. Peirce supposedly invented a lot, but got overlooked. Łukaiewicz, I'm not sure. Tarski employed quantifier elimination to prove the decidability of various theories like Euclidean geometry. Brouwer invented intuitionistic logic, and a(n arguably) viable approach to doing analysis and topology intuitionistically. Heyting provided semantics to intuitionistic logic. Gentzen created the proof calculus Natural Deduction which resembles informal proofs (as well as the closely related proof calculus Sequent Calculus). Prawitz I don't know. Girard, I don't know. Martin-Löf derived Dependently Typed Lambda Calculus using the Curry-Howard correspondence. I guess all this stuff gets overlooked because Russell's goal was very ambitious: He wanted to connect formal logic with everyday language, and how to perform sound everyday reasoning. In that sense, his ambition was similar to the Stoics. The above stuff mostly doesn't address this use-case.

mellosouls 4y ago

I'm not sure that Russell is overrated by non-philosophers - his unusual popular fame for his field is down to his brilliance as a writer and communicator, and charisma and social engagement as a human being. Those are valuable qualities and he is rated accordingly for them.

pfkurtz 4y ago

Frege is all over analaytic philosophy, as I experienced it as an undergraduate in a top department. Many of the most important papers and books (Dummett, Kripke, Evans, etc) in philosophy of language, logic, mathematics take various of his positions as starting points. I would describe Frege as the philosopher I had never heard of before showing up at a philosophy department whom I then heard the most about. His insights were "forgotten" for a time, but have been central to discussions for several decades.