Activity: Talks and presentations › Talk or oral contribution › Science to Science
Description
Johannes Thomae, Frege's colleague in Jena, adopted a "formal standpoint" which compared arithmetic with chess: our signs for numbers are like chess pieces, whose meaning comes from the rules of the game we play with them. This view inspired an attack by Frege, and reflections from Wittgenstein, which give it an important place in early analytic philosophy. But Thomae's analogy is still not well understood. We can derive a better understanding of it from Thomae's mathematical context. For Thomae, "signs" are not concrete marks but abstract representations; and game rules are less important than a certain shift in perspective.
Period
24 Aug 2022
Event title
TiLPS History of Analytic Philosophy Workshop 2022