Abstract
This paper has three goals: (i) to show that the foundational program begun in theBegriffsschrift, and carried forward in theGrundlagen, represented Frege's attempt to establish the autonomy of arithmetic from geometry and kinematics; the cogency and coherence of‘intuitive’ reasoning were not in question. (ii) To place Frege's logicism in the context of the nineteenth century tradition in mathematical analysis, and, in particular, to show how the modern concept of a function made it possible for Frege to pursue the goal of autonomy within the framework of the system of second-order logic of theBegriffsschrift. (iii) To address certain criticisms of Frege by Parsons and Boolos, and thereby to clarify what was and was not achieved by the development, in Part III of theBegriffsschrift, of a fragment of the theory of relations.
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Demopoulos, W. Frege and the rigorization of analysis. J Philos Logic 23, 225–245 (1994). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01048481
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01048481