Michael Dummett

Michael Dummett
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Sir Michael Dummett in 2004
Sir Michael Anthony Eardley Dummett F.B.A., D. Litt, (born1925) is a leading Britishphilosopher. He has both written on the history ofanalytic philosophy, and made original contributions to the subject, particularly in the areas ofphilosophy of mathematics,philosophy of logic,philosophy of language andmetaphysics. He also devised theQuota Borda system of proportional voting, based on theBorda count, and has written scholarly works ontarot. Other interests have beenimmigration law and English grammar and usage. In 1944 he was received into theRoman Catholic Church, and remains a practising Catholic.
He attendedWinchester College, before going up toChrist Church, Oxford. Upon graduation he was awarded a fellowship to the eliteAll Souls College, Oxford. In 1979, he becameWykeham Professor of Logic at Oxford, a post he held until retiring in 1992. During his term as Wykeham Professor, he held a Fellowship atNew College, Oxford. He won theRolf Schock prize in 1995, and wasKnighted in 1999.
Contents
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1 Work in philosophy2 Activism3 Tarot4 Catholicism5 Works6 See also7 References8 External links
[edit] Work in philosophy
His work on the German philosopherFrege has been acclaimed. His first book Frege: Philosophy of Language (1973), written over many years, is now regarded as a classic. The book was instrumental in the rediscovery of Frege‘s work, and influenced a whole generation of British philosophers, includingGareth Evans.
In his 1963 paper Realism he popularised a controversial approach to understanding the historical dispute betweenrealist and other non-realist schools of philosophy such as idealism, nominalism,Irrealism etc. He characterized all of these latter positions asanti-realist and argued that the fundamental disagreement between realist and anti-realist was over the nature of truth. He has claimed that realism is best understood as accepting the classical characterisation of truth as bivalent and evidence-transcendent, while anti-realism rejects this in favor of a concept of knowable truth. Historically, these debates had been understood as disagreements about whether a certain type of entity objectively exists or not. Thus, we may speak of (anti-)realism with respect to other minds, the past, the future, universals, mathematical entities (such asnatural numbers), moral categories, the material world, or even thought. The novelty of Dummett‘s approach consisted in seeing these disputes as, at base, analogous to the dispute betweenintuitionism andplatonism in thephilosophy of mathematics.
It is now common, thanks to Dummett‘s influence, to speak of a post-Dummettian generation of English philosophers, including such figures as John McDowell, Christopher Peacocke, and Crispin Wright--though only Wright has been fairly close to Dummett on substantive philosophical questions.
Academic Genealogy
Notable teachers Notable students
G.E.M. AnscombeGareth Evans
Luciano Floridi
Christopher Peacocke
Hans Sluga
Timothy Williamson
Crispin Wright
[edit] Activism
Dummett has been politically active, through his work as a campaigner against racism. He let his philosophical career stall in order to influence civil rights for minorities during what he saw as a crucial period of reform in the late1960s. He also has worked on the theory of voting, which led to his introduction of theQuota Borda system.
Dummett drew heavily on his work in this area in writing his book On Immigration and Refugees, an account of what justice demands of states in relationship to movement between states. Dummett in that book argues that the vast majority of opposition to immigration is founded in racism and says that this has especially been so in the UK.
He has written of his shock on finding anti-Semitic opinions in the diaries ofFrege, to whose work he had devoted such a high proportion of his professional career.
[edit] Tarot
Michael Dummett is also a leading historian in the research of theTarot with various publications to his credit including "The Game of Tarot: From Ferrara to Salt Lake city", 1980, which left its mark on the field of literature about the venerable deck of cards. Dummett championed the use of the tarot cards for trick taking card games and expressed some disdain for the later occult practices to which the cards were often put. It should be noted that as a converted catholic, he probably follows the commands of the Scriptures who are quite explicit about the consequences suffered by believers in divination and the like. He thus argues that the renaissance use of the Tarot was as a set of playing cards and that it only acquired its association with the occult in the18th century. Dummet champions the theory that since the oldest tarot decks are from the XVth century and have been found in Northern Italy, it follows that the first deck, or prototarot, has been created there and in the Renaissance. Critics argue among other things that the iconographic program of the best known deck, the Tarot de Marseille, is medieval.
[edit] Catholicism
Throughout his career, Dummett has published a number of articles on various issues facing the contemporaryRoman Catholic Church, mainly in the EnglishDominican journalNew Blackfriars. Dummett has also published an essay in the bulletin of theAdoremus society on the subject of liturgy, and a philosophical essay defending the intelligibility of the Catholic Church‘s teaching on theeucharist ("The Intelligibility of Eucharistic Doctrine" in William J. Abraham and Steven W. Holzer, eds., The Rationality of Religious Belief: Essays in Honour of Basil Mitchell, Clarendon Press, 1987.)
In October of 1987, one of his contributions to New Blackfriars sparked considerable controversy, when he attacked currents of Catholic theology that diverged from traditional orthodox Catholicism and argued that "the divergence which now obtains between what the Catholic Church purports to believe and what large or important sections of it in fact believe ought, in my view, to be tolerated no longer." A debate in the journal over these remarks continued for months, attracting contributions from the theologianNicholas Lash and the historianEamon Duffy, among others.
[edit] Works
On analytical philosophy and logic: Frege: Philosophy of Language (London, 1973/1981) Elements of Intuitionism (Oxford, 1977, 2000) Truth and Other Enigmas (London, 1978) Frege: Philosophy of Mathematics (London, 1991) The Logical Basis of Metaphysics (London, 1991) Origins of Analytical Philosophy (London, 1993) The Seas of Language (Oxford, 1993) Truth and the Past (Oxford, 2005) Thought and Reality (Oxford, 2006)
On politics: Voting Procedures (Oxford, 1984) Principles of Electoral Reform (New York, 1997) On Immigration and Refugees (London, 2001)
Tarot works: Game of Tarot (1980) Visconti-Sforza Tarot Cards (1986) A Wicked Pack of Cards: The Origins of the Occult Tarot, coauthor with Ronald Decker and Thierry Depaulis (New York, 1996) A History of the Occult Tarot: 1870-1970, coauthor with Ronald Decker (New York, 2002) A History of Games Played with the Tarot Pack: The Game of Triumphs , coauthor with John McLeod (2004)
[edit] See also
Is logic empirical? which discusses an article by Dummett on an argument ofHilary Putnam for the correctness ofquantum logicTruth-value link realism, which Dummett criticized in early works
[edit] References
Johannes L Brandl, Peter Sullivan (eds.) New Essays on the Philosophy of Michael Dummett. Rodopi, 1999.ISBN 9042004665 Richard Kirkham. Theories of Truth. MIT Press, 1992. Chapter 8 is a discussion of Dummett‘s views on meaning. Karen Green. Dummett: Philosophy of Language. Polity, 2001.ISBN 0-7456-2295-X Richard G. Heck (ed.) Language, Thought, and Logic: Essays in Honour of Michael Dummett. Oxford University Press, 1998.ISBN 0-19-823920-3 Bernhard Weiss. Michael Dummett. Princeton University Press, 2002.ISBN 0-691-11330-0
[edit] External links
Article on Michael Dummett at theInternet Encyclopedia of PhilosophyBiographical notes on Michael Dummett at Trionfi, a database about the tarot.Critic of Michael Dummett‘ Theory of a Lombardian Tarot Origin at Tarotchoco, a blog about the history of Tarot.
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Rolf Schock Prize Laureates
Logic and Philosophy
Willard Van Orman Quine (1993) • Michael Dummett (1995) •Dana Scott (1997) •John Rawls (1999) •Saul Kripke (2001) •Solomon Feferman (2003) •Jaakko Hintikka (2005)
Mathematics
Elias M. Stein (1993) •Andrew Wiles (1995) •Mikio Sato (1997) •Yuri I. Manin (1999) •Elliott H. Lieb (2001) •Richard P. Stanley (2003) •Luis Caffarelli (2005)
Musical Arts
Ingvar Lidholm (1993) •György Ligeti (1995) •Jorma Panula (1997) •Kronos Quartet (1999) •Kaija Saariaho (2001) •Anne Sofie von Otter (2003) •Mauricio Kagel (2005)
Visual Arts
Rafael Moneo (1993) •Claes Oldenburg (1995) •Torsten Andersson (1997) •Herzog & de Meuron (1999) •Giuseppe Penone (2001) •Susan Rothenberg (2003) •Kazuyo Sejima/Ryue Nishizawa (2005)
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Dummett"
Categories:1925 births |21st century philosophers |Alumni of Christ Church, Oxford |Analytic philosophers |British philosophers |Fellows of All Souls College, Oxford |Fellows of New College, Oxford |Living people |Philosophers of language |Rolf Schock Prize laureates |Roman Catholic philosophers |Tarot card games |Tarot
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