Zigzag and fregean arithmetic

Fernando Ferreira

pp. 81-100

in: Hassan Tahiri (ed), The philosophers and mathematics, Berlin, Springer, 2018

Abstract

In Frege's logicism, numbers are logical objects in the sense that they are extensions of certain concepts. Frege's logical system is inconsistent, but Richard Heck showed that its restriction to predicative (second-order) quantification is consistent. This predicative fragment is, nevertheless, too weak to develop arithmetic. In this paper, I will consider an extension of Heck's system with impredicative quantifiers. In this extended system, both predicative and impredicative quantifiers co-exist but it is only permissible to take extensions of concepts formulated in the predicative fragment of the language. This system is consistent. Moreover, it proves the principle of reducibility applied to concepts true of only finitely many objects. With the aid of this form of reducibility, it is possible to develop arithmetic in a thoroughly Fregean way.

Cited authors

Frege Gottlob