Abstract

FULUGONIO, María Gabriela. El principio fregeano del contexto en Die Grundlagen Der Arithmetik: Una revisión a la interpretación de Dummett. Anal. filos. [online]. 2008, vol.28, n.2, pp.205-238. ISSN 1851-9636.

In his masterpiece of 1884, Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik [Gl.] Frege presents the context principle as a fundamental one in his investigation à propos an accurate concept of number. Thus, resting on it he offers a contextual definition of cardinal number; but after analyzing some objections he realizes that this definition does not work and decides himself for an explicit one. The question about what is the purport of the context principle when something that appeared to be the consequence (and the intended consequence) is put aside admits more than a single answer. In this paper I argue against the canonic interpretation (Dummett 1991) for, even while keeping next to the Fregean text, it fails to offer an integral explanation of how the context principle works all along Gl. In particular, I will defend that: i) contrary with Dummett 1991, the contextual definition of cardinal number (which on regards of the context principle is proposed as a first approximation of the desired definition) is not abandoned by Frege when giving his explicit definition of number, ii) the context principle has in Gl. a fundamental eristic role of crossing out rival positions about the nature of numbers, iii) such contextual definition of number has an heuristic role in the discovery context, in the sense it offers a key intuition towards the final formulation (the explicit definition), iv) furthermore, the contextual definition is a necessary condition in the justification context for the latest has been built up through the first one. For all this, I maintain that the function of the context principle is not the one Dummett prioritizes, i. e., the failed function of solving the ontological problem of the nature of numbers; the function of the context principle is rather and fundamentally methodological. It is on its eristic and heuristic function that its relevance to the Gl. investigation must be looked for.

Keywords : Context principle; Contextual definition of number; Explicit definition of number; Abstract objects; Representations.

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