Michael Dummett Quotes
Sir Michael Anthony Eardley Dummett was a British philosopher of logic, language, and mathematics and a long-serving Wykeham Professor of Logic at Oxford. His monumental Frege: Philosophy of Language reread Frege as the founder of analytic philosophy and articulated Dummett's own program in which the theory of meaning is the foundation of metaphysics. The quotes below are attributed to Michael Dummett, organized by topic.
Browse Michael Dummett by topic
Michael Dummett on Knowledge
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“Dummett, M. A. E. The Logical Basis of Metaphysics . Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1991.”
Philosophy can take us no further than enabling us to command a clear view of the concepts by means of which we think about the world, and, by so doing, to attain a firmer grasp of the way we represent the world in our thought. It is for this reason and in this sense that philosophy is about the world. -
“On Lewis Carroll 's work on election theory; quoted in Robin Wilson, Lewis Carroll in Numberland (2008), p. vii”
Such were the lucidity of exposition and his mastery of the topic that it seems possible that, had he ever published it, the political theory of Britain would have been significantly different.
Michael Dummett on Mind
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Attributed to Michael Dummett:
“Meaning is what we know when we understand a sentence.”
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“Philosophy can take us no further than enabling us to command a clear view of the concepts by means of which we think about the world, and, by so doing, to attain a firmer grasp of the way we represent the world in our thought. It is for this reason and in this sense that philosophy is about the world.”
Dummett, M. A. E. The Logical Basis of Metaphysics . Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1991.
Michael Dummett on Politics
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“Such were the lucidity of exposition and his mastery of the topic that it seems possible that, had he ever published it, the political theory of Britain would have been significantly different.”
On Lewis Carroll 's work on election theory; quoted in Robin Wilson, Lewis Carroll in Numberland (2008), p. vii
Michael Dummett on Time
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“...the most interesting fact about the Tarot pack [is] that it is the subject of the most successful propaganda campaign ever launched: not by a very long way the most important, but the most completely successful. An entire false history, and false interpretations, of the Tarot pack was concocted by the occultists; and it is all but universally believed.”
Decker, Ronald; Depaulis, Thierry; Dummett, Michael. A Wicked Pack of Cards: The Origins of the Occult Tarot (1996), p. 27
Michael Dummett on Truth
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Attributed to Michael Dummett:
“The theory of meaning is the foundation of metaphysics.”
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Attributed to Michael Dummett:
“Truth is a matter of justified assertibility, not of bare correspondence.”
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Attributed to Michael Dummett:
“Realism is the thesis that statements are determinately true or false independently of our means of knowing.”
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Attributed to Michael Dummett:
“Logic without philosophy of language is empty; philosophy of language without logic is blind.”