Ebook: F. P. Ramsey: Philosophical Papers

"Frank Ramsey was the greatest of the remarkable generation of Cambridge philosophers and logicians which included G. E. Moore, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Maynard Keynes. Before his tragically early death in 1930 at the age of twenty-six, he had done seminal work in mathematics and economics as well as in logic and philosophy. This volume, with a new and extensive introduction by D. H. Mellor, contains all Ramsey's previously published writings on philosophy and the foundations of mathematics. The latter gives the definitive form and defence of the reduction of mathematics to logic undertaken in Russell and Whitehead's Principia Mathematica; the former includes the most profound and original studies of universals, truth, meaning, probability, knowledge, law and causation, all of which are still constantly referred to, and still essential reading for all serious students of these subjects."

"The papers in this volume have all been published before: details are given in the Bibliography. But only the following were prepared for publication by Ramsey himself: Chapter 2, ‘Universals ’, and its Postscript, ‘Note on the Preceding Paper’ (part of ‘Universals and the “Method of Analysis"'); Chapter 3, ‘Facts and Propositions’; Chapter 8, ‘The Foundations of Mathematics ’; and Chapter 9, ‘ Mathematical Logic ’.
All but one of the other papers were first prepared for publication after Ramsey’s death in 1930 by his friend and editor R. B. Braithwaite, who included them in _The Foundations of Mathematics and other Logical Essays_ (hereafter FM), the collection of Ramsey’s papers published in 1931."