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 give the definitive form and defence of the reduction of mathematics to logic undertaken in Russell and Whitehead's Principia Mathematica; the former include 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.

Preface; Introduction; Note on symbolism; 1. Philosophy (1929); 2. Universals (1925); Postscript: Note on the preceding paper (1926); 3. Facts and propositions (1927); 4. Truth and probability (1926); Postscript: Probability and partial belief (1929); Reasonable degree of belief (1928); Statistics (1928); Chance (1928); 5. Knowledge (1929); 6. Theories (1929); Postscript: Causal qualities (1929); 7. Law and causality; A. Universals of law and of fact (1928); B. General propositions and causality (1929); 8. The Foundations of mathematics (1925); 9. Mathematical logic (1926); 10. Epilogue (1925); Bibliography of Ramsey's works; Index.