The Philosophy of F. P. Ramsey by Nils-Eric Sahlin (PDF)

Description

F.P. Ramsey was a remarkably creative and subtle philosopher who in the briefest of academic careers (he died in 1930 at 26) made significant contributions to logic, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of language and decision theory. His few published papers reveal him to be a figure of comparable importance to Russell, Carnap and Wittgenstein in the history of analytical philosophy. This book is the first critical study of Ramsey’s work, offering a thorough exposition and interpretation of his ideas, setting the ideas in their historical context, and assessing their significance for contemporary research. The study is intended to complement the reissue by the Press of Ramsey’s papers edited by Professor Hugh Mellor.

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: Review “Sahlin is to be congratulated for his bold venture sketching an intellectual portrait of Frank P. Ramsey, a man who mastered existing modes of inuirty in many fields and then extended them.” Journal of Economic Literature”Sahlin has touched on all the bases not only providing us with an accurate exposition of Ramsey’s ideas but with illuminating discussion of their significance.” Isaac Levi, Columbia University”Nils-Eric Sahlin’s study, The philosophy of F.P. Ramsey, is the only one of its kind. Sahlin has worked out a unified and exhustive interpretation Ramsey’s philosophy — its various parts form indeed a coherent whol — and it will become the standard for Ramsey’s scholarship. This book should…be of the highest interest to any specialist curious enough to wish to learn about adjacent fields…and to see how far a philosopher can go in the direction of a unifying philosophy without sacrificing the rigorous standards of the scientific inquiry.” Mathieu Marion, The Journal of Symbolic Logic Book Description F. P. Ramsey was a remarkably creative and subtle philosopher who made significant contributions to logic, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of language and decision theory.

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Sahlin(S)does an excellent job in assessing the positive aspects of Ramsey’s substantial contributions to mathematics,philosophy,economics,logic,probability ,induction,pragmatism,decision theory,and the subjectivist approach to probability.Unfortunately,S does not do a very good job of assessing the deficiency that exists in some areas of Ramsey’s work.A prime example would be Ramsey’s two reviews of J M Keynes’s 1921 book ,titled A Treatise on Probability.Ramsey wrote reviews in 1922 and 1926.Both of these reviews are based on a reading of the first four chapters of Keynes’s book plus 3-4 pages,apparently selected by Ramsey at random ,from Parts II-V of the rest of Keynes’s book.Ramsey made a major blunder in his interpretation of Keynes’s definitions of nonnumerical and nonmeasurable in chapter III of the TP(1921).Keynes defined these terms to mean not by a single numeral or number and not by a single numerical relation,respectively.Instead,Keynes argued that it generally took TWO numbers to measure a probability,an upper bound and a lower bound.The exception was the case of positive symmetrical evidence.In this case a decision maker could resort to Keynes’s superior version of the principle of nonsufficient reason,the principle of indifference,to calculate exact,precise,definite point estimate using a single numeral or number.Ramsey instead argued that Keynes meant that nonnumerical meant that no numbers could in general be used to specify a probability estimate.Thus, Ramsey talks about Keynes’s “mysterious”nonnumerical probabilities and “mysterious”degrees of belief,which,according to Ramsey are also “nonnumerical”.Ramsey(and S)failed to take Keynes’s chapter III ,page 37 warning to the reader that he should wait until after he has finished Part II of the TP BEFORE HE DRAWS ANY CONCLUSIONS FROM chapter III.Keynes’s technical discussions ,in chapters 15 and 17 of the TP on using Boole’s approach to establish upper and lower bounds to estimate probabilities, were not read by Ramsey(orS).The result has been that philosophers,economists ,psychologists ,etc.have,for the last 75-80 years,based their assessment of Keynes’s TP on reviews that Bertrand Russell correctly,and very generously,characterised as having the LEAST value of any of Ramsey’s work.

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