Wittgenstein on Ramsey's reform of logicism

Anderson Nakano

I will first explain Ramsey's attempt in theFoundations of Mathematics(1925)to reform the logicist project of reducing arithmetic to logic. The central element ofthisreform is an explicit definition of the identity function by means of so-called “functionsin extension”. Afterwards, I will elucidate Wittgenstein's critique of Ramsey's attempt,showing, first, that this critique has a logical, and not an epistemological, basis; secondly,that it underlies Wittgenstein's overall attitude towards logicism