Abstract
This paper considers whether incompatibilism, the view that negation is to be explained in terms of a primitive notion of incompatibility, and Fregeanism, the view that arithmetical truths are analytic according to Frege’s definition of that term in §3 of Foundations of Arithmetic, can be held together. Both views are attractive in their own right, in particular for a certain empiricist mind-set. They promise to account for two philosophical puzzling phenomena: the problem of negative truth and the problem of epistemic access to numbers. For an incompatibilist, proofs of numerical non-identities must appeal to primitive incompatibilities. I argue that no analytic primitive incompatibilities are forthcoming. Hence incompatibilists cannot be Fregeans.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 27-46 |
| Journal | European Journal of Analytic Philosophy |
| Volume | 14 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2018 |
Keywords
- negation
- falsity
- arithmetic
- analyticity
- incompatibility