Abstract
After presenting the ordinary and the Fregean formulations of the ancestral, I raise the question of what is their relationship, the natural candidate being that the Fregean version is an analysans intended to improve upon, and replace, the common notion of ancestral (the analysandum). Next, two types of circles that arise in connection with the Fregean ancestral are presented, and it is claimed that one of the circles makes it impossible to maintain the just described (“replacement”) interpretation. A reference is made to Kerry, who was the first to point out a circularity in Frege’s ancestral. Some of Frege’s remarks are examined in order to tentatively sketch, an answer to the issue of the relationship between ordinary and Fregean ancestral; the latter, if not as an analysans replacing the common notion, can still be seen as a profound enrichment of the former.
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Van Heijenoort, shortly after participating in our History of Logic conference, Spring 1980, at the University of Texas at Austin, donated a large amount of papers to the History of Logic Collection I had been developing since the 1960s, as part of the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center (HRC). Soon, however, a new administration of the HRC removed the history of science and of ideas at large from its priorities, contrary to the plans of the creator of the HRC, the great humanist Harry Ransom (for further background cf. [8]). The many boxes with Van Heijenoort’s Nachlass had to be relocated somewhere else in the huge UT campus. Van Heijenoort strongly complained, in a letter to the president of The University of Texas at Austin, July 23, 1983, wondering if it would not be “best to have the papers transferred to another institution”. UT Vice-president W. S. Livingston reassured (August 10, 1983) Van Heijenoort that his papers were “in good hands” and “well being cared for”. As of now, the UT Library catalogue (http://www.lib.utexas.edu/) shows under “Jean Van Heijenoort”, as item 7, “Van Heijenoort, Jean, Papers” including reprints, manuscripts, lectures, and research notes, as well as letters from other scholars. The materials are located at the Briscoe Center for American History-Archives of American Mathematics (“remote storage”, requiring 24-h notice).
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Angelelli, I. Frege’s Ancestral and Its Circularities. Log. Univers. 6, 477–483 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11787-012-0051-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11787-012-0051-z