This work is the long awaited sequel to the author’s classic Frege: Philosophy of Language. But it is not exactly what the author originally planned. He tells us that when he resumed work on the book in the summer of 1989, after a long interruption, he decided to start afresh. The resulting work followed a different plan from the original drafts. The reader does not know what was lost by their abandonment, but clearly much was gained: The present work may (...) be the most compactly organized of Dummett’s philosophical books, and its value as commentary on Frege is enhanced by its being organized as a study of Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik and selected parts of Grundgesetze. Moreover, since Dummett has been thinking and writing about Frege for forty years, we have a single, mature chronological stage of his thought. (shrink)

This book is a systematic study of the uses of tropes in metaphysics. By a trope Bacon says he understands either a thing’s having a property or the property as localized to that thing. Bacon believes that entities belonging to the following ontological categories, among others, may all be constructed out of tropes: individuals, universals, states of affairs, and possible worlds. Evidently, if you have tropes, the other categories are all de trop. Bacon also uses trope theory to provide analyses (...) of time, causation, belief, and duty. (shrink)

Metaphysics is the thoroughly empirical science. Every item of experience must be evidence for or against any hypothesis of speculative cosmology, and every experienced object must be an exemplar and test case for the categories of analytic ontology. Technically, therefore, one example ought for our present theme to be as good as another. The more dignified examples, however, are darkened with a patina of tradition and partisanship, while some frivolous ones are peculiarly perspicuous. Let us therefore imagine three lollipops, made (...) by a candy man who buys sticks from a big supplier and molds candy knobs on them. Lollipop No. 1 has a red round peppermint head, No. 2 a brown round chocolate head, No. 3 a red square peppermint head. The circumstance here which mainly provokes theories of subsistence and inherence is similarity with difference: each lollipop is partially similar to each other and partially different from it. If we can give a good account of this circumstance in this affair we shall have the instrument to expose the anatomy of everything, from an electron or an apple to archangels and the World All. (shrink)