Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-t5tsf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-16T15:26:56.336Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

3 - On the Significance of the Burali-Forti Paradox

from Part I - Structuralism, Extendability, and Nominalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 January 2021

Geoffrey Hellman
Affiliation:
University of Minnesota
Get access

Summary

Often the Burali-Forti paradox is referred to as the paradox of “the largest ordinal,” which goes as follows. Let Ω be the class of all (von Neumann, say) ordinals.

Type
Chapter
Information
Mathematics and Its Logics
Philosophical Essays
, pp. 54 - 60
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Burgess, J., Hazen, A., and Lewis, D. [1991] “Appendix,” in Lewis, D., Parts of Classes (Oxford: Blackwell), pp. 121149.Google Scholar
Ferreirós, J. [2007] The early development of set theory. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/settheory-early/, last accessed September 2010.Google Scholar
Hellman, G. [1989] Mathematics without Numbers: Towards a Modal-Structural Interpretation (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Menzel, C. [1984] “Cantor and the Burali-Forti paradox,” The Monist 67: 92107.Google Scholar
Moore, G. H. and Garciadiego, A. [1981] “Burali-Forti’s paradox: a reappraisal of its origins,” Historia Mathematica 8: 319350.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Putnam, H. [1967] “Mathematics without foundations,” reprinted in Mathematics, Matter, and Method: Philosophical Papers, Volume I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), pp. 4359.Google Scholar
Zermelo, E. [1930] “Über Grenzzahlen und Mengenbereiche: Neue Untersuchungen über die Grundlagen der Mengenlehre,” Fundamenta Mathematicae, 16, 2947; translated as “On boundary numbers and domains of sets: new investigations in the foundations of set theory,” in Ewald, W., ed., From Kant to Hilbert: A Source Book in the Foundations of Mathematics, Volume 2 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 1219–1233.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×