Begriffsschrift

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Image:Begriffsschrift Titel.png

The title page of the original 1879 edition

Begriffsschrift is the title of a short book on logic by Gottlob Frege, published in 1879, and is also the name of the formal system set out in that book.

Begriffsschrift is usually translated as concept writing or concept notation; the full title of the book identifies it as "a formula language, modelled on that of arithmetic, of pure thought." The Begriffsschrift was arguably the most important publication in logic since Aristotle founded the subject. Frege's motivation for developing his formal approach to logic resembled Leibniz's motivation for his calculus ratiocinator. Frege went on to employ his logical calculus in his research on the foundations of mathematics, carried out over the next quarter century.

1 Notation and the system
2 The calculus in Frege's work
3 Influence on other works
4 A quote
5 References
6 See also
7 External links

Notation and the system

The calculus contains the first appearance of quantified variables, and is essentially classical bivalent second-order logic with identity, albeit presented using a highly idiosyncratic two-dimensional notation: connectives and quantifiers are written using lines connecting formulas, rather than the symbols ¬, ∧, and ∀ in use today. For example, that judgement B materially implies judgement A, i.e. Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable; please see math/README to configure.): B \rightarrow A

is written as .

In the first chapter, Frege defines basic ideas and notation, like proposition ("judgement"), the universal quantifier ("the generality"), the conditional, negation and the "sign for identity of content" Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable; please see math/README to configure.): \equiv

in the second chapter he declares nine formalized propositions as axioms.

Image:FregesBasicSignsInBegriffsschrift.PNG

In chapter 1, §5, Frege defines the conditional as follows:

"Let A and B refer to judgeable contents, then the four possibilities are:

(1)	A is asserted, B is asserted;
(2)	A is asserted, B is negated;
(3)	A is negated, B is asserted;
(4)	A is negated, B is negated.

Let

signify that the third of those possibilities does not obtain, but one of the three others does. So if we negate Image:Begriffsschrift connective2.png, that means the third possibility is valid, i.e. we negate A and assert B."

The calculus in Frege's work

Frege declared nine of his propositions to be axioms, and justified them by arguing informally that, given their intended meanings, they express intuitive truths. Re-expressed in contemporary notation, these axioms are:

Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable; please see math/README to configure.): \vdash \ \ A \rightarrow \left( B \rightarrow A \right)

Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable; please see math/README to configure.): \vdash \ \ \left[ \ A \rightarrow \left( B \rightarrow C \right) \ \right] \ \rightarrow \ \left[ \ \left( A \rightarrow B \right) \rightarrow \left( A \rightarrow C \right) \ \right]

Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable; please see math/README to configure.): \vdash \ \ \left[ \ D \rightarrow \left( B \rightarrow A \right) \ \right] \ \rightarrow \ \left[ \ B \rightarrow \left( D \rightarrow A \right) \ \right]

Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable; please see math/README to configure.): \vdash \ \ \left( B \rightarrow A \right) \ \rightarrow \ \left( \lnot A \rightarrow \lnot B \right)

Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable; please see math/README to configure.): \vdash \ \ \lnot \lnot A \rightarrow A

Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable; please see math/README to configure.): \vdash \ \ A \rightarrow \lnot \lnot A

Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable; please see math/README to configure.): \vdash \ \ \left( c=d \right) \rightarrow \left( f(c) = f(d) \right)

Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable; please see math/README to configure.): \vdash \ \ c = c

Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable; please see math/README to configure.): \vdash \ \ \left( \ \forall a : f(a) \ \right) \ \rightarrow \ f(c)

These are propositions 1, 2, 8, 28, 31, 41, 52, 54, and 58 in the Begriffschrifft. (1)-(3) govern material implication, (4)-(6) negation, (7) and (8) identity, and (9) the universal quantifier. (7) expresses Leibniz's indiscernibility of identicals, and (8) asserts that identity is reflexive.

All other propositions are deduced from (1)-(9) by invoking any of the following inference rules:

Modus ponens allows us to infer Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable; please see math/README to configure.): \vdash B

from Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable; please see math/README to configure.): \vdash A \to B
and Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable; please see math/README to configure.): \vdash A

The rule of generalization allows us to infer Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable; please see math/README to configure.): \vdash P \rightarrow \forall x : A(x)

from Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable; please see math/README to configure.): \vdash P \to A(x)
if x does not occur in P;

The rule of substitution, which Frege does not state explicitly. This rule is much harder to articulate precisely than the two preceding rules, and Frege invokes it in ways that are not obviously legitimate.

The main results of the third chapter, titled "Parts from a general series theory," concern what is now called the ancestral of a relation R. "b is an R-ancestor of a" is written "aR*b".

Frege applied the results from the Begriffschrifft, including those on the ancestral of a relation, in his later work The Foundations of Arithmetic. Thus, if we take xRy to be the relation y=x+1, then 0R*y is the predicate "y is a natural number." (133) says that if x, y, and z are natural numbers, then one of the following must hold: x<y, x=y, or y<x. This is the so-called "law of trichotomy".

Influence on other works

For a careful recent study of how the Begriffsschrift was reviewed in the German mathematical literature, see Vilko (1998). Some reviewers, especially Ernst Schroder, were on the whole favorable. All work in formal logic subsequent to the Begriffsschrift is indebted to it, because its second-order logic was the first formal logic capable of representing a fair bit of mathematics and natural language.

Some vestige of Frege's notation survives in the "turnstile" symbol Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable; please see math/README to configure.): \vdash

derived from his "Inhaltsstrich" ── and "Urteilsstrich" │. Frege used these symbols in the Begriffsschrift in the unified form ├─ for declaring that a proposition is (tautologically) true. He used the "Definitionsdoppelstrich" │├─ as a sign that a proposition is a definition. Furthermore, the negation sign  Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable; please see math/README to configure.): \neg
can be read as a combination of the horizontal Inhaltsstrich with a vertical negation stroke. This negation symbol was introduced by  Arend Heyting

^[1] in 1930 to distinguish intuitionistic from classical negation.

In the Tractatus Logico Philosophicus, Ludwig Wittgenstein pays homage to Frege by employing the term Begriffsschrift as a synonym for logical formalism.

Frege's 1892 essay, "Sense and reference" recants some of the conclusions of the Begriffschrifft about identity (denoted in mathematics by the = sign).

A quote

"If the task of philosophy is to break the domination of words over the human mind [...], then my concept notation, being developed for these purposes, can be a useful instrument for philosophers [...] I believe the cause of logic has been advanced already by the invention of this concept notation." (Preface to the Begriffsschrift)

References

^ Arend Heyting: "Die formalen Regeln der intuitionistischen Logik," in: Sitzungsberichte der preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, phys.-math. Klasse, 1930, S. 42-65.

Gottlob Frege. Begriffsschrift: eine der arithmetischen nachgebildete Formelsprache des reinen Denkens. Halle, 1879.

Translations:

Bynum, Terrell Ward, trans. and ed., 1972. Conceptual notation and related articles, with a biography and introduction. Oxford Uni. Press.
Bauer-Mengelberg, Stefan, 1967, "Concept Script" in Jean Van Heijenoort, ed., From Frege to Gödel: A Source Book in Mathematical Logic, 1879-1931. Harvard Uni. Press.

Secondary literature:

George Boolos, 1985. "Reading the Begriffsschrift", Mind 94: 331-44.
Ivor Grattan-Guinness, 2000. In Search of Mathematical Roots. Princeton University Press.
Risto Vilkko, 1998, "The reception of Frege's Begriffsschrift," Historia Mathematica 25(4): 412-22.