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Frank Plumpton Ramsey

Frank Plumpton Ramsey was born in February 1903 and died in January 1930 just before his 27th birthday. In his short life he produced an extraordinary amount of profound and original work in economics, mathematics, logic and philosophy. For a brief account of his life and work, see the entry on him in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford: Oxford University Press (2004). See also 'Frank Ramsey: a biography' in this collection.

The first published collection of Ramsey's philosophical work is The Foundations of Mathematics and Other Logical Essays, ed. R. B. Braithwaite, London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Trubner (1931). There is a slightly different selection in his Philosophical Papers, ed. D. H. Mellor, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (1990).

Besides the biography mentioned above, this collection comprises a selection of the MSS by Ramsey of which microfilms are held in the University Library.

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Now showing 1 - 6 of 6
  • ItemOpen Access
    Probability and Partial Belief
    (Kegan Paul, Trench & Trubner, 1931) Ramsey, Frank Plumpton
    This note is a postscript to Ramsey's 'Truth and Probability'. It replaces that article's psychological reading of subjective probability with a reading of it as a consistency condition on the theory that we act to maximise expected utility.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Causal Qualities
    (Kegan Paul, Trench & Trubner, 1931) Ramsey, Frank Plumpton
    This note is, in effect, a postscript to Ramsey's 'Theories'. It argues that to assert the existence of a causal quality (e.g. mass) is merely to affirm the consequences of a theory that invokes it.
  • ItemOpen Access
    General Propositions and Causality
    (Kegan Paul, Trench & Trubner, 1931) Ramsey, Frank Plumpton
    This article rebuts Ramsey's earlier theory, in 'Universals of Law and of Fact', of how laws of nature differ from other true generalisations. It argues that our laws are rules we use in judging 'if I meet an F I shall regard it as a G'. This temporal asymmetry is derived from that of cause and effect and used to distinguish what's past as what we can know about without knowing our present intentions.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Universals of Law and of Fact
    (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978) Ramsey, Frank Plumpton
    The article argues that universals of law, i.e. the laws of nature, are the general axioms of a deductive system of all knowledge, and their deductive consequences. Universals of fact are generalisations deducible from these together with particular facts.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Knowledge
    (Kegan Paul, Trench & Trubner, 1931) Ramsey, Frank Plumpton
    This note argues that a belief is knowledge if it's true, certain (i.e. a full belief) and obtained by a reliable process.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Frank Ramsey: a biography
    (BBC, 1978-02-27) Mellor, David Hugh
    The article is derived from the accompanying radio portrait. It was published in 1995 in Philosophy 70, 243-262, and is reproduced here by permission of the Editor. Page numbers after quotations from Ramsey refer to F. P. Ramsey: Philosophical Papers, edited by D. H. Mellor, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
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