The Philosophy of Michael Kremer: Frege, Wittgenstein, Ryle, and the Analytic Tradition

*RECORDINGS* The recordings of the conference can be found here: 

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Gpym9Yqzue9F6iHG9tPRBhspq36L2R6Y?usp=sharing

*UPDATE* Ryan Simonelli will replace Kristin Boyce on Saturday morning.

Simonelli's presentation title will be: "Consequence, Coherence, and Consequence Again: Rethinking the Philosophical Significance of the Sequent Calculus"

In the spring of the current academic year, on May 19-21, the Department of Philosophy will host a conference to honor the work of Professor Michael Kremer, who is retiring at the end of the year. Over the course of his distinguished career, Professor Kremer has made a range of profound and lasting contributions to different areas of philosophy. His most influential contributions, however, will arguably prove to be his twenty or so articles on the history of analytic philosophy, especially those focusing on the interpretation, reception, and continuing relevance for contemporary philosophy of the ideas of the following three figures: (1) Gottlob Frege – above all, his conceptions of logic, truth, judgment, sense and reference; (2) Ludwig Wittgenstein – above all, the structure and aim of his early book, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and the distinction between saying and showing that it presents and how that distinction serves to illuminate the nature, at one and the same time, of logic and ethics; and (3) Gilbert Ryle – above, all, his distinction between knowing how and knowing that and how it opened for analytic philosophy an appreciation both of the differences and of the underlying unity of practical and theoretical forms of knowledge. Kremer has also done important work that combines these figures – especially his articles showing how early Wittgenstein’s thought emerges from an engagement with Frege’s ideas and how Ryle played a crucial role in the reception, dissemination, and interpretation of both Frege and Wittgenstein. Also relevant for the conference will be Kremer’s various essays engaging the question “What is the History of Philosophy Good For”? – as well as the manner in which his own more detailed work on the history of analytic tradition both exemplifies what excellent work in the history of philosophy is and how it serves to unblock and advance progress on topics at the forefront of contemporary philosophy.