Ramsey

This chapter provides a novel interpretation of Ramsey’s ‘Universals’ (1925a). Ramsey famously concluded that the particular–universal distinction cannot be a piece of a priori knowledge. This chapter argues that Ramsey’s conclusion in ‘Universals’ is the result of his deep engagement with the general themes of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus—that language disguises thought and that representation is pictorial. This chapter also argues, however, that to understand the details of Ramsey’s ‘Universals’, which have hitherto baffled commentators, we also need to look to Wittgenstein’s philosophy of logic, Whitehead’s philosophy of nature, and Russell’s introduction to the second edition of Principia Mathematica.