Bob Hale,

FRSE Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE) is an award granted to individuals that the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland's national academy of science and letters, judged to be "eminently distinguished in their subject". This so ...

(1945 – 12 December 2017) was a British philosopher, known for his contributions to the development of the neo-Fregean (neo-logicist)

philosophy of mathematics The philosophy of mathematics is the branch of philosophy that studies the assumptions, foundations, and implications of mathematics. It aims to understand the nature and methods of mathematics, and find out the place of mathematics in peopl ...

in collaboration with

Crispin Wright Crispin James Garth Wright (; born 21 December 1942) is a British philosopher, who has written on neo-Fregean (neo-logicist) philosophy of mathematics, Wittgenstein's later philosophy, and on issues related to truth, realism, cognitivism, ...

, and for his works in modality and

philosophy of language In analytic philosophy, philosophy of language investigates the nature of language and the relations between language, language users, and the world. Investigations may include inquiry into the nature of meaning, intentionality, reference, the ...

Career

Hale obtained a BPhil in Philosophy in 1967 from

Linacre College Linacre College is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in the UK whose members comprise approximately 50 fellows and 550 postgraduate students. Linacre is a diverse college in terms of both the international composition of its me ...

University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the world's second-oldest university in contin ...

. From 2006 until his death, he was a professor of philosophy in the department of philosophy at the

University of Sheffield The University of Sheffield (informally Sheffield University or TUOS) is a public university, public research university in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England. Its history traces back to the foundation of Sheffield Medical School in 1828, Firth C ...

. Prior to that, he taught in the

University of Glasgow , image = UofG Coat of Arms.png , image_size = 150px , caption = Coat of arms Flag , latin_name = Universitas Glasguensis , motto = la, Via, Veritas, Vita , ...

, the University of St. Andrews and the

University of Lancaster , mottoeng = Truth lies open to all , established = , endowment = £13.9 million , budget = £317.9 million , type = Public , city = Bailrigg, City of Lancaster , country = England , coor = , campus = Bailrigg , faculty = ...

. Hale produced the first published neo-Fregean

construction of the real numbers In mathematics, there are several equivalent ways of defining the real numbers. One of them is that they form a complete ordered field that does not contain any smaller complete ordered field. Such a definition does not prove that such a complete ...

. In his book (''Necessary Beings''), he argues for an essentialist theory of necessity and possibility.

Notable positions

British Academy The British Academy is the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and the social sciences. It was established in 1902 and received its royal charter in the same year. It is now a fellowship of more than 1,000 leading scholars span ...

Research Reader (1997–9) * Fellow of the

Royal Society of Edinburgh The Royal Society of Edinburgh is Scotland's national academy of science and letters. It is a registered charity that operates on a wholly independent and non-partisan basis and provides public benefit throughout Scotland. It was established i ...

(from 2000) * President of the

Aristotelian Society The Aristotelian Society for the Systematic Study of Philosophy, more generally known as the Aristotelian Society, is a philosophical society in London. History Aristotelian Society was founded at a meeting on 19 April 1880, at 17 Bloomsbury Squar ...

(2002–3) * Leverhulme Senior Research Fellow (2009–11)

Selected works

* (1987) ''Abstract Objects''. Oxford:

Blackwell Publishing Wiley-Blackwell is an international scientific, technical, medical, and scholarly publishing business of John Wiley & Sons. It was formed by the merger of John Wiley & Sons Global Scientific, Technical, and Medical business with Blackwell Publish ...

. * (1997) Co-editor with Crispin Wright. ''The Blackwell Companion to the Philosophy of Language''. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. * (2001) With Crispin Wright. ''The Reason's Proper Study: Essays towards a Neo-Fregean Philosophy of Mathematics''. Oxford:

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print book ...

. * (2013) "Necessary Beings: An Essay on Ontology, Modality, and the relations between them" Oxford:

.Reviews of ''Necessary Beings: An Essay on Ontology, Modality, and the relations between them'': * *

References

External links

Interview
at 3:AM Magazine {{DEFAULTSORT:Hale, Bob 1945 births 2017 deaths 20th-century British philosophers 21st-century British philosophers Philosophers of language Philosophers of mathematics Academics of the University of Sheffield Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Presidents of the Aristotelian Society