27 Facts About Michael Dummett

Michael Dummett wrote on the history of analytic philosophy, notably as an interpreter of Frege, and made original contributions particularly in the philosophies of mathematics, logic, language and metaphysics.

Michael Dummett was known for his work on truth and meaning and their implications to debates between realism and anti-realism, a term he helped to popularize.

Michael Dummett devised the Quota Borda system of proportional voting, based on the Borda count.

Michael Dummett studied at Sandroyd School in Wiltshire, at Winchester College as a scholar, and at Christ Church, Oxford, which awarded him a major scholarship in 1943.

Michael Dummett was called up for military service that year and served until 1947, first as a private in the Royal Artillery, then in the Intelligence Corps in India and Malaya.

In 1979, Michael Dummett became Wykeham Professor of Logic at Oxford, a post he held until retiring in 1992.

Michael Dummett has held teaching posts at Birmingham University, UC Berkeley, Stanford University, Princeton University, and Harvard University.

Michael Dummett won the Rolf Schock prize in 1995, and was knighted in 1999.

Michael Dummett classed all the latter as anti-realist and argued that the fundamental disagreement between realist and anti-realist was over the nature of truth.

The novelty of Michael Dummett's approach consisted in seeing these disputes as at base analogous to the dispute between intuitionism and Platonism in the philosophy of mathematics.

Michael Dummett espoused semantic anti-realism, a position suggesting that truth cannot serve as the central notion in the theory of meaning and must be replaced by verifiability.

Michael Dummett was politically active, through his work as a campaigner against racism.

Michael Dummett let his philosophical career stall in order to influence civil rights for minorities during what he saw as a crucial period of reform in the late 1960s.

Michael Dummett worked on the theory of voting, which led to his introduction of the Quota Borda system.

Michael Dummett drew heavily on his work in this area in writing his book On Immigration and Refugees, an account of what justice demands of states in relationship to movement between states.

Michael Dummett has written of his shock on finding anti-Semitic and fascist opinions in the diaries of Frege, to whose work he had devoted such a high proportion of his professional career.

Michael Dummett wrote a shorter overview of the theory of voting, for the educated public.

Michael Dummett was a scholar in the field of card-game history, with numerous books and articles to his credit.

Michael Dummett was a founding member of the International Playing-Card Society, in whose journal The Playing-Card he regularly published opinions, research and reviews of current literature on the subject; he was a founder of the Accademia del Tarocchino Bolognese in Bologna.

Michael Dummett laid the foundation for most subsequent research on the game of tarot, including exhaustive accounts of the rules of all hitherto known forms of the game.

Michael Dummett showed that the middle of the 18th century saw a great development in the game of Tarot, including a modernized deck with French suit-signs, and without the medieval allegories that interest occultists.

In 1987, Michael Dummett collaborated with Giordano Berti and Andrea Vitali on the project of a great Tarot exhibition at Castello Estense in Ferrara.

In 1944, Michael Dummett was received into the Roman Catholic Church and remained a practising Catholic.

Michael Dummett published an essay in the bulletin of the Adoremus Society on the subject of liturgy, and a philosophical essay defending the intelligibility of the Catholic Church's teaching on the Eucharist.

Michael Dummett retired in 1992 and was knighted in 1999 for "services to philosophy and to racial justice".

Michael Dummett received the Lakatos Award in the philosophy of science in 1994.

Michael Dummett died on 27 December 2011 aged 86, leaving his wife Ann and three sons and two daughters.