Bob Hale (philosopher)

This article is about the British philosopher. For the baseball player, see Bob Hale (baseball player).

Bob Hale, FRSE (1945 – 12 December 2017)^[3] was a British philosopher, known for his contributions to the development of the neo-Fregean (neo-logicist) philosophy of mathematics in collaboration with Crispin Wright, and for his works in modality and philosophy of language.^[4]

Bob Hale FRSE
Born	1945
Died	12 December 2017 (aged 72)
Education
Alma mater	University of Oxford
Philosophical work
Era	Contemporary philosophy
Region	Western philosophy
School	Analytic philosophy Neo-logicism (Scottish School)[1]
Main interests	Philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of language, modality
Notable ideas	Neo-logicism, essentialist theory of modality[2]

Career

Hale obtained a BPhil in Philosophy in 1967 from Linacre College, University of Oxford.^[5] From 2006 until his death, he was a professor of philosophy in the department of philosophy at the University of Sheffield. Prior to that, he taught in the University of Glasgow, the University of St. Andrews and the University of Lancaster.

Hale produced the first published neo-Fregean construction of the real numbers.^[4][6] In his book (Necessary Beings), he argues for an essentialist theory of necessity and possibility.^[6]

Notable positions

• British Academy Research Reader (1997–9)
• Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (from 2000)^[6]
• President of the Aristotelian Society (2002–3)^[7]
• Leverhulme Senior Research Fellow (2009–11)

Selected works

• (1987) Abstract Objects. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.^[8]
• (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.^[9]
• (2013) "Necessary Beings – An Essay on Ontology, Modality, and the Relations Between Them" Oxford: Oxford University Press.^[10]