Crispin James Garth Wright (/raɪt/; born 21 December 1942) is a Britishphilosopher, who has written onneo-Fregean (neo-logicist)philosophy of mathematics,Wittgenstein's laterphilosophy, and on issues related totruth,realism,cognitivism,skepticism,knowledge, andobjectivity. He is Professor of Philosophical Research at theUniversity of Stirling, and taught previously at theUniversity of St Andrews,University of Aberdeen,New York University,Princeton University andUniversity of Michigan.^[7]

Wright was born in Surrey and was educated atBirkenhead School (1950–61) and atTrinity College, Cambridge, graduating in Moral Sciences in 1964 and taking aPhD in 1968. He took an OxfordBPhil in 1969 and was elected Prize Fellow and then Research Fellow atAll Souls College, Oxford, where he worked until 1978. He then moved to theUniversity of St. Andrews, where he was appointed Professor of Logic and Metaphysics and then the first Bishop Wardlaw University Professorship in 1997.^[8] From fall 2008 to spring 2023, he was professor in theDepartment of Philosophy atNew York University (NYU). He has also taught at theUniversity of Michigan,Oxford University,Columbia University, andPrinceton University. Crispin Wright was founder and director of Arché at the University of St. Andrews,^[9] which he left in September 2009 to take up leadership of the Northern Institute of Philosophy (NIP) at theUniversity of Aberdeen. Once NIP ceased operations in 2015,^[10] Wright moved to theUniversity of Stirling.

In the philosophy of mathematics, he is best known for his bookFrege's Conception of Numbers as Objects (1983), where he argues that Frege'slogicist project could be revived by removing theaxiom schema of unrestricted comprehension (sometimes referred to asBasic Law V) from theformal system.Arithmetic is then derivable insecond-order logic fromHume's principle. He gives informalarguments that (i)Hume'sprinciple plus second-order logic isconsistent, and (ii) from it one can produce theDedekind–Peano axioms.^[11] Both results wereproven informally by Gottlob Frege (Frege's Theorem), and would later be more rigorously proven byGeorge Boolos and Richard Heck. Wright is one of the major proponents ofneo-logicism, alongside his frequent collaboratorBob Hale. He has also writtenWittgenstein and the Foundations of Mathematics (1980).

In general metaphysics, his most important work isTruth and Objectivity (Harvard University Press, 1992). He argues in this book that there need be no single, discourse-invariant thing in whichtruth consists, making an analogy withidentity. There need only be someprinciples regarding how the truthpredicate can be applied to asentence, some 'platitudes' about true sentences. Wright also argues that in some contexts, probably includingmoral contexts,superassertibility will effectively function as a truth predicate. Hedefines a predicate as superassertible if and only if it is "assertible" in some state of information and then remains so no matter how that state of information is enlarged upon or improved. Assertiveness iswarrant by whatever standards inform thediscourse in question.^[12] Many of his most important papers in philosophy of language, epistemology, philosophical logic, meta-ethics, and the interpretation of Wittgenstein have been collected in the two volumes published byHarvard University Press in 2001 and 2003.

In epistemology, Wright has argued thatG. E. Moore's proof of anexternal world ("Here is one hand") is logically valid but cannot transmit warrant from its premise to the conclusion, as it instantiates a form of epistemic circularity called by him "warrant transmission failure".^[13] Wright has also developed a variant ofLudwig Wittgenstein's hinge epistemology, introduced in Wittgenstein'sOn Certainty as a response to radical skepticism. According to hinge epistemology, there are assumptions or presuppositions of any enquiry – called "hinge propositions" – that cannot themselves be rationally doubted, challenged, established or defended. Examples of hinges are the propositions that there are universal regularities in nature, that our sense organs are normally reliable, and that we do not live in a skeptical scenario (such as that in which we are globally hallucinated by a Cartesianevil demon or the more recentsimulation hypothesis). Wright instead contends that certain hinge propositions can actually be rationally held because there exists a type of non-evidential,a priori warrant – which Wright calls "epistemic entitlement" – for accepting them as true.^[14] In collaboration with epistemologist Luca Moretti, Wright has further developed this theory to the effect that we are entitled toignore the possibility that we live in a skeptical scenario.^[15]

• Fellow of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2012^[16]
• Leverhulme Trust Personal Research Professor, 1998–2003
• FRSE:Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, 1996
• FBA:Fellow of the British Academy, 1992^[17]
• British Academy Research Reader, 1990–2
• Fulbright scholar atPrinceton University, 1985-6
• Prize Fellow,All Souls College,Oxford, 1969–71

• Wittgenstein on the Foundations of Mathematics (Harvard University Press, 1980)
• Frege's Conception of Numbers as Objects (Humanities Press 1983)
• Truth and Objectivity (Harvard University Press, 1992)
• Realism, Meaning, and Truth, 2nd edition (Blackwell 1993)
• The Reason's Proper Study (co-authored withBob Hale) (Oxford University Press, 2001)
• Rails to Infinity (Harvard University Press, 2001)
• Saving the Differences (Harvard University Press, 2003)
• Expression and Self-Knowledge (co-authored withDorit Bar-On) (Wiley-Blackwell, 2023)

• "NYU Arts & Science: Crispin Wright". Archived fromthe original on 28 January 2016.
• "Northern Institute of Philosophy: Crispin Wright". University of Aberdeen. Archived fromthe original on 2 December 2013.
• "Philosophers on Film: Crispin Wright". The Philosopher's Eye. 4 December 2012.
• Coliva, Annalisa (8 July 2013)."Mind, Meaning, and Knowledge: Themes from the Philosophy of Crispin Wright". University of Notre Dame.
• "Works by Crispin Wright". PhilPapers.
• Wright, Crispin."VAGUENESS: A FIFTH COLUMN APPROACH"(PDF). Archived fromthe original(PDF) on 3 June 2016. Retrieved11 July 2013.

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