This conclusion, and indeed this book, are not a summation of Dummett's major contributions to philosophy. I am not in a position to offer such a summary, not having an encompassing view of his work. But neither is anyone else in such a position. Dummett is an active philosopher who is temperamentally disposed to question and rethink many of his most basic assumptions and views. It would take an unholy alliance of arrogance and recklessness to anticipate the future direction his philosophy might take. So, more modestly, what are some of the broader lessons of this book's engagement with his philosophy?

Dummett's approach to philosophy is both distinctive and, in some respects, out of vogue. Although he is a theoretical philosopher he is acutely aware of the dangers of vacuously theorizing in philosophy and he sees philosophical theorizing as quite distinct from scientific theorizing. Dummett's philosophy is an attempt to understand ourselves and the way we represent the world. We aim at uncovering a certain class of truths and thus employ the most powerful elements of our cognitive architecture: for instance, systematic theory building and the techniques of mathematical logic. But we aim to understand ourselves from our own point of view; we don't seek an understanding of ourselves as natural phenomena. Moreover the philosophical attempt to understand is not a self-contained, purely reflective business. It emerges from, and, in some ways, is continuous with, an essential feature of normal human life, namely, the way we reflectively engage with one another and with our practices.