Sir Michael Anthony Eardley Dummett FBA (/ˈdʌmɪt/; 27 June 1925 – 27 December 2011) was an English academic described as "among the most significant British philosophers of the last century and a leading campaigner for racial tolerance and equality.

Born 27 June 1925 at his parents' house, 56, York Terrace, Marylebone, London, Dummett was the son of George Herbert Dummett (1880 – 12 November 1969), later of Shepherd's Cottage, Curridge, Berkshire, a silk merchant and rayon dealer, and Mabel Iris (1893–1980), daughter of the civil servant and conservationist Sir Sainthill Eardley-Wilmot (himself grandson of the politician Sir John Eardley-Wilmot, 1st Baronet).

[4][5][6] He 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.

He 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 his 1963 paper "Realism", he popularised a controversial approach to understanding the historical dispute between realist and other non-realist philosophy such as idealism, nominalism, irrealism.

Thus we may speak of realism or anti-realism with respect to other minds, the past, the future, universals, mathematical entities (such as natural numbers), moral categories, the material world, or even thought.

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.

He 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.

In the book, Dummett argued in favour of open borders and mass migration, except when states were "under special threat" and could therefore refuse entry.

He has written of his shock on finding anti-Semitic and "extreme right-wing" opinions in the diaries of Frege, to whose work he had devoted such a high proportion of his professional career.

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.

"The hundred years between about 1730 and 1830 were the heyday of the game of Tarot; it was played not only in northern Italy, eastern France, Switzerland, Germany and Austro-Hungary, but also in Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden and even Russia.

Throughout his career, Dummett published articles on various issues then facing the Catholic Church, mainly in the English Dominican journal New Blackfriars.

[6] Notable articles and exhibition catalogues include "Tarot Triumphant: Tracing the Tarot" in FMR, (Franco Maria Ricci International), January/February 1985; Pattern Sheets published by the International Playing Card Society; with Giordano Berti and Andrea Vitali, the catalogue Tarocchi: Gioco e magia alla Corte degli Estensi (Bologna, Nuova Alfa Editorale, 1987).