Abstract
The problems involved with sense and reference differ significantly from those dealt with in the previous chapter. The problems we dealt with there involved questions of logic and logical calculus, which Frege indubitably considered to be ontologically relevant; the problems we are about to discuss are more of an epistemological nature. And it is an epistemological reflection which Frege offers in ‘On Sense and Reference’ where he deals with the essence of equality (identity), which had already been treated in some detail in the Begriffsschrift. Frege’s procedure can be reproduced as follows. If one understands identity as a relation between objects — or, more precisely, of an object to itself — a true judgement of the form “a = b” will express the same relation of identity as a judgement of the form “a = a”. The two judgements will not differ in cognitive value, in direct contradiction to the occurrence of judgements of the form “a = b” which are not able to be established a priori like the analytic judgement “a = a”.
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References
Rivetti Barbò, F., ‘Il “Senso e significato” di Frege: Ricerca teoretica sul senso e designato delle espressioni, e sui valori di verità’, in Studi di filosofia e di storia della filosofia in onore di Francesco Olgiati, Milano 1962.
This happens when a sense is attributed to sentences, although Frege’s present analysis of direct and indirect discourse should also include it. The formulations of the text consciously avoid a limitation to single words, which are only considered as special cases. While there is no objection to this procedure in the case of direct discourse, in that of indirect discourse one has to object that the obvious prehension of thoughts as sense of a sentence is close to being a petitio principii. Of course, this becomes obvi-ous only later when Frege wants to expand the sense-reference schema to sentences. In that context he renounces a demonstration of the shift of sense and reference in the case of indirect discourse because he thinks he has already taken care of it. Cf. note 11, below.
One can be sure that a semantic system, in which sense and reference of sentence and sentential components were unconnected and incomparable, would be quickly rejected as ‘inadequate’, ‘useless’, ‘pointless’ (etc., according to the philosophical position of the one judging). Whence it is wise to take up this problem before going on to the usual questions of semantics (whether sentential or verbal sense is prior, etc.).
By ‘thought’ Frege does not mean a mental act: “not the subjective act of thinking but the objective content thereof, which is able to be the common property of several thinkers” (SuB, 32). And Frege’s use of the word ‘thought’ is not as unusual as is often maintained. Thus, one often says that two inventors came ‘on the same thought at almost the same time’, without having in mind the mental images. This is generally what is implied by composed thoughts in the Fregean context.
One could see in the question “Is this thought to be seen as its [i.e., the sentence’s] sense or as its reference?” (SuB, 32) only an expression of an attempt at both, in order to ‘exhaust’ them and then come back to ‘neither’. This ‘rescue’ is excluded by the fact that a short time later Frege concludes from the non-identity of thought and sentential reference to the identity of thought an d sentential sense. — Carnap is excellent at detecting and clarifying the presuppositions of Fregean argumentation. Cf. his Meaning and Necessity. A Study in Semantics and Modal Logic, Chicago 1947 (2nd ed.: 1956, reprint 1960).
That by sentences here are meant only meaningful sentences is understood since only about them can one ask the question concerning sentential sense and sentential reference.
Russell, B., ‘The Logical and Arithmetical Doctrines of Frege’, Appendix A in The Principles of Mathematics, London 1903 (2nd ed.: 1937), pp. 475–496, resp. 501–522.
This strange formulation, according to which not only an object cannot work as sense but also sense and object seem to be mutually exclusive, will have to be analyzed later on.
We will save mention of the matter of partial ideas in the case of truth-values for the last chapter. It is of little import for the problem of sense and reference.
Cf. note 2, in this chapter.
Frege’s view that this proof has already been done for sentences, too, is suspect in view of our note 2 in this chapter. It is true that Frege provided a formulation of the earlier statement on indirect discourse; but we do not think this should be used as long as it has not been completely proved that Frege’s concepts of ‘sense’ and ‘reference’ are just as applicable to sentences as to grammatical names and definite descriptions.
It is characteristic of thoughts, that one can affirm that “A command and a request are not thoughts but they stand on the same level with thoughts” (SuB, 38). This same view is to be found unchanged in the article `The Thought’ (1918–19): “One will not deny to an imperative sentence a sense; but this sense is not of the kind that involves the question of truth. This is why I would not call the sense of an imperative sentence a thought. In this same way, request and demand sentences are to be excluded” (Ged., 62). While the remark of 1892 obviously includes the sense of questions as distinct from thoughts, Frege’s analysis of interrogative sentences provides another answer in 1918–19: “Interrogative and declarative sentences contain the same thoughts; but the declarative sentence includes an extra, namely the assertion. And the interrogative contains an extra, namely the request.” The two, therefore, have the same content and this “is the thought or at least contains a thought” (Ged., 62). According to Frege, the connection is such that already in the construction of a sentential question we fully include the thought which is to be designated in the answer. Cf. Wells, R.S., ‘Frege’s Ontology’, The Review of Metaphysics 4 (1950–51), 537–573, especially § 19, where there are indications of the agreement of Frege’s later views with the latest analyses.
Frege here affirms the presence of an indefinitely indicating component for nominal clauses also (SuB, 43). This is confused. Frege takes up an indication already mentioned in the case of the sentence ‘(he) who discovered the elliptical form of planetary orbits died in poverty’. Frege holds that there is a case where “the grammatical subject ‘who’ has no independent sense and only communicates relations to the ‘died in poverty’ ” (SuB, 39). It seems wrong to us to see in this case an ‘indefinitely indicating component’, like that found in the case of the other clauses; since this would imply that the reference of the subordinate clause is incomplete — which is not the case since Kepler is this reference. The ‘who’ does relate to the final clause but the relation is purely grammatical and not logical since the nominal clause has no other relation to the whole sentence than is had by any other subject (e.g., ‘Kepler’ in this case). It is conceivable that Frege let himself be misled by the double function of ‘who’. It is both reference-point for the predicate and grammatical subject. The difference between the two functions is clear if we take the complete form of the sentence: ‘he, who discovered the elliptical form of planetary orbits, died in poverty’. One can see that the ‘who’, which communicates the relation to the final clause, is precisely not that which is included in the subordinate clause which, in turn, refers not to the final clause but to the initial ‘he’. Therefore, while it is correct that the sense of the subordinate clause is an incomplete thought, it is not an incomplete entity in the sense of the doctrine of function and object, as Frege’s talk of an ‘indefinitely indicating component’ seems to imply. The impossibility of comparing these cases will be made clear in the text by the treatment of conditional clauses. On the latter, cf. also Geom. IV, 377, 379, 400.
One could attempt to interpret Frege’s talk of ‘indefinitely indicating components’ (cf. previous note) as having a different meaning than the same expression in the articles on function and object. ‘Indeterminacy’ would then be characteristic of any expression, in which the subject-position is not occupied by a (grammatical) proper name, so that descriptions and nominal clauses would be as undetermined as expressions with empty places. It seems to us, however, that this interpretation cannot be justified. It should be noted, on the other hand, that it cannot be refuted by reference to Frege’s later equivalence of “proper names, or something similar” (SuB, 45) since in the text in question the logical proper names are not opposed to expressions with indefinitely indicating components but to the components themselves.
Despite the introductory ‘either’, he means non-exclusive ‘or’!
It is not completely clear why Frege does not follow the previous case in finding three partial thoughts. In any case, nothing seems to exclude the assumption that the final clause expresses the thought that iron cannot float on water.
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Thiel, C. (1968). The Article ‘On Sense and Reference’. In: Sense and Reference in Frege’s Logic. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2981-9_6
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