Philosophy of Language notes
Meeting #1 Brad A-G 2013
Questions to be answered:
• What, for Frege, is a thought?
• Can we define truth, according to Frege? If so, what’s the definition? If not, why not?
Frege’s The Thought: A Logical Inquiry
Question: Is Frege concerned with the act of thinking or the thing thought?
Old view (pt. of “Modern Semantic Tradition” (roughly 17th – 19th century, before Frege and Russell)
The meaning of an expression is constituted by ideas, images or impressions that are in the head of speaker/thinkers. The picture: A linguistic impression signifies an idea in the head of a speaker and that idea represents a referent.
2 tenets underlying the view:
T1: first-personal authority about meaning—speaker/thinker is autonomous as to the meanings of her words.
T2: Meaning is constituted by subjective psychological content—the meaning of an expression is a mental image, an idea, etc. Cf. Locke: words “stand for nothing but ideas in the head of him that uses them” (Book III, ii, 2).
Frege attacks T2; Wittgenstein attacks T1. It is now generally thought that meaning cannot be identified with, or constructed from, private, psychological content
(Re T1: Wittgenstein attacks the idea of a “Private Language”, where, as Wittgenstein described the notion of a Private Language, it is one in which “The words of this language are to refer to what can be known only to the speaker; to his immediate, private, sensations. So another cannot understand the language.”)
Reasons why a consideration of the Modern Semantic Tradition is important:
(i) Frege and Russell’s work in semantics and logic, in the interest of proving the logicist thesis, is spurred, to some extent, by a dissatisfaction with extant conceptions of meaning.
(ii) The danger of an act-object ambiguity in semantics
Reminder: Act-Object Distinction
The word, “thought” exhibits what is sometimes called an act-object ambiguity. You have an act-object ambiguity when a word X can
Questions to be answered:
• What, for Frege, is a thought?
• Can we define truth, according to Frege? If so, what’s the definition? If not, why not?
Frege’s The Thought: A Logical Inquiry
Question: Is Frege concerned with the act of thinking or the thing thought?
Old view (pt. of “Modern Semantic Tradition” (roughly 17th – 19th century, before Frege and Russell)
The meaning of an expression is constituted by ideas, images or impressions that are in the head of speaker/thinkers. The picture: A linguistic impression signifies an idea in the head of a speaker and that idea represents a referent.
2 tenets underlying the view:
T1: first-personal authority about meaning—speaker/thinker is autonomous as to the meanings of her words.
T2: Meaning is constituted by subjective psychological content—the meaning of an expression is a mental image, an idea, etc. Cf. Locke: words “stand for nothing but ideas in the head of him that uses them” (Book III, ii, 2).
Frege attacks T2; Wittgenstein attacks T1. It is now generally thought that meaning cannot be identified with, or constructed from, private, psychological content
(Re T1: Wittgenstein attacks the idea of a “Private Language”, where, as Wittgenstein described the notion of a Private Language, it is one in which “The words of this language are to refer to what can be known only to the speaker; to his immediate, private, sensations. So another cannot understand the language.”)
Reasons why a consideration of the Modern Semantic Tradition is important:
(i) Frege and Russell’s work in semantics and logic, in the interest of proving the logicist thesis, is spurred, to some extent, by a dissatisfaction with extant conceptions of meaning.
(ii) The danger of an act-object ambiguity in semantics
Reminder: Act-Object Distinction
The word, “thought” exhibits what is sometimes called an act-object ambiguity. You have an act-object ambiguity when a word X can