Freges sense reference distinction, freges theory of thought, freges anti psychologism and freges theory of demonstratives. Philosophy of language philosophy of language freges revolution. Freges innovations provided the basis of modern logic, but his influence in other areas should not be understated. This article describes wittgenstein and freges personal relationship and examines how much we know. I do not think a proper reaction to your criticism of freges posit the reference of a sentence is its truthvalue can be made in the stackexchange format.
Philosophers today still find that work insightful. The poverty of philosophy as a science throughout its history philosophy has been thought to be a member of a community of intellectual disciplines united by their common pursuit of knowledge. Gottlob frege 18481925 is most celebrated today for his contributions to mathematical logic and the philosophy of language. Lecture notes introduction to philosophy of language. Alexander miller is professor of philosophy at the university of birmingham, uk. Gottlob frege arguments of the philosophers by hans d. We shall begin by discussing some central topics of freges philosophy of language. Introduction gottlob freges impacts on the philosophy of language are so fundamental and numerous so that it is difficult to fathom a field without them. Freges argument about the sense and reference of a sentence. Freges on sense and reference philosophy of language. The indirect sense of a sentence is its meaning to the subject of the main clause thought. Reliable information about the coronavirus covid19 is available from the world health organization current situation, international travel. White of freges work in the german collection hermes et al. This highly acclaimed book is a major contribution to the philosophy of language as well as a systematic interpretation of frege, indisputably the father of analytic philosophy.
Friedrich ludwig gottlob frege 1848 1925 was a german mathematician, logician and philosopher, who helped found both modern mathematical logic and the beginnings of the analytic philosophy movement although his work was little known and poorly received during his lifetime, it has exerted a fundamental and farreaching influence on 20th century philosophy. There are two common reactions to freges claim that some senses and thoughts are private. Philosophy of mathematics 1991, it is dummetts chief contribution to frege scholarship. See heck and may for further discussion of freges contribution to the philosophy of language. We also take up what is problematic in the issue of translation from culture to culture, from indigenous language to metropolitan language, and from oral to written discourse. He was a greek philosopher and is often referred to as the first teacher or the very first true scientist. Gottlob frege by individual philosopher philosophy. Nevertheless, given the expository purposes of this article, thats mostly what i will do. Course description we shall begin by discussing some central topics of freges philosophy of language. Freges contribution to philosophy of language oxford handbooks. Aug 25, 2019 it is a theorem of logic that nothing falls under this concept. Studies in phenomenological and classical realism general editors. It resolved the many tensions that lingered in frege s and russell s work, marking an end to the early period of analytic philosophy.
Freges theory of reference university of notre dame. While pursuing his investigations into mathematics and logic and quite possibly, in order to ground those investigations, frege was led to develop a philosophy of language. Language use is a remarkable fact about human beings. Freges theorem and foundations for arithmetic stanford. See heck and may 2006 for further discussion of freges contribution to the philosophy of language. This article discusses freges apparently metaphysical doctrine that concepts are unsaturated. Freges sensereference distinction, freges theory of thought, freges anti psychologism and freges theory of demonstratives. He worked as a mathematics professor at the university of jena, and is understood by many to be the father of analytic philosophy, concentrating on the philosophy of language, logic, and mathematics.
This engaging and accessible introduction to the philosophy of language is an unrivalled guide to one of the liveliest and most challenging areas of philosophy and the new edition captures the vibrant energy of current debate. These papers, unlike most of frege s writings, seem to be straightforwardly about language. These philosophers inspired both the development of analytic philosophy and various philosophical approaches to the study of language. But this comment does place a burden on the reader who takes a contribution to. The book clearly explains and assesses freges work in. In freges time, psychologism was exemplified by the empiricism of john stuart mill. As such, compositionality ranks as the distinctively linguistic contribution freges philosophy of logic makes to philosophy of language, not just as a guiding maxim but also in particular aspects of freges more detailed proposals.
Gottlob frege 18481925 is most celebrated today for his contributions to. Frege was a mathematician, and he thought that mathematicians should be able to explain what numbers are. According to locke, ideas exist independently of words, which serve merely as their vehicles. Begriffsschrift german for, roughly, conceptscript is a book on logic by gottlob frege, published in 1879, and the formal system set out in that book. An i language is at least what a grammar that met our second, higher goal, would say it is. Freges work has gone on to influence contemporary work across a broad spectrum, including the philosophy of mathematics and logic, the philosophy of language, and the philosophy of mind. As any survey of collections on the philosophy of language would suggest, much of frege s influence on the philosophy of language can be found in two papers that i have not yet mentioned, on sense and meaning and thoughts. Oclcs webjunction has pulled together information and resources to assist library staff as they consider how to handle coronavirus. Philosophy of language chapter one the logical study of language 7 1. Gottlob freges contributions to philosophy of language are so numerous and so fundamental that it is difficult to imagine the field without them.
Privatists accept both private senses and thoughts, while intersubjectivists dont accept either. Find materials for this course in the pages linked along the left. Unless such an account could be supplied for a particular language. There are two common reactions to frege s claim that some senses and thoughts are private. To understand the importance of freges contribution we will focus on dummetts interpretation. Frege and russell were concerned with the semantic as well as syntactic aspect of language. Gottlob frege s contributions to philosophy of language are so numerous and so fundamental that it is difficult to imagine the field without them.
His contributions to the philosophy of language include. Gottlob frege german mathematician and philosopher britannica. The theorem is the central contribution of gottlob freges formal work on arithmetic. First, he argued persuasively that there can be only finitely many primitives in a language, otherwise the language could not be learned by a finite being. Freges theorem and foundations for arithmetic first published wed jun 10, 1998. This paper outline a brief philosophical way of the nature of human language, from plato 427347 bc to portroyal grammar. International library of the philosophy of education bibliography.
Davidsons contribution to the philosophy of language. Numerous and frequentlyupdated resource results are available from this search. Begriffsschrift is usually translated as concept writing or concept notation. An investigation of freges various contributions to the study of language, focusing on three of his most famous doctrines. Working on the borderline between philosophy and mathematicsviz. Locke s emphasis on individual words, as well as the foundational role he assigned to psychology, were attacked by the german logician gottlob frege 18481925, who is generally regarded as the father of modern philosophy of language. According to the context principle, the basic unit of sense is the proposition, or sentence.
An explanation of gottlob freges solutions to freges puzzle and the problem of propositional attitude reports using freges theory of sense. Frege is one of the founders of analytic philosophy, whose work on logic and language gave rise to the linguistic turn in philosophy. Philosophy of language remains indispensable for an understanding of contemporary philosophy. Philosophy of language, second edition dummett, michael on. Pdf freges contribution to philosophy of language researchgate. Truth and meaning it is conceded by most philosophers of language, and recently even by some linguists, that a satisfactory theory of meaning must give an account of how the meanings of sentences depend upon the meanings of words. Freges contribution to philosophy of language oxford. Lebenwerkzeit 2001 has already been available, and interpretations of freges philosophy as well as editions and. Freges contribution to philosophy of language semantic scholar. Notes to gottlob frege stanford encyclopedia of philosophy.
Frege, kant, and the logic in logicism 27 would have been open to kant to claim that freges begriffsschrift is not a proper logic at all, but a kind of abstract combinatorics, and that the meaning of the iterated quantifiers can only be grasped through construction in pure intuition. The extension of a concept f records just those objects which f maps to the true. Freges contribution to philosophy of language philpapers. The direct sense of a sentence is the stand alone meaning of the sentence, i. Freges logical works were revolutionary, and are often taken to represent the fundamental break between contemporary approaches and the older, aristotelian tradition. This idea has inspired research in the field for over a century and we discuss it in what follows. Routledge encyclopedia of philosophy philosophy of language. Donald davidson made a number of important contributions to philosophy of logic, language, and mind, and in this chapter some of them are presented. The interpretation of frege s philosophy dummett, michael on. Pdf freges contribution to philosophy of language robert. The first section below considers why a philosophical investigation of language mattered at all for frege, the mathematician, and why it should have mattered to him. This highly acclaimed book is a major contribution to the philosophy of language as well as a systematic interpretation of frege.
Psychologism is a natural outgrowth of a thoroughgoing empiricism or naturalism that reduces all questions to empirical questions, questions of natural science. Philosophy of communication combines two ambiguous disciplines, philosophy and communication. Philosophy sociology nonfiction john perry offers a rethinking of gottlob freges seminal contributions to philosophy of language. Frege, gottlob internet encyclopedia of philosophy. Plato 427347 bc and aristotle 384322 bc present the question of. Josef seifert and giovanni reale in what is philosophy. Gottlob frege german mathematician and philosopher. Freges most important contribution to the philosophy of language was his distinction between sense sinn and reference bedeutung. Our plan for the remainder of the paper is as follows. Sense and reference in freges philosophy book, 1993. Scope and background thought, communication, and understanding.
No one has figured more prominently in the study of german philosopher gottlob frege than michael dummett. So, for example, an e language sentence is a string of words contrary to our ordinary notion of a sentence, whereas an i language sentence is a particular syntactic structure, not identifiable with a string of words. Philosophy of language freges revolution britannica. Pdf freges unthinkable thoughts lukas skiba academia. Essays in the philosophy of language international library of philosophy 1st edition by mark sainsbury author. They resist analysis in terms of their contribution to truthconditions, but carry implications for the discourses in which they occur, with 5 involving some presumptive contrast with what might have been expected and 6, as. The present volume investigates the legacy of gottlob frege, bertrand russell and ludwig wittgenstein in contemporary philosophy of language and linguistics. For instance, the view that he developed in on sense and reference, the moststudied essay in the philosophy of language, dominated twentiethcentury work in.
In the preface to tractatus logicophilosophicus, ludwig wittgenstein acknowledges his debt to the great works of gottlob frege. Its origin and scope modern european philosophy by wolfgang carl author departing from frege. Initially, frege was trained as a mathematician and today, a better part of his nonfoundational mathematical contribution has significantly inspired issues such as complex analysis and geometry. Frege, russell and wittgenstein were founders although not by any means the sole founders of the analytic tradition in philosophy. Pdf gottlob freges contributions to philosophy of language are so numerous and so fundamental that it is difficult to imagine the field without. Marshall mcluhan is taken for granted by many communication scholars, but he was a professor of english literature. Harvard university press is pleased to reissue this classic book in paperback. The sentence is the smallest unit of language which can be used to say anything at all. This new book offers a comprehensive and accessible introduction to freges remarkable philosophical work, examining the main areas of his writings and demonstrating the connections between them. Beginning with a systematic look at freges foundational theories on sense and reference, alexander miller goes on to offer an exceptionally clear exposition of the development of subsequent arguments in the philosophy of language. Considering the question of equality identity, he was faced with a number of problems. His philosophy of language has had just as much, if not more, impact than his contributions to logic and mathematics. Even if we ignore the apparent blunders, the view that on sense and meaning is meant as a contribution to a philosophical account of language does not entirely. There are distinct things x and y that fall under the concept f and anything else that falls under the concept f is identical to either x or y.
One tradition, call it the system perspective, thinks of a language as a collection of formal rules. Freges main contribution to philosophy spans philosophical logic, the theory of meaning, mathematical logic and the philosophy of mathematics. Frege is best known for three significant contributions to philosophy. Gottlob frege, german mathematician and logician, who founded modern mathematical logic. Gottlob frege was neither a linguist nor a philosopher. Freges most striking contribution to the philosophy of language was his classification between meaning and reference. Their principal contribution, indeed, could be regarded as being in the opposite direction. The chapter describes the historical development of freges central views, and the connections between those views. Freges theorem collects eleven essays by richard g heck, jr, one of the worlds leading authorities on freges philosophy.
Frege s main contribution to philosophy spans philosophical logic, the theory of meaning, mathematical logic and the philosophy of mathematics. Gottlob frege 18481925 gottlob frege was a german logician, mathematician and philosopher who played a crucial role in the emergence of modern logic and analytic philosophy. As such, compositionality ranks as the distinctively linguistic contribution frege s philosophy of logic makes to philosophy of language, not just as a guiding maxim but also in particular aspects of frege s more detailed proposals. Frege s contribution to philosophy of language with robert may in e. The book clearly explains and assesses frege s work in these areas, systematically examining his major concepts, and revealing the links between them. The philosophy of language has a history almost as long as the history of. It tells us that the axioms of arithmetic can be derived, purely logically, from a single principle. The most distinguished followers of the tractatus were the logical positivists of the vienna circle, who flourished in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Because its investigations are conceptual rather than empirical, the philosophy of language is distinct from linguistics, though of course it must pay attention to the facts that linguistics and related disciplines reveal. These two principles are immediately linked to the context principle, which is central to freges project.
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