Abstract
Elements of Symbolic Logic by Hans Reichenbach provides the first analysis of tenses from a translinguistic, transgrammatical, transcultural logical viewpoint. However, the author does not address the problem of relations between the tenses and temporality, whose investigation is devoted to physics. Despite the brilliant discovery, an irreconcilable gap between the two different epistemological perspectives emerges at a glance. Where Reichenbach stopped is precisely where one must start from to continue the exploration on the exterminated continent that one can glimpse behind his study
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
«[…] the laws of logic can be called ‘laws of thought’: so far as they stipulate the way in which one ought to think […] But the expression ‘laws of thought’ leads one to suppose that these laws govern thinking in the same way as laws of nature govern events in the external world. In that case they can be nothing but laws of psychology: for thinking is a psyche process. And if logic were concerned with these psychological laws it would be part of psychology […] ” (Frege 1893).
- 3.
«It is curious that the anti-Kantian Reichenbach share the same opinion on this topic as the philosopher from Königsberg: “The question of logic is not… how we think, but how we should think”» (Kant 1902: 14).
- 4.
For a more in-depth treatment, see also Reichenbach (1951: 215–229).
- 5.
Reichenbach makes a different use of the expression “indexical signs” than that made by linguists. For the latter, indexical or deictic signs are those signs whose interpretation varies with the contest, like the use of personal pronouns (ex. “I” spoken by person A refers to A; pronounced by person B, it refers to B) or the use of demonstrative adjectives and pronouns (ex. “this” refers to an object close to A, if A is speaking, and to an object close to B, if B is speaking), etc.
- 6.
The sentence is a linguistic expression susceptible to being true or false; the proposition is the meaning of a sentence; the assertion is a sentence used to affirm with certainty.
- 7.
“The names, whether simple or themselves composite, of which the name of a truth-value consists, contribute to the expression of the thought, and this contribution of the individual [component] is its sense. If a name is part of the name of a truth-value, then the sense of the former name is part of the thought expressed by the latter name” (Frege 1893: 90). A young scholar (Tripodi 2008) retains that the point of view of the Grundgesestze (1893–1903), which are posterior to Über Sinn und Bedeutung (1892), overcomes the conception expressed by Frege in Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik (1884) where the German logician had clearly said that “only in the context of a statement do the words mean something” (Frege 1884: § 62); moreover, he had added “one must never investigate the meaning of a word in isolation” (Frege 1884: ix).
- 8.
«Man versteht ihn (sc. einen Satz), wenn man seine Bestandteile versteht» (Wittgenstein 1961: 4.24).
- 9.
“We are pushed then to recognized the truth value of a phrase as its denotation” Frege 1892: 34).
- 10.
“And we declare all true sentences to denote the truth-value truth, and all false sentences to denote the truth-value falseness” (Church 1956: 25).
- 11.
“By intension of a sentence we mean the proposition that it deisgnates, and by extension its truth value” “(Unter der Intension eines Satzes wollen wir die durch ihn bezeichnete Proposition, und unter seine Extension seinen Wahrheitswert)” (Carnap 1954: 40).
- 12.
A propositional variable is a sign that stands for a proposition at will.
- 13.
Think of the logic of deitics, the logic of assertions, the erotetic logic, and the logic of commands, which will be born from the considerations which Reichenbach makes, respectively, in Reichenbach (1947): 284–287, 336–339, 339–342, 342–343.
- 14.
For example, the frequentative of ‘ago’ agire [to act] is ‘agito’ to agitate, shake, push here and there; the frequentative of ‘rogo’ chiedere [to ask] is ‘rogito’ to ask repeatedly, with insistence; the frequentative of ‘teneo’ tenere [to have] is ‘tento’ to touch, handle, etc.
- 15.
I like to underline that such a shift of meaning is found also in some Italian sayings: ‘donna baffuta è sempre piaciuta’ [‘A bewhiskered woman always pleased’] ‘caldo di panni non ha fatto mai danni’ [‘Heat from clothing was never harmful,’ meaning that in the cold, the heat procured from clothing is helpful, while when it is hot, one can simply take off the clothing—Trans.m], etc.
- 16.
Also, in Italian there is an analogous difference between the imperfetto, (ex. “io vedevo Giovanni”, “I was seeing John”) corresponding to the French imperfait and to the English simple past-extended and the passato remoto (ex. “io vidi Giovanni”, “I saw John”) corresponding to the French passé défini and to the English simple past.
- 17.
Think of the anomaly of the Italian language that distinguishes full four forms of past (passato prossimo, imperfetto, passato remoto, trapassato remoto) against the two of the futhre (futuro anteriore, futuro semplice), while coherence would have a symmetry between the verb tenses of the past and those of the future.
- 18.
See, among the numerous works by Reichenbach on time, “What is Time?” (Reichenbach 1951: 144–156).
- 19.
See the very interesting bibliography, exposed first in chronological order (259–264), and then by author (264–267).
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Malatesta, M. (2016). Tenses and Temporality in Reichenbach’s Thought. In: Santoianni, F. (eds) The Concept of Time in Early Twentieth-Century Philosophy. Studies in Applied Philosophy, Epistemology and Rational Ethics, vol 24. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24895-0_27
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