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The epistemology of “On Sense and Reference”

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Abstract

This paper sheds light on an epistemological dimension of Frege’s “On Sense and Reference.” Under my suggested reading of it, one of its aims is to suggest a picture about propositional knowledge and its production. According to this picture, judgment, which produces propositional knowledge, is identification of the truth-value True with the reference of a given sentence. The propositional knowledge that p, produced by the judgment that p, consists in the knowledge of the identity between the True and the reference of “p.” Judgment as such is a primitive kind of identification. It produces non-propositional knowledge of the identity of the True to which propositional knowledge is reduced.

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Notes

  1. Michael Dummett (1981) has developed this semantic interpretation. Donald Davidson also makes crucial contributions to it (e.g., Davidson, 2001a and 2001b). Richard Kimberly Heck (2012) and Eva Picardi (2010) support the semantic interpretation through their analysis of Frege’s elucidatory demonstration of basic laws. Joan Weiner (2020) provides a critical discussion about the semantic interpretation.

  2. My translation of Frege’s published and unpublished manuscripts is based on Frege, 1970, 1979, and 1997.

  3. I am not denying that there can be a technical reason why Frege regards truth-values as objects. For instance, Duarte (2009, appendix 1) and Bentzen (2020) argue that Frege’s earlier conception of content causes technical issues in Begriffsschrift, and introducing truth-values as objects solves those issues. Also, Ricketts (2003) shows other technical benefits of introducing truth-values as objects into Begriffsschrift. All I am saying here is that it is also a philosophical thesis that truth-values are objects.

  4. Many of Frege’s works (e.g.,1891; 1893; 1906; 1914) put forward the idea that truth-values are sentential references and thus objects. The last work of Frege that includes this idea is “[Notes for Ludwig Darmstaedter]” (1919, 255).

  5. For instance, in “Sources of Knowledge of Mathematics and the Mathematical Natural Sciences,” Frege takes “only the recognition of [the truth of a thought], the judgment proper” Frege, (1924) Sources, as knowledge. Given that knowledge is an epistemic state while judgment is an epistemic act, what Frege means seems to be that it is by judgment that we produce knowledge. Here, “knowledge” must mean “propositional knowledge” because he is talking about knowledge related to thoughts.

  6. The sense of a name contains a ‘mode of presentation’ of its reference (1892b, 57).

  7. Also, Frege’s solution to the puzzle needs a criterion of identity for senses. However, he does not deal with this issue in the paper, either. For the discussion of this issue, see Bentzen (2020), Ebert (2016), and Textor (2018).

  8. One might point out that we also need an act of taking a step from \(\langle\)p\(\rangle\) to the False. Indeed, we can negate that p. However, for Frege (1918b), negating that p is just judging that it is not the case that p, i.e., taking a step from \(\langle\) it is not the case that p\(\rangle\) to the True.

  9. Frege provides the same elucidation of assertion in Grundgesetze (1893, §5).

  10. In “Boole’s Logical Calculus and Begriffsschrift,” Frege says about Aristotle and Boole that in their logic, “the logically primitive activity is the formation of concepts by abstraction, and judgment and inference enter in through an immediate or indirect comparison of concepts via their extensions” (1880, 15). In contrast, Frege’s logic starts “from judgments and their contents, and not from concepts” (1880, 16). In addition, the sentences of his logic, Begriffsschrift, must have a judgment-stroke, which is the “representation of a judgment” (1893, §5). In his letter to Jourdain, Frege says that “if \(\cdots\) one were to leave out the judgment-strokes \(\cdots\), something essential would be missing” (1980: 79, italics mine). It is an important question why Frege takes judgment to be essential to logic, though it is not important to our discussion for now. We will come back to this question at the end of Sect. 4.

  11. For a detailed reading and examination of this argument, see Kim, 2021b

  12. The infinite regress we have above is exactly the kind of regress to which Frege appeals to in his argument for the indefinability of truth according to scholars like Ricketts (1996), Heck (2012), and Kim (2021a). If their interpretation of the argument is right, that also constitutes a reason to doubt that deciding that a sense belongs to an object is judging so.

  13. Pagin (2001) provides an interpretation of this argument as an argument that truth is not a property. According to scholars like Ricketts (1996) and Kim (2021a), this is not Frege’s only argument that truth is not a property. They take Frege’s argument for the indefinability of truth also to be his argument that truth is not a property.

  14. According to scholars, “Comments on Sense and Reference” was written between 1892—the year in which “On Sense and Reference” was published—and 1895 (1979, 118n).

  15. The notion of non-judgmental identification is not unfamiliar anymore. For example, Millikan (1998, 2000) provides an extensive discussion about non-judgmental identification. According to her, identifying is not making a judgment, i.e., “harboring an intentional attitude” (2000, §12.7) like a belief. It is rather using an ability to identify an object (or a property). She calls such an ability “substance concept.” Millikan’s characterization of non-judgmental identification thus focuses on expounding the notion of substance concept. To discuss this notion in detail goes beyond the scope of this paper.

  16. One might say that \(\cdots\) is the True” is Frege’s truth-predicate, and thus \(|\)p\(|\) is just identical with \(|\)p is the True \(|\). In reply, first, Frege’s point is that truth is not a property. It does not seem plausible to think that Frege would introduce any predicate for truth. Secondly, Frege’s point in “On Sense and Reference” is that knowledge of identity is substantive only when there is the difference between the senses of relevant names. Judging is identifying, and what judging produces is substantive knowledge of identity. Thus, it cannot be the case that “the True” just has a non-substantive sense. It must have a sense distinguishable from \(|\)p\(|\).

  17. For Frege’s anti-psychologism about logic, see his Foreword of Grundgesetze (1893).

  18. It is clear that Frege is criticizing Kantian epistemology, because he explicitly mentions Kant as his target (1918b, 353).

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  1. Chungbuk National University, 1 Chungdae-Ro Seowon-Gu College of Humanities (N16-1) Office 410, Cheongju-Si, Chungcheongbuk-Do, 28644, Republic of Korea

    Junyeol Kim

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Kim, J. The epistemology of “On Sense and Reference”. AJPH 2, 43 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s44204-023-00092-0

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