Taking a lead from Eva Picardi’s work and influence, I investigate the significance of Frege’s context principle for the philosophy of language. I argue that there are some interpretive problems with recent meta-semantic interpretations of the principle. Instead, I offer a somewhat weaker alternative: the context principle is a tool to license certain definitions. Moreover, I claim that it merely lays out one of many possible ways of licensing a definition. This means, among other things, (...) that despite Frege’s imperative injunctions, the context principle formulates a permission—not a requirement. (shrink)

Dummettian anti-realism–the refusal to endorse bivalence–is generally thought to be associated with idealism This paper argues that this is only true of the position developed by early Dummett. In a later manifestation Dummettian anti-realism is better thought of as providing the logic for anti-realisms of an error theoretic kind. Early on Dummett distinguished deep from shallow arguments for giving up bivalence: deep arguments followed a strong ‘sufficiency’ reading of Frege’s context principle, and made the sentence the primary vehicle (...) of meaning. Enriched by an account of truth in terms of verifiability, deep arguments implied a form of linguistic idealism. From within a perspective that had already made ontology relative to theory, it was natural for the difference between realism and idealism to hinge on the notion of truth for sentences. Having given up the distinction between deep and shallow arguments against bivalence, Dummett, post 1990, asserts that every rejection of bivalence leads to a form of anti-realism. In the intervening years, he has also come to cast doubt on the sufficiency reading of the context principle, particularly as developed by Crispin Wright. These doubts open the space for some more simple-minded criticisms of this strong version of the context principle, developed in the paper. Once the sufficiency reading of the context principle is given up, arguments for failing to assert bivalence come to hinge on beliefs about ‘genuine’ existence. These forms of anti-realism cannot be taken to imply idealism. Rather, in many cases they will be the expression of views of an error-theoretic kind, that are quite compatible with a thorough-going rejection of idealism. (shrink)

In this paper, I try to uncover the role played by Wittgenstein's context principle in his criticism of Russell's theory of types. There is evidence in Wittgenstein's writings that a syntactical version of the context principle in connection with the theory of symbolism functions as a good reason for his dispensing with the theory of types.

I try to reconstruct how Frege thought to reconcile the cognitive value of arithmetic with its analytical nature. There is evidence in Frege's texts that the epistemological formulation of the context principle plays a decisive role; it provides a way of obtaining concepts which are truly fruitful and whose contents cannot be grasped beforehand. Taking the definitions presented in the Begriffsschrift,I shall illustrate how this schema is intended to work.

This thesis is concerned with explaining how a subject can acquire a priori knowledge of arithmetic. Every account for arithmetical, and in general mathematical knowledge faces Benacerraf's well-known challenge, i.e. how to reconcile the truths of mathematics with what can be known by ordinary human thinkers. I suggest four requirements that jointly make up this challenge and discuss and reject four distinct solutions to it. This will motivate a broadly Fregean approach to our knowledge of arithmetic and mathematics in general. (...) Pursuing this strategy appeals to the context principle which, it is proposed, underwrites a form of Platonism and explains how reference to and object-directed thought about abstract entities is, in principle, possible. I discuss this principle and defend it against different criticisms as put forth in recent literature. Moreover, I will offer a general framework for implicit definitions by means of which - without an appeal to a faculty of intuition or purely pragmatic considerations - a priori and non-inferential knowledge of basic mathematical principles can be acquired. In the course of this discussion, I will argue against various types of opposition to this general approach. Also, I will highlight crucial shortcomings in the explanation of how implicit definitions may underwrite a priori knowledge of basic principles in broadly similar conceptions. In the final part, I will offer a general account of how non-inferential mathematical knowledge resulting from implicit definitions is best conceived which avoids these shortcomings. (shrink)

Frege proposed that his Context Principle—which says that a word has meaning only in the context of a proposition—can be used to explain reference, both in general and to mathematical objects in particular. I develop a version of this proposal and outline answers to some important challenges that the resulting account of reference faces. Then I show how this account can be applied to arithmetic to yield an explanation of our reference to the natural numbers and of (...) their metaphysical status. (shrink)

The paper focuses on Gottlob Frege’s so called Context Principle (CP hereafter), which counts as one of the most controversial points of his philosophy. Due to its importance and centrality in Frege’s thought, a detailed discussion of the principle requires a detailed analysis of almost all aspects of his philosophy. Obviously, such a task cannot be successfully accomplished here. Thus I limit myself to address only two questions concerning the CP: what role does the principle play (...) (in Grundlagen) and how can we interpret it. Addressing the first problem is required in order to address the second. Most authors interpreted CP from the perspective of Frege’s later distinction between sense and reference, which I will call the ‘semantic interpretation’. Although I accept this perspective as valuable and important, I will initially inverse the action and I will try to approach CP, and generally Grundlagen, in a more natural way, contextually, namely setting them in the initial logicist plan of the Begriffschrift. Finally, I will try to provide an interpretation concerning the alleged conflict between CP and Frege’s compositionality thesis such that they could coherently stay together. (shrink)

This paper presents a new interpretation of Frege's context principle on which it applies primarily to singular terms for abstract objects but not necessarily to singular terms for ordinary objects.

I explore the decisive connection Frege often draws between the context principle and antipsychologism, arguing that his assertion of this connection occupies a central place within the articulation of his linguistic method. In particular, Frege’s appeal to the context principle in the course of describing the epistemology of arithmetic, I argue, connects his doctrine of the nature of judgment with his defense of the objecthood of numbers, showing how an appeal to the special role of judgment (...) in securing truth can function as a linguistically based account of objectivity that excludes subjectivist psychologism. Expanding and clarifying this appeal, moreover, allows us to understand better the special pragmatic position of the recognition of patterns of use and practice in the process of analyzing meanings. In particular, it emerges that these patterns cannot bear the explanatory weight they have sometimes been taken to bear within an envisaged reductive “theory of meaning.” Rather, their recognition must figure within a practice of analysis that is continuous with, rather than an explanatory reduction of, our ordinary discursive practices, and whose elucidatory resources are not accessible except from within the perspective of those practices. (shrink)

What is the primacy of logic? Concepts, judgments, or inferences? Whereas representationalists traditionally argue for a primacy of the conceptual, rationalists, referring to the context principle and the use theory of meaning, consider judgments and inferences to be primary. This dispute also seems to be applicable to logic diagrams: Whereas “Euler-type diagrams” are actually only for judgments and inferences, “concept diagrams” represent ontologies by using concepts. With reference to Schopenhauer, the paper develops a position called “rational representationalism.” According (...) to this point of view, the question of primacy is decided by analyzing the functions of the logic principles: For the explanation of logic and language, concepts are primary, but for understanding it is judgments. The mediation between intuitive representation and logical rationality is ensured by concept diagrams. (shrink)

This paper discusses Michael Dummett’s criticism of the Neo-Fregean concep- tion of the context principle. I will present four arguments by Dummett that purport to show that the context principle is incompatible with platonism. I discuss and ultimately reject each argument. I will close this paper by identifying what I take to be a deep rooted tension in the Neo-Fregean project which might have motivated Dummett’s opposition to the Neo-Fregean use of the context principle. (...) I argue that this tension does give rise to a legitimate concern, yet it does not affect the Neo-Fregean conception of the context principle. (shrink)

_ Source: _Page Count 21 The “Context Principle”, as the author understands it in this paper, is the claim that sub-sentential linguistic expressions have meaning only in the context of complete meaningful sentences. The author reconstructs the version of the Context Principle that Wittgenstein holds in the _Tractatus_, shows that it has intuitive plausibility and can be defended against alleged counterexamples, and develops an argument for its truth that can be found in the _Tractatus_. In (...) short, the author argues that the “fit” between the meanings of sentences and the meanings of the expressions they contain can only be adequately explained if one acknowledges that for a sub-sentential expression to have meaning _is_ for it to make a contribution to the meaning of a sentence. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to examine Frege’s view of the context principle in his mature philosophical doctrine. Here, the author argues that the context principle is embodied in the contextual explanation of value-ranges presented in Basic Laws of Arithmetic. The contextual explanation of value-ranges plays essentially the same role as the context principle in The Foundations of Arithmetic. It is supposed to show how a reference to natural numbers is possible. Moreover, the (...) author argues against the view that the context principle should be separated from the recarving thesis. This aspect of Frege’s view leads the author to the rejection of the purely referential view of the context principle, which is fairly widely accepted in the current literature. (shrink)

There is considerable likelihood that Gottlob Frege began writing his Foundations of Arithmetic with the expectation that he could introduce his numbers, not with sets, but through some algebraic techniques borrowed from earlier writers of the Gottingen school. These rewriting techniques, had they worked, would have required strong philosophical justification provided by Frege's celebrated "context principle," which otherwise serves little evident purpose in the published Foundations.

Gottlob Frege and Ludwig Wittgenstein (the later Wittgenstein) are often seen as polar opposites with respect to their fundamental philosophical outlooks: Frege as a paradigmatic "realist", Wittgenstein as a paradigmatic "anti-realist". This opposition is supposed to find its clearest expression with respect to mathematics: Frege is seen as the "arch-platonist", Wittgenstein as some sort of "radical anti-platonist". Furthermore, seeing them as such fits nicely with a widely shared view about their relation: the later Wittgenstein is supposed to have developed his (...) ideas in direct opposition to Frege. The purpose of this paper is to challenge these standard assumptions. I will argue that Frege's and Wittgenstein's basic outlooks have something crucial in common; and I will argue that this is the result of the positive influence Frege had on Wittgenstein. (shrink)

Pretendo usar o exemplo dos nomes de percursos de valores como prova de que, contrariamente ao que Michael Resnik e Michael Dummett sustentam, Frege nunca abandonou o seu princípio do contexto: “Apenas no contexto de uma sentenya tem uma palavra significado”. Em particular, pretendo mostrar que a prova da completude com relação ao significado, que Frege tentou introduzir na linguagem formal das Grundgesetze der Arithmetik, baseia-se em uma aplicação do principio do contexto, e que, em consequencia, tambem nomes de percursos (...) de valores tem significado apenas nocontexto de uma sentença. A teoria Fregeana do sentido e do significado somente pode ser entendida adequadamente sob o pano de fundo do princfpio do contexto.Taking course-of-values names as an example, I want to show that, contrary to what Michael Resnik and Michael Dummett claim, Frege never abandoned his context principle “Only in the context of a sentence do words have meaning”. In particular, I want to show that Frege’s attempted proof of referentiality for the formal language of Grundgesetze der Arithmetik rests on the context principle and that, consequently, course-of-values names have a reference only in the context of a sentence. It is only in the light of the context principle that Frege’s theory of sense and reference can be understood appropriately. (shrink)

This paper explores the limitations of current empirical approaches to the philosophy of language in light of a recent criticism of Frege's context principle. According to this criticism, the context principle is in conflict with certain features of natural language use and this is held to undermine its application in Foundations of Arithmetic. I argue that this view is mistaken because the features with which the context principle is alleged to be in conflict are (...) irrelevant to the principle's methodological significance for our understanding of the role of analysis in analytic philosophy. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Wittgenstein-Studien Jahrgang: 5 Heft: 1 Seiten: 89-100.

Contextualist approaches to the Liar Paradox postulate the occurrence of a context shift in the course of the Liar reasoning. In particular, according to the contextualist proposal advanced by Charles Parsons and Michael Glanzberg, the Liar sentence L doesn’t express a true proposition in the initial context of reasoning c, but expresses a true one in a new, richer context c', where more propositions are available for expression. On the further assumption that Liar sentences involve propositional quantifiers (...) whose domains may vary with context, the Liar reasoning is blocked. But why should context shift? We argue that the paradox involves principles of contextualist reflection that explain, by analogy with well-known reflection principles for arithmetic, why context must shift from c to c' in the course of the Liar reasoning. This provides a diagnosis of the Liar Paradox—one that equally applies to two revenge arguments against contextualist approaches, one recently advanced by Andrew Bacon, the other mentioned by Charles Parsons and more recently revived by Cory Juhl. (shrink)

The context of the work is the analysis of African values. The significance is the avoidance of generalizations. There are cultures in Africa and not just one culture and in each culture, there is a diversity of clans. The analysis of African values ought to have universal relevance, hence the use of phenomenological-hermeneutical method. This is the first analysis of such a value in the Igbo cultural group. It is at the same time a contribution to an important and (...) often neglected aspect of development: human development. The personality of the individual is a fundamental principle. Solidarity, philosophically formulated, can be a norm that regulates people's behavior. The personality of the individual is a fundamental principle. A person is identified with his dignity. This dignity is enriched and thus matures through his openness to others and positive contribution to the development of their personality. In order to show that our principle is not a mere abstract idealization, the second part of the work is a hermeneutical analysis of solidarity as found among the Igbo of Nigeria. Sylvanus Ifeanyichukwu Nnoruka is a Catholic priest of the Archdiocese of Onitsha (Nigeria). He has published Personal Identity: a Philosophical Survey as well as other books and articles. (shrink)

With the principles it brought, Islam aimed to first build the individual and then revive the society. In this context, the consultation (shûra) is an important socio-political-ethical principle. Given the purpose of revealing what is right it is no coincidence that God advises people to do their work in consultation,. Indeed, consultation has been practiced in the life of societies since ancient times. The Prophet, too, adopted to do business by consulting people who were experts in the issues (...) that did not receive revelation throughout his life, and he carried out many practices in this regard. Thus, he left a very important legacy for Muslims to reach a maturity that can stand on their own feet and to have the ability to shape their future in the following processes. It is essential for Muslims to take care of this legacy left to them, to prevent the political power from turning into tyrannical structures, to participate in and contribute to the decision-making mechanisms/administration. Doing business in consultation maintains its importance today as it was yesterday. Therefore, it is our main goal to reveal what kind of principle consultation is in terms of functionality. While doing this, attention was paid to include concept analysis, historical and factual reality, and the reflections of the principle to the present day in the content of the text. As a method, document analysis, one of the qualitative research methods, was preferred. As a result, it has been seen that the consultation has a very strong ground in the context of psychology and sociology. In this respect, it has been identified that the consultation, which seems to have a universal quality, has very positive effects on individual and especially social/political understanding. (shrink)

The Principle of Context and the Principle of Compositionality only conflict when they are construed as claims about the origin of meanings. I will clarify this point by means of an historical survey into the treatment that PCtxt receives in Frege's Grundlagen and in Wittgenstein's Tractatus. I will argue that Frege actually introduces non-equivalent formulations of PCtxt generating an unstable notion of meaning when related with PCmp. The Tractatus solves this imbalance by assuming both the contextuality and (...) the compositionality at the very core of the notion of meaning, thus by ruling out the claim of two separated —sensitive to collision— principles. My thesis is that in the stage of development of the Tractatus, Wittgenstein found a way to meet and fit together the tensions between PCtxt and PCmp emerging in Frege´s philosophy of language and detected by latter commentators. (shrink)

The context-sensitivity of many cognitive processes is usually seen as an objective property which we should try to account for and to simulate in computational models. This rests on a mistaken view of inquiry as guided by principles alone. In ethics, exclusive reliance on principles is all but abandoned: the ability to deal with particular cases depends on something more. The same goes for the belief fixation processes involved in communication and other cognitive tasks. The paper defends a mixed (...) model of inquiry, which combines the traditional rationalist reliance on principles with a consideration for appropriateness in the case at hand. The key idea is that how one deals with context is a matter not of fact, but of judgment. The paper concludes with a characterization of some of the areas in which context is easily dealt with, and explains why areas in which it isn’t are not systematically shunned by people. # 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. (shrink)

In this article I argue the relevance of natural law for framing and addressing ethical issues raised by the practice of business in a global context. There are historical, as well as systematic reasons for this. On the historical side, it can be argued that the origin of modern economics is linked to a cultural context, still influenced by modern natural law theories. Thus, even if Hume’s moral theory is everything but a natural law theory, either in the (...) traditional or the modern sense, his “laws of nature” (fixation of property, rules for its transference, and promises) represent a systematization of the rules of justice necessary to preserve the space of economic freedom required for development of a commercial society. This systematization is in line with the classical approach to natural law, which nevertheless presents further advantages for developing an ethical approach to economic activity, since it brings with itself a conception of economic agency richer than that of Hume: a conception that is not necessarily linked to pursuit self-interest, but rather is inspired by ethical motives right from the start. Indeed, on the systematic side, the classical natural law is seen as the law of practical reason: a set of principles in charge of inspiring both virtuous action and legal practice, so that we can realize the human good. Assuming the embodied and social nature of human beings, as well as the various cultural realizations of humanity, a natural law approach to ethics is in a position to stimulate a dynamic and bottomup articulation of the personal and common good, concern for progress and sustainable development, universal principles and cultural variations. (shrink)

This essay critically assesses two strategies of accommodation used by defenders of impartialism in ethics to argue that the care orientation represents no genuine challenge to impartialist theoretical paradigms. One strategy focuses on impartiality as a constraint on moral deliberation, the other as a constraint on moral justification. While highlighting respects in which the commitment to impartiality is more consonant with the care orientation than many advocates of care have acknowledged, this essay attempts to clarify crucial ways in which each (...) accommodationist strategy falls, thus locating some of the more important contributions and challenges the care orientation offers to moral theory. (shrink)

The prioritisation of scarce resources has a particular urgency within the context of the COVID‐19 pandemic crisis. This paper sets out a hypothetical case of Patient X (who is a nurse) and Patient Y (who is a non‐health care worker). They are both in need of a ventilator due to COVID‐19 with the same clinical situation and expected outcomes. However, there is only one ventilator available. In addressing the question of who should get priority, the proposal is made that (...) the answer may lie in how the pandemic is metaphorically described using military terms. If nursing is understood to take place at the ‘frontline’ in the ‘battle’ against COVID‐19, a principle of military medical ethics—namely the principle of salvage—can offer guidance on how to prioritise access to a life‐saving resource in such a situation. This principle of salvage purports a moral direction to return wounded soldiers back to duty on the battlefield. Applying this principle to the hypothetical case, this paper proposes that Patient X (who is a nurse) should get priority of access to the ventilator so that he/she can return to the ‘frontline’ in the fight against COVID‐19. (shrink)

Whereas indirect euthanasia is a common clinical practice, active euthanasia remains forbidden in most countries. The reason for this differentiation is usually seen in the principle of double-effect (PDE). PDE states that there is a morally relevant difference between the intended consequences of an action and merely foreseen, unintended side-effects. This article discloses the fundamental assumptions presenting the basis for this application of the PDE and examines whether these assumptions are compatible with the PDE. It is shown that neither (...) a liberal nor a utilitarian point of view makes the utilization of the PDE possible. In accordance with philosophical tradition, only within the doctrine of the sanctity of life does the PDE seem to be applicable. By analysing the premises of this doctrine, and comparing them with those of the PDE, the inconsistency of this idea is demonstrated. It is suggested that the role of the PDE in the current discussion on euthanasia is largely exaggerated. (shrink)

This book asserts that the better one understands the causes of behavior, the better one can apply that knowledge to produce a better world. Harcum begins with a description of the nervous system and continues with chapters on development, perception, internal states, learning, memory, and the ultimate selection of behaviors.