Frege: Abstract Objects

In the section “Validity and Existence in Logik, Book III,” I explain Lotze’s famous distinction between existence and validity in Book III of Logik. In the following section, “Lotze’s Platonism,” I put this famous distinction in the context of Lotze’s attempt to distinguish his own position from hypostatic Platonism and consider one way of drawing the distinction: the hypostatic Platonist accepts that there are propositions, whereas Lotze rejects this. In the section “Two Perspectives on Frege’s Platonism,” I argue that this (...) is an unsatisfactory way of reading Lotze’s Platonism and that the Ricketts-Reck reading of Frege is in fact the correct way of thinking about Lotze’s Platonism. (shrink)

El hecho de que Frege remita a la psicología el problema respecto a cómo se capturan pensamientos, ha llevado a que se imponga entre los críticos la idea de que toda consideración de la subjetividad está ausente en este autor. Como consecuencia de lo anterior, existe un cierto modo de concebir la relación entre Frege y Husserl como un hiato absoluto entre ambos autores respecto al punto mencionado anteriormente. En la presente contribución se defiende una visión en extremo diferente, a (...) saber, que Frege desempeña un papel intermediario entre el platonismo del siglo XIX y la fenomenología husserliana. El punto central de la argumentación es llamar la atención sobre el compromiso entre naturalismo e idealismo que caracterizó al platonismo anterior a Frege y el inicio de su superación por éste. (shrink)

This paper argues that Carnap both did not view and should not have viewed Frege's project in the foundations of mathematics as misguided metaphysics. The reason for this is that Frege's project was to give an explication of number in a very Carnapian sense — something that was not lost on Carnap. Furthermore, Frege gives pragmatic justification for the basic features of his system, especially where there are ontological considerations. It will be argued that even on the question of the (...) independent existence of abstract objects, Frege and Carnap held remarkably similar views. I close with a discussion of why, despite all this, Frege would not accept the principle of tolerance. (shrink)

I trace changes to Frege's understanding of numbers, arguing in particular that the view of arithmetic based in geometry developed at the end of his life (1924–1925) was not as radical a deviation from his views during the logicist period as some have suggested. Indeed, by looking at his earlier views regarding the connection between numbers and second-level concepts, his understanding of extensions of concepts, and the changes to his views, firstly, in between Grundlagen and Grundgesetze, and, later, after learning (...) of Russell's paradox, this position is a natural position for him to have retreated to, when properly understood. (shrink)

Neste artigo, tento mostrar como o Platonismo de Frege relaciona-se muito intimamente com a noção de eternidade de Bolzano. Compreendida como o domínio total de variação do tempo, a eternidade de Bolzano nos oferece um interessante instrumento para estipular o que é eterno: um objeto é eterno se é imutável em relação ao fluxo do tempo. Desta forma, a definição do zero proposta por Frege faz uso tácito de tal noção, na medida em que o zero é definido como “o (...) número que pertence a um conceito” cuja extensão é imutável em qualquer mundo possível. Por conta disto, podemos inferir que o platonismo, sob a ótica de Frege, pode assumir que os objetos abstratos não estão necessariamente fora do tempo e do espaço, mas são eternos, no sentido bolzaniano. (shrink)

Joan Weiner has argued that Frege’s definitions of numbers constitute linguistic stipulations that carry no ontological commitment: they don’t present numbers as pre-existing objects. This paper offers a critical discussion of this view, showing that it is vitiated by serious exegetical errors and that it saddles Frege’s project with insuperable substantive difficulties. It is first demonstrated that Weiner misrepresents the Fregean notions of so-called Foundations-content, and of sense, reference, and truth. The discussion then focuses on the role of definitions in (...) Frege’s work, demonstrating that they cannot be understood as mere linguistic stipulations, since they have an ontological aim. The paper concludes with stressing both the epistemological and the ontological aspects of Frege’s project, and their crucial interdependence. (shrink)

This paper argues that Frege is not the metaphysical platonist about mathematics that he is standardly taken to be. It is shown that Frege’s project has two distinct stages: the identification of what is true of our ordinary notions, and then the provision of a systematic account that shares the identified features. Neither of these stages involves much metaphysics. The paper criticizes in detail Dummett’s interpretation of §§55-61 of Grundlagen. These sections fall under the heading ‘Every number is a self-subsistent (...) object’ and are described by Dummett as containing the worst arguments put forward by Frege. It is argued that essentially all of Dummett’s interpretive points are mistaken. Finally, I show that Frege’s claims about the independence of mathematics from humans and their activities does not commit him to any particularly metaphysical position either. (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.

Probably the best arguments for Platonism are those directed against its rival philosophies of mathematics. Frege's arguments against formalism, Gödel's arguments against constructivism and those against the so-called syntactic view of mathematics, and an argument of Hodges against Putnam are expounded, as well as some arguments of the author. A more general criticism of Quine's views follows. The paper ends with some thoughts on mathematics as a sort of Platonism of structures, as conceived by Husserl and essentially endorsed by the (...) author. (shrink)

This paper is divided into two main sections. In the first, I attempt to show that the characterization of Frege as a redundancy theorist is not accurate. Using one of Wolfgang Carl's recent works as a foil, I argue that Frege countenances a realm of abstract objects including truth, and that Frege's Platonist commitments inform his epistemology and embolden his antipsychologistic project. In the second section, contrasting Frege's Platonism with pragmatism, I show that even though Frege's metaphysical position concerning truth (...) has been criticized as reproachable, I argue that it may be useful for people to think like Platonists while conducting their scientific and philosophical inquiries. (shrink)

A feature of Frege's philosophy of arithmetic that has elicited a great deal of attention in the recent secondary literature is his contention that numbers are ‘self‐subsistent’ objects. The considerable interest in this thesis among the contemporary philosophy of mathematics community stands in marked contrast to Kreisel's folk‐lore observation that the central problem in the philosophy of mathematics is not the existence of mathematical objects, but the objectivity of mathematics. Although Frege was undoubtedly concerned with both questions, a goal of (...) the present paper is to argue that his success in securing the objectivity of arithmetic depends on a less contentious commitment to numbers as objects than either he or his critics have supposed. As such, this paper is an articulation and defense of both Frege's analysis of arithmetic and Kreisel's observation. (shrink)

Gottlob Frege is often called a "platonist". In connection with his philosophy we can talk about platonism concerning three kinds of entities: numbers, or logical objects more generally; concepts, or functions more generally; thoughts, or senses more generally. I will only be concerned about the first of these three kinds here, in particular about the natural numbers. I will also focus mostly on Frege's corresponding remarks in The Foundations of Arithmetic (1884), supplemented by a few asides on Basic Laws of (...) Arithmetic (1893/1903) and "Thoughts" (1918). My goal is to clarify in which sense the Frege of Foundations and Basic Laws is a platonist concerning the natural numbers.1.. (shrink)

In this paper, the authors discuss Frege's theory of "logical objects" and the recent attempts to rehabilitate it. We show that the 'eta' relation George Boolos deployed on Frege's behalf is similar, if not identical, to the encoding mode of predication that underlies the theory of abstract objects. Whereas Boolos accepted unrestricted Comprehension for Properties and used the 'eta' relation to assert the existence of logical objects under certain highly restricted conditions, the theory of abstract objects uses unrestricted Comprehension for (...) Logical Objects and banishes encoding formulas from Comprehension for Properties. The relative mathematical and philosophical strengths of the two theories are discussed. Along the way, new results in the theory of abstract objects are described, involving: the theory of extensions, the theory of directions and shapes, and the theory of truth values. (shrink)

Un trait du langage qui menace de saper la sûreté de la pensée est sa tendance à former des noms propres auxquels aucun objet ne correspond. [...] Un exemple particulièrement remarquable de cela est la formation d’un nom propre selon le schéma «l’extension du concept a», par exemple «l’extension du concept étoile». À cause de l’article défini, cette expression semble désigner un objet; mais il n’y a aucun objet pour lequel cette expression pour-rait être une désignation appropriée. De là les (...) paradoxes de la théorie des ensembles, qui ont porté un coup mortel à la théorie des ensembles elle-même. J’étais moi-même sous cette illusion quand afin de fournir une fondation logique aux nombres, j’ai tenté de construire les nombres comme des ensembles. (shrink)

In this paper, I seek to clarify an aspect of Frege's thought that has been only insufficiently explained in the literature, namely, his notion of logical objects. I adduce some elements of Frege's philosophy that elucidate why he saw extensions as natural candidates for paradigmatic cases of logical objects. Moreover, I argue (against the suggestion of some contemporary scholars, in particular, Wright and Boolos) that Frege could not have taken Hume's Principle instead of Axiom V as a fundamental law of (...) arithmetic. This would be inconsistent with his views on logical objects. Finally, I shall argue that there is a connection between Frege's view on this topic and the famous thesis first formulated in ‘Über Begriff und Gegenstand’ that ‘the concept horse is not a concept’. As far as I know, no due attention has been given to this connection in the scholarly literature so far. (shrink)

According to Frege, the introduction of a new sort of abstract object is methodologically sound only if its identity conditions have been satisfactorily explained. Ironically, this ontological restriction has come to be known by Quine's criticism of Frege's intensional semantics, as the precept "No entity without identity." The aim of the paper is to reconstruct Frege's methodology of the introduction of abstract objects in detail, and to defend it against the more restrictive methodology underlying Quine's criticism of the recognition of (...) intensional objects. The main thesis is that Quine's criterion of non-circularity for the satisfactory individuation of abstract objects must be rejected. (shrink)

Syntactic Reductionism, as understood here, is the view that the ‘logical forms’ of sentences in which reference to abstract objects appears to be made are misleading so that, on analysis, we can see that no expressions which even purport to refer to abstract objects are present in such sentences. After exploring the motivation for such a view, and arguing that no previous argument against it succeeds, sentences involving generalized quantifiers, such as ‘most’, are examined. It is then argued, on this (...) basis, that Syntactic Reductionism is untenable. (shrink)

In Part One of this dissertation I examine the relationship between reason and objectivity in Frege's thought, concentrating on the question of whether or not Frege should be interpreted as a platonist. By platonism I mean the view that objects such as numbers or propositions are objective, non-spatial and timeless, existing in a realm distinct from the external world of physical objects and the internal realm of the mind; and that statements about or involving such objects are true independently of (...) whether or not human beings take them to be true. I defend the traditional interpretation of Frege as a platonist against the claims of revisionist interpretations of Frege, offered by Hans Sluga, Thomas Ricketts and Erich Reck, that seek to deny or mitigate Frege's commitment to platonism. I also argue that similarities between Frege and Descartes further support my interpretation of Frege as a platonist. ;Part Two of the dissertation revolves around Frege's famous distinction between sense and reference. Frege introduces this distinction to explain how an identity statement can be both true and informative. I begin with an examination of Frege's first attempt to solve the puzzle of informative identity statements in his early work the Begriffsschrift, comparing it with his ultimate solution in "On Sense and Reference." I then examine the nature of the distinction between sense and reference and explore some of its consequences. Next I examine the relationship between the sense/reference distinction and three interrelated Fregean principles: the context principle the compositionality principle and the priority principle (judgments are prior to the concepts that compose them. Finally, I examine Saul Kripke's influential criticism of Frege's claim that for a proper name to adequately perform its function it must contain both a sense and a reference. I then critically examine responses by Tyler Burge and Michael Dummett to Kripke's interpretation and criticism of Frege. (shrink)

In this paper, the author derives the Dedekind-Peano axioms for number theory from a consistent and general metaphysical theory of abstract objects. The derivation makes no appeal to primitive mathematical notions, implicit definitions, or a principle of infinity. The theorems proved constitute an important subset of the numbered propositions found in Frege's *Grundgesetze*. The proofs of the theorems reconstruct Frege's derivations, with the exception of the claim that every number has a successor, which is derived from a modal axiom that (...) (philosophical) logicians implicitly accept. In the final section of the paper, there is a brief philosophical discussion of how the present theory relates to the work of other philosophers attempting to reconstruct Frege's conception of numbers and logical objects. (shrink)

In this paper, I challenge those interpretations of Frege that reinforce the view that his talk of grasping thoughts about abstract objects is consistent with Russell's notion of acquaintance with universals and with Gödel's contention that we possess a faculty of mathematical perception capable of perceiving the objects of set theory. Here I argue the case that Frege is not an epistemological Platonist in the sense in which Gödel is one. The contention advanced is that Gödel bases his Platonism on (...) a literal comparison between mathematical intuition and physical perception. He concludes that since we accept sense perception as a source of empirical knowledge, then we similarly should posit a faculty of mathematical intuition to serve as the source of mathematical knowledge. Unlike Gödel, Frege does not posit a faculty of mathematical intuition. Frege talks instead about grasping thoughts about abstract objects. However, despite his hostility to metaphor, he uses the notion of ‘grasping’ as a strategic metaphor to model his notion of thinking, i.e., to underscore that it is only by logically manipulating the cognitive content of mathematical propositions that we can obtain mathematical knowledge. Thus, he construes ‘grasping’ more as theoretical activity than as a kind of inner mental ‘seeing’. (shrink)

In the dissertation I seek to clarify an aspect of Frege's thought that has been insufficiently explained in the literature, namely, his notion of logical object. It is well known that the core of Frege's philosophical enterprise up to Grundgesetze der Arithmetik was the reduction of arithmetic to logic. Since Frege regarded numbers as objects, logic must have an ontological basis, i.e., an adequate class of objects to which numbers are reducible. These objects are, for Frege, extensions of concepts and (...) truth-values. ;In the dissertation I adduce some elements of Frege's philosophy that elucidate why he saw these as natural candidates for paradigmatic cases of logical objects. In particular, I argue that Frege could not have taken Hume's principle instead of Axiom V as a fundamental law of arithmetic. This would be inconsistent with his views on logical objects. First, I try to explain what are the general criteria for qualifying objects as logical, and why extensions of concepts have to be seen as the paradigmatic case of logical objects according to these criteria. There is, in my view, a connection between Frege's view on this topic and the famous thesis first formulated in ""Uber Begriff und Gegenstand " that "the concept horse is not a concept." ;Next, I examine Frege's introduction of truth-values as objects in his writings from 1891-92. As I shall argue, Frege's ontologization of truth-values is basically motivated and justified by the technical advantages that this step brought for the formalism of Grundgesetze der Arithmetik. ;Finally, I examine Frege's arguments in section 10 of Grundgesetze der Arithmetik, since this is the place in Frege's writings where extensions and truth-values are identified. I argue that Frege did not mean to employ a generalized version of the context principle in this section. Moreover, I argue that there is no incompatibility between Frege's procedure in this section and his realism regarding mathematical entities. (shrink)

Frege is celebrated as an arch-Platonist and arch-realist. He is renowned for claiming that truths of arithmetic are eternally true and independent of us, our judgments and our thoughts; that there is a third realm containing nonphysical objects that are not ideas. Until recently, there were few attempts to explicate these renowned claims, for most philosophers thought the clarity of Frege's prose rendered explication unnecessary. But the last ten years have seen the publication of several revisionist interpretations of Frege's writings (...) — interpretations on which these claims receive a very different reading. In Frege on Knowing the Third Realm, Tyler Burge attempts to undermine this trend. Burge argues that Frege is the very Platonist most have thought him — that revisionist interpretations of Frege's Platonism, mine among them, run afoul of the words on Frege's pages. This paper is a response to Burge's criticisms. I argue that my interpretation is more faithful than Burge's to Frege's texts. (shrink)

Michael Dummett mounts, in Frege: Philosophy of Mathematics, a concerted attack on the attempt, led by Crispin Wright, to salvage defensible versions of Frege's platonism and logicism in which Frege's criterion of numerical identity plays a leading role. I discern four main strands in this attack—that Wright's solution to the Caesar problem fails; that explaining number words contextually cannot justify treating them as enjoying robust reference; that Wright has no effective counter to ontological reductionism; and that the attempt is vitiated (...) by the unavoidable impredicativity of its leading principle—and argue that none of them succeeds. (shrink)

For Frege the objective is independent of our inner world and the same for everyone. I argue that Frege's demand for objectivity is the result of his concern to make sense out of the practices of science. I point out that science, for Frege, requires agreement and purposeful disagreement among its participants. Without such interaction science reduces to useless, self-indulgent babble. It is the social nature of science that ushers in objectivity. I compare Frege's demand for objectivity with Locke's views (...) on language. ;Frege divides what there is into three realms according to a thing's nature and our access to or knowledge of it. The first realm contains the subjective, the second realm the objective and sensible, and the third realm the objective and non-sensible. It is the third realm to which the objects of mathematics and thoughts, i.e. bearers of truth, belong. We have access to the members of the third realm by reason. I point out that there is a tension in Frege's work. For we would expect Frege to appeal to contemplation of the third realm to justify his foundations of arithmetic and the nature of thoughts. I show, however, that it is the discipline of science, especially mathematics, and our deep rooted practices that influence Frege's conclusions. (shrink)

Two claims the present author has made about Frege's philosophy are defended against Michael Dummett's criticisms (The Interpretation of Frege's Philosophy and ?Objectivity and Reality in Lotze and Frege?, this journal, 1982). The claim that Frege was concerned primarily with epistemological problems rather than with the theory of meaning, and the claim (this journal, 1978) that the ascription of Wirklichkeit to Thoughts is evidence of Frege's realism, are clarified and defended. Dummett's own characterization of Frege's realism is considered and rejected.

An explanation of Frege's change from objective idealism to platonism is offered. Frege had originally thought that numbers are transparent to reason, but the character of his Axiom of Courses of Values undermined this view, and led him to think that numbers exist independently of reason. I then use these results to suggest a view of Frege's mathematical epistemology.

Both Dummett and Tugendhat seem to conclude that Frege's thesis that truth values are objects which are signified by certain sentences is an assumption which was unjustified even for Frege. In this paper I wish to show that Frege's thesis was one of several assumptions which led Frege to a complex semantic theory for the first order predicate calculus which is surpassed only by Tarski's truth and satisfaction definitions. As such, this thesis receives its justification by being an essential part (...) of a theory which as far as Frege knew was an adequate semantic theory for his version of the first order predicate calculus. This justification, now, of course, would not support the view that there are these objects. The reason for this is that Tarski's truth definition gives us a way of providing a semantics for a class of sentences which properly includes the class of sentences for which Frege's semantics is adequate without the need to assume the existence of truth values as objects. (shrink)

Michael Dummett argued that Frege was a realist while Hans Sluga countered that he was an objective idealist in the rationalist tradition of Kant and Lotze. Sluga ties Frege's idealism to the context principle which he argues Frege never gave up. It is argued that Sluga has correctly interpreted the pre?1891 Frege while Dummett is correct concerning the later period. It is also claimed that the context principle was dropped prior to 1891 to be replaced by the doctrine of unsaturated (...) entities. (shrink)

In this note the claim is defended that Frege was a realist in the sense that he attributed causal efficacy to certain abstract objects. The arguments of Dummett and Sluga (cf. Inquiry, Vols. 18, 19, and 20 [1975–77]) to the contrary are criticized.