Identity in Frege’s Shadow

Abstract

Frege overlooked the role of quantifiers as expressing, by their formal dependence on each other, the actual dependences between variables bound to them. The resulting flaw in Frege’s and other logicians’ logic began to be corrected only in IF logic. The dependence relations are codified in the Skolem functions that correspond to existential-force quantifiers. Their existence is the natural truth condition. Such functions are not adequately handled in first-order predicate logic. In any adequate logic, a fixed mode of identification is presupposed. The frameworks of identification can be perspectival or public. Kripke makes the same mistake about quantifiers as Frege and in addition assumes that only perspectival indentification is needed in the last analysis. He also overlooks dependence relations between modal operators and quantifiers.

Jaakko Hintikka—deceased