Abstract
Frege is an anti-psychologist about logic who takes logic to be sharply distinguished from psychology. However, Frege also takes judgment, which seems to be a subject of psychology, to be essential to logic. Van der Schaar attempts to explain away this tension by arguing that judgments relevant to logic in Frege are not mental actions psychology deals with. Against this reading, I show that for Frege, judgments are mental actions consistently. The tension in question should be explained away by clarifying the sense in which judgment is essential to logic for Frege. He takes judgment to be essential to logic because he thinks that logic requires judgments to be performed. Logic requires logicians to be committed to truth, and it is by judgments that we are committed to truth. If Frege takes judgment to be essential to logic only in this sense, he is not thereby committed to logical psychologism.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
For instance, see Foreword of Grundgesetze (Frege 1893: XIV-XXVI).
In his letter to Jourdain (Frege, 1980: 79), Frege takes the judgment stroke to mark ‘something essential’ for logical inference. Also, he says that he takes judgment to be ‘logically fundamental activity’ unlike Boole who takes the formation of concepts by abstraction to be logically fundamental (Frege, 1880: 15-6).
In ‘Thought’ Frege says that an assertion represents an act of judgment (Frege 1918a: 329).
For a further elaboration of the idea that the judgment-stroke is a performative, see Smith (2000)’s discussion.
There are other reasons why van der Schaar ascribes (LnE) to Frege. For one, she appeals to the point that the performative for judging, ‘⊦’, does not have an argument place for the judging subject, saying that it only represents a logical judgment. However, given that it is a performative but not a predicate for describing a judgment, it is unclear why it must have such an argument place. Van der Schaar also mentions the following statement from Frege’s letter to Jourdain: ‘If a sentence uttered with assertoric force expresses a false Thought, then it is logically useless and strictly speaking, incomprehensible’ (Frege, 1980: 79). She argues that by ascribing the logical notion of judgment, i.e., judgment viewed from a first-person perspective, we can understand Frege’s statement. However, as van der Schaar admits, Kremer (2000) provides an arguably plausible interpretation that is not based on the logical notion of judgment. Her complaint against Kremer is that he is missing the importance of the first-person perspective in Frege. In other words, van der Schaar criticizes Kremer by appealing to her claim that Frege endorses the logical notion of judgment. Thus, van der Schaar’s reading of this passage cannot be a self-subsistent reason to accept logical judgment as judgment viewed from a first-person perspective. There are also other reasons why she thinks that Frege endorses the distinction between logical judgment and empirical judgment. However, the following discussion provides strong evidence against it.
In fact Frege seems to be criticizing the Kantian framework. If ‘that through two points only one straight line passess’ refers to a synthetic judgment, ‘judgment’ there cannot mean what the verb ‘to judge’ refers to, i.e., the act of judging. In the part of the main text where we can find this footnote, Frege describes the Kantian framework as the view that ‘the judging subject sets up the connection or order of parts in the act of judging and thereby brings the judgment into existence’ (Frege 1918b: 354). Thus, the Kantian framework takes judgment to be an action while it accepts synthetic judgments. Frege seems to be pointing to what he takes to be a tension in the Kantian framework.
The point that logic requires judgments to be performed is further supported by his criticism of what he dubs ‘the intentionalist logic’. Frege writes: "
The intensionalist logicians ⋯ forget that logic is not concerned with how thoughts, regardless of truth-value, follow from thoughts, that the step from thought to truth-value—more generally, the step from sense to reference—has to be taken. ⋯ The laws of logic are first and foremost laws in the realm of [references] and only relate indirectly to sense" (1892a: 122).
The laws of logic concern the realm of reference, and thus the step to the realm of reference ought to be taken. Now, taking a step from thoughts to truth-value is just judging. Thus, logic requires judgments to be performed. Note that the so-called intensionalists are different from psychological logicians because the former takes logic to concern thoughts that are independent of our minds. Therefore, Frege’s point that logic requires judgments to be performed distinguishes his conception of logic not only from logical psychologism but also from logical intensionialism.
Bibliography
Adler, J. & B. Armour-Garb. (2007). Moore’s Paradox and the Transparency of Belief. In M. Green & J. N. Williams (Eds.), Moore’s Paradox; New Essays on Belief, Rationality and the First Person (pp. 146–162). Oxford: Clarendon Press
Frege, G. (1880). Booles rechnende Logik und die Begriffsschrift. Originally unpublished. Translated by P. Long & R. White as Boole’s Logical Calculus and the Concept-Script. In Frege 1979 (pp. 9–46)
Frege, G. (1891). Funktion und Begriff. Jena: Hermann Pohle. Translated by P. Geach as Function and Concept. In Frege 1970 (pp. 21–41)
Frege, G. (1892a). Ausführungen über Sinn und Bedeutung. Originally unpublished. Translated by P. Long & R. White as Comments on Sense and Reference. In Frege 1979 (pp. 118–125)
Frege, G. (1892b). Über Sinn und Bedeutung. Zeitschrift für Philosophie und philosophische Kritik 100: 25–50. Translated by M. Black as On Sense and Reference. In Frege 1970 (pp. 56–78)
Frege, G. (1893). Grundgesetze der Arithmetik I. Jena: Verlag Hermann Pohle, Band I. Translated by P. Ebert & M. Rossberg as Basic Laws of Arithmetic I. In Frege 2013
Frege, G. (1918a). Der Gedanke: Eine Logische Untersuchung. Beiträge zur Philosophie des deutschen Idealismus I: 58–77. Translated by P. Geach & R. H. Stoothoff as “Thought”. In Frege 1997 (pp. 325–345)
Frege, G. (1918b). Die Verneinung: Eine Logische Untersuchung. Beiträge zur Philosophie des deutschen Idealismus I: 143–157. Translated by P. Geach & R. H. Stoothoff as Negation. In Frege 1997 (pp. 346–361)
Frege, G. (1970). Philosophical Writings of Gottlob Frege. Edited and translated by P. Geach & M. Black. Oxford University Press
Frege, G. (1979). Posthumous Writings. Edited by H. Hermes, F. Kambartel, & F. Kaulbach. Translated by P. Long & R. White. The University of Chicago Press
Frege, G. (1980). Gottlob Frege: Philosophical and Mathematical Correspondence. Edited by G. Gabriel, H. Hermes, F. Kambartel, C. Thiel, A. Veraart, B. McGuinness, & H. Kaal. Blackwell Publishing
Frege, G. (1997). The Frege Reader. Edited by M. Beaney. Blackwell Publishing
Frege, G. (2013). Basic Laws of Arithmetic. Edited and translated by P. Ebert & M. Rossberg. Oxford University Press
Heck, R. K. (2012). Reading Frege’s Grundgesetze. Oxford University Press
Kremer, M. (2000). Judgment and Truth in Frege. Journal of the History of Philosophy, 38(4), 549–581
Smith, N. (2000). Frege’s Judgement Stroke. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 78(2), 153–175
Textor, M. (2010). Frege on Judging as Acknowledging the Truth. Mind, 119(475), 615–655
van der Schaar, M. (2018). Frege on Judgement and the Judging Agent. Mind, 127(505), 225–250
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Additional information
Publisher’s note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Kim, J. Frege’s Anti-Psychologism about Logic : the Relationship between Logic and Judgment. Philosophia 50, 2585–2596 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-022-00537-5
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-022-00537-5