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On the Link Between Frege's Platonic-Realist Semantics and His Doctrine of Private Senses

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

Sara Ellenbogen
Sara Ellenbogen
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
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Extract

Frege's doctrine that the demonstrative ‘I’ has a private, incommunicable sense creates tension within his theory of meaning. Fregean sense is supposed to be something objective, which exists independently of its being cognized by anyone. And the notion of a private sense corresponding to primitive aspects of an individual of which only he can be awaredoes violence both to Frege's theory of sense as well as to our notionof language as something essentially intersubjective. John Perry has arguedthat Frege was led to the doctrine of private senses in spite of his beliefin the objectivity of sense through his attempt to solve a problem which indexicals posed for his theory. And while philosophers have argued about whether the notion of a private sense is in fact problematic for Frege, they have tended to share Perry's assumption about its origin.

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 72 , Issue 281 , July 1997 , pp. 375 - 382
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1997

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References

1 Frege, Gottlob, ‘The Thought: A Logical Inquiry’ from Philosophical Logic, ed Strawson, P. F., translated by M., A. and Marcell, Quinton, (Oxford, 1964), 26.Google ScholarReprinted from Mind, vol. 65 (1956), 289-311.Google Scholar

2 Op. cit. note 1, 273.

3 Perry, John, ’, The Philosophical Review, No. 4 (10 1977), 490.Google Scholar

4 Evans, Gareth, ’ from Meaning and Understanding, ed. Parrett, H. and Bouveresse, J., Gruyter, W. de, (Berlin; N.Y., 1991), 296–297.Google Scholar

5 McDowell, John, ‘De Re Sense’, The Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 34, no. 12, 290.Google Scholar

6 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, PhilosophicalInvestigations (translated by Anscombe, G. E. M.) (New York, 1968), 290.Google Scholar

7 I would like to thank Peter Apostoli for his helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. This paper was presented at the Central Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association in Chicago, April 27, 1995. An earlier version of this paper, ‘On the LinkBetween Frege's Platonic-Realist Semantics and his Doctrine of Incommunicable Senses’ is published in the papers of the 17th International Wittgenstein Symposium, The British Tradition in 20th Century Philosophy, eds. Hintikka, and Puhl, , (Kirchberg am Wechsel, 1994).Google Scholar