From the other side, once you "grasp" the truth of a situation, have you any choice but to affirm it? This would seem to be somewhat closer to the sense of assertion intended. In other words, Moore's paradox is a simple impossibility: to see the truth of a situation or a proposition is to believe it. — Srap Tasmaner

But I want to make a bit of a different point. On my (admittedly limited) understanding of the Tractatus, one thing a picture is entirely incapable of depicting is that it is true. A picture can show how things might be, and things may indeed be that way, but the picture cannot include itself in its depiction and vouch for its own accuracy.

Just so, my belief that a picture is accurate does not count as evidence that it is. — Srap Tasmaner

We have talked some -- whether we should have or not, I'm not sure --- about whether there's some sense in which propositions are self-asserting. In these terms, whether a picture at least inherently claims that things stand as it shows, even if it cannot itself substantiate that claim. — Srap Tasmaner

After a close read of Kimhi's section 2.5 I see him doing the exact same thing that Srap and I were doing. He says that both a declarative sentence and an asserted declarative sentence "display" force, but whereas the first is "a mere display" the second is "a self-identifying display." — Leontiskos

...what is Kimhi trying to argue here?

Simply working from Boynton, he seems to be saying that if the declarative sentence, "The cloud is raining," does not display an assertion, then it is impossible to say under what conditions the cloud would be raining or not raining. That if "the cloud is raining" and "the cloud is not raining" do not display different assertions, then they could not be associated with different truthmakers. This looks like the same argument that Wittgenstein gives in Rombout 60-62. — Leontiskos

That is what Wittgenstein tries to show by means of this analogy: the difference between (Wittgenstein’s conception of) Fregean assertion and Wittgenstein’s own idea of a sentence saying that its Sinn_w is true. In Tractatus a sentence cannot take a meta-position and compare the Sinn_w it shows with the world. Therefore, the sentence cannot acknowledge its own truth. A sentence cannot ‘check’ whether it corresponds to the world and decide upon the truth of the claim it makes, there are no extra-linguistic acts attributed to sentences. Nevertheless, every sentence aims at truth. A sentence is a picture of reality and as such it already makes a claim about what reality looks like. That is what 4.022 expresses: a sentence depicts a situation and says that this situation is the case. Sentences are not completely neutral phenomena; in showing a situation, they already ‘support’ that situation. It would be incorrect to ascribe intentions to sentences, but a sentence depicts a possibility and embodies that possibility in the same time: the possibility may in fact not obtain, but the ‘proposal’ the sentence makes is that it does obtain. In representing a possibility, the sentence more or less puts the truth of this possibility under consideration.

<<4.2 The meaning of the sentence is its agreement or disagreement of the possibilities of the existence and non-existence of states of affairs.>>

It is not asserted in the Fregean sense, for this agreement is not assertion. Whether it is actually true, or whether it corresponds to reality, seems to be irrelevant to Wittgenstein, at least for logical considerations. It may be part of the natural sciences or of interest to someone, but it is not relevant when formulating the limits of our thought. The actual truth of a sentence can only be established by a subject, and it is already mentioned that a subject does not belong to logic. — Frege, Russell and Wittgenstein on the Judgment Stroke, by Floor Rombout, 63

Isn't it self-evident that if logic is to be meaningful then there must be some relation between thought and reality? — Leontiskos

Unless these philosophers explain WHY thought MUST reflect reality (via "logic"), it doesn't seem to have any force to me, except as, ironically, unsupported assertions. — schopenhauer1

The rules of logic always presuppose that the words used are not empty, that the sentences express judgements, that we are not playing with mere words.

(Gottlob Frege, “Dialog mit Pünjer über Existenz”) — Lukáš Novák, Can We Speak About That Which Is Not?, 157-8

I want to highlight a few things in Owen Boynton’s first-rate essay/review on Thinking and Being. — J

For any proposition, Pa, its truth value is associated with the extensional reference to something that exists (the extension is a relation between a and a fact in the world that must obtain). But what is it that creates this “association”? How is it associated with the extensional reference to something that exists, as opposed to something that does not exists?

“In virtue of what is the forceless combination Pa associated with the truth-making
relation that a falls under the extension of P, and thus with the claim Pa, rather than
with the truth-making relation that a does not fall under P (or falls under the extension
of ~P), and this with the opposite claim ~Pa? This question cannot be answered, since
Pa does not display an assertion, and therefore there is nothing that associates it with
the positive rather than the negative judgment.” (Kimhi, 137)

Interestingly, this, coming near the end of Kimhi’s work, is very much where Rödl starts out in Self-Consciousness and Objectivity (p. 43: “But this second-order judgment is not a thought of its own validity. So I am not, in judging that I must judge q, conscious of anything that stands in the way of judging that I may judge ~q. And this is to say that I am not conscious of anything that stands in the way of judging ~ q.”);. . . — Boynton's Review of Thinking and Being

It's tricky to switch paradigms, but in Wittgenstein's paradigm the problem is that Frege has "two phases in the assertion of a sentence." Russell struggles with the same issue from a different paradigm. For Frege it is the difference between "the True" and the judgment-stroke.

To try to put it plainly: is it possible to see that something is true before going on to assert it? And does (the recognition of?) a sentence's truth require a subject? Is the syncategorematicity (in Boynton's sense) of the judgment-stroke already present in the truth-assessment?

The puzzle is explicit in Frege's requirement that only true sentences can be asserted, a requirement that is incomprehensible to, and thus not even understood by, Russell and Wittgenstein. If only true sentences can be asserted, then what exactly is the difference between calling a sentence true and asserting it? Frege has an uncommonly objective notion of truth (and also assertion) (at least as far as contemporary logic is concerned). — Leontiskos

I note that many of the fears over misinformation mention the threat to some amorphous, ill-defined order. Both China and the EU have this in common. From the EU, “The risk of harm includes threats to democratic political processes, including integrity of elections, and to democratic values that shape public policies in a variety of sectors, such as health, science, finance and more.” Or for China it threatens to “undermine economic and social order”. It’s clear to me that it is a threat to the state. Therefor, digital authoritarianism and the control of information is required. — NOS4A2

Put differently, in asserting, "If p then q," we are asserting something about p and q. Is the takeaway then that assertoric force is not binary? And yet, is assertion binary?
— Leontiskos

An interesting question. "If p then q" seems to be inherently an assertion about the relationship between p and q. It is an inherently asymmetric relation: "if q then p" is not entailed.

"It is raining" has the form "x is y", just as "it is green" does, and yet they are not the same. To state that it is raining, I could just say "raining", which would seem to indicate that assertion is not always binary.

I hope I've understood your question; I'm pretty confident about working out the logic of natural language, but I'm not great with formal logic. — Janus

...Just so, I'm resistant to analysis that treats all of our declarative utterances as deserving an "I judge that ..." or "I believe that ..." in front of them. Sometimes we judge, sometimes we go out of our way to mark what we're saying as our personal belief, and sometimes, probably mostly, we just talk. — Srap Tasmaner

I still don't know what this thread is about, but I'm pretty sure it starts in a place pretty far from me and goes in the opposite direction. — Srap Tasmaner

OK. Evidently my choice of “The grass in my backyard” was unfortunate, because it looks like its grammar may confuse the logical point. Let’s change the term to “Berlin”. If I say “Berlin,” I doubt if anyone would call it an incomplete sentence. Or, if you like, imagine Frege walking along a beach and finding a scrap of paper with the word “Berlin” written on it. In either of these cases, I’m guessing the natural response would be something like “What about Berlin?” or “I wonder why ‛Berlin’ appears here.” But what my question about comprehension is asking to you to affirm, is that in neither case would the response be “What is Berlin? I don’t understand this term” (if you’ll grant that the folks involved have heard of Berlin before). — J

To the second quote: I do indeed want to talk about (in the sense of "mention") some x apart from any function. I’ve just done so. You say that “Frege will not have it.” That may well be true. But again, what I’m asking is, does “not having it” mean that Frege doesn’t comprehend the term “Berlin”, or doesn’t think that I do? Or is it, rather, that he’s urging me to understand that I can’t say anything about the term without its taking its place to saturate a function? — J

KG: The grass is green
FG: ⊢∃x(Grass(x) ∧ Green(x)) — Leontiskos

Frege doesn't write
⊢p⊃q
⊢p
⊢q
such that each is within it's own intensional bracket; he writes
⊢(
p⊃q
p
q) — Banno

The first is invalid; the second, brilliant. — Banno

Frege's system 'cannot account for the inference: “p”→ “A judges p”→ “A rightly judges p."' because it is invalid. It simply does not follow from p, that A judges p, nor that A rightly judges p. — Banno

This goes back to my original question, what gives the assertion any truth-value in the first place? Whether you say "This person thinks X is true and judges correctly" or just "X is true", besides just a more efficient logical form, what does it matter really? — schopenhauer1

Now my response is that we as a community choose to use "the sky is blue" to set out something about the way things are (or are not, when it is overcast). But you don't seem to like this answer. I suspect you want a theory that sets out, for any given sentence, if it is true or no. — Banno

That's not what logic does. Rather it is about the consistency of what we say. — Banno

But I guess the bigger picture here is that Kimhi seems to think Frege is lacking something that say, someone like Aristotle captured in his logic- some sort of active engagement of the thinker and the logic. I guess I just don't see the difference really in how Aristotle adds the "active" engagement part. As far as I see from their logical forms, they are different ways of saying the same thing. I don't see anything like "Thucydides thinks that Socrates is mortal". Rather Aristotle's example would be "Socrates is mortal". I guess I don't get Kimhi's comparison and how he thinks Aristotle captures the "thinking" part. — schopenhauer1

This might be the sort of thing McDowell and Kimhi are looking for. — Banno

Here's a passage from T&B that talks about this — J

That is to say, the "thinking" part, according to this view, is "behind the scenes". The conclusions are then taken from the "thinking part" and put forth in logical terms so as to be clear and consistent so nothing is misconstrued. — schopenhauer1

I read up more on Frege's meta-logical theory, and it seems that he was a sort of Platonist about logical truths.. So finally, I think I see what the goal of Kimhi here is. It's not the FORM per se, but Frege's underlying assumptions of logic.. That logic is not psychological, according to Frege, but rather metaphysically real in some Platonic way... Ok, so this just goes back to an old debate about the nature of truth. Is "Truth" independent of human thinking, or is it "True" irrespective of the interpreter (or psychology)? — schopenhauer1

Do not trust anyone who uses the words "disinformation" or "misinformation."
What they mean is "opinions that run contrary to mine that I should be allowed to suppress." — Jordan Peterson

So, by the middle of the 20th century, the scientific community — in the United States and many other Western countries — had achieved a goal long wished for by many of its most vocal members: it had been woven into the fabric of ordinary social, economic, and political life. For many academic students of science — historians, sociologists, and, above all, philosophers — that part of science which was not an academic affair remained scarcely visible, but the reality was that most of science was now conducted within government and business, and much of the public approval of science was based on a sense of its external utilities — if indeed power and profit should be seen as goals external to scientific work. Moreover, insofar as academia can still be viewed as the natural home of science, universities, too, began to rebrand themselves as normal sorts of civic institutions. For at least half a century, universities have made it clear that they should not be thought of as Ivory Towers; they were not disengaged from civic concerns but actively engaged in furthering those concerns. They have come to speak less and less about Truth and more and more about Growing the Economy and increasing their graduates’ earning power. The audit culture imposed neoliberal market standards on the evaluation of academic inquiry, offering an additional sign that science properly belonged in the market, driven by market concerns and evaluated by market criteria. The entanglement of science with business and statecraft historically tracked the disentanglement of science from the institutions of religion. That, too, was celebrated by scientific spokespersons as a great victory, but the difference here was that science and religion in past centuries were both in the Truth Business.

When science becomes so extensively bonded with power and profit, its conditions of credibility look more and more like those of the institutions in which it has been enfolded. Its problems are their problems. Business is not in the business of Truth; it is in the business of business. So why should we expect the science embedded within business to have a straightforward entitlement to the notion of Truth? The same question applies to the science embedded in the State’s exercise of power. Knowledge speaks through institutions; it is embedded in the everyday practices of social life; and if the institutions and the everyday practices are in trouble, so too is their knowledge. Given the relationship between the order of knowledge and the order of society, it’s no surprise that the other Big Thing now widely said to be in Crisis is liberal democracy. The Hobbesian Cui bono? question (Who benefits?) is generally thought pertinent to statecraft and commerce, so why shouldn’t there be dispute over scientific deliverances emerging, and thought to emerge, from government, business, and institutions advertising their relationship to them? — Harvard historian of science Steve Shapin, Is There a Crisis of Truth?

but there is a sense in which Frege's system automatically narrows the the field of true statements to statements about real things, and that does seem relevant to Kimhi's whole invocation of Parmenides. Somehow. — Srap Tasmaner

...my case that Frege only means, literally, that we can't speak in Logicalese about the existence of entities or the non-existence of entities. I don't take him to mean that we can't understand the difference, or that we can only understand what can be said in Logicalese. — J

Consider this: if you can predicate existence, can you also predicate non-existence? — Srap Tasmaner

Are you saying that, because “The grass in my backyard” is an individual term, not "Fregean," not part of a proposition, Frege would be reduced to silence about it? Would he say, “Sorry, I don’t understand that term”? This seems unlikely. I’m deliberately asking a question about an individual term because I’m trying to build up an argument about Frege’s views on existence. — J

Your response goes on to imagine what Frege would say about a different bit of language, “The grass is in my backyard,” but that of course is a proposition and not at issue. — J

And the question remains for you as well: You are not a Fregean, so what account would you give of that term? — J

Every syllogistic term must have an extension—must signify a concept in Frege’s sense. And this violates commitment (3). — Kimhi, Thinking and Being, 45

I’m happy to have both Novak and Rombout on tap. As I mentioned yesterday, my time is a bit curtailed this week but I’m sure they are both worth reading, and I’ll do so. — J

All the objections to Frege's logic that I have seen are metalogical objections, and yours is no exception. ↪Srap Tasmaner says that there is no (counter)-argument being offered, and this is true at least insofar as there is no counter-argument which adopts Fregian presuppositions. What is being questioned is the presupposition.

So how does one offer an argument against logical presuppositions? The most obvious way is to argue that the presupposition fails to capture some real aspect of natural logic or natural language, and by claiming that natural propositions possess a variety of assertoric force that Frege's logic lacks, this is what you are doing. Yet this is where a point like Novák's becomes so important, for logicians like Russell, Frege, Quine, et al., presuppose that natural language is flawed and must be corrected by logic. This moots your point. — Leontiskos

In other words, your paraphrase ("such sentences have an inherent assertional logical or grammatical structure") may capture the idea just fine. — J

The question is whether the "other uses" of a statement are truly independent of its assertoric nature. — Leontiskos

But I worry that this tangential "hair-splitting" may have no force against Frege, and so I don't want to develop it too far. It's more that, "Here's something I hold, which sounds a lot like what Kimhi is saying. Maybe Kimhi could be interpreted this way? But I don't see how it intersects with Frege." — Leontiskos

...But it is also supposed to corroborate Frege’s point. For if a thought can be conveyed without assertoric force, assertoric form must be external to a proposition’s semantical character. — Kimhi, Thinking and Being, 44

The textbook account of truth-functional propositional complexity begins from Frege’s point. — Kimhi, Thinking and Being, 47

But this construal of concept expressions rests on an incoherent association of the unity of a contradictory pair of assertions with the duality of truth and falsehood, understood as two objects with contrary properties (see TLP 4.063). — Kimhi, Thinking and Being, footnote 34

I was addressing 'if p then q'. — Janus

Well, here we are back to the vexing question of "assertion" a la Kimhi. To push you down the rabbit hole, I'd need to persuade you that your use of "say" and "says" is not innocent, but brings with it an entire apparatus involving what it is for a consciousness to think (and possibly assert) a proposition. I'm still working on the best way to talk about this (and I'm not sure it's true, but Kimhi makes it plausible at least). — J

Who dug this rabbit hole? Lewis Carroll, apparently. — bongo fury

In order to understand a sentence which is either assertoric or imperative, then, we have to know two things: under what conditions it is correct and under what conditions incorrect; and whether it is used to make an assertion or to give a command. [...] The conditions for the correctness or incorrectness of a sentence could then be considered as endowing it with a certain descriptive content, which is in general independent of whether it is being used to make an assertion or give a command; this descriptive content corresponds precisely to what Frege calls the sense of a sentence, or the thought it expresses. In order to understand the sentence, to know its use, it will be necessary that it should contain another symbolic element conveying the force with which it is used; something playing the part of an assertion sign or command sign. Here the assertion sign is doing much more than merely marking the beginning and end of the sentence [pace Wittgenstein]. — Michael Dummett: Frege, Philosophy of Language, page 305

Broadly -- I think everyone knows this, but here we are -- the two principal strands of thought about language are: language as symbol system (which facilitates thought); language as communications system. Frege is generally treated as part of the former camp, and early Wittgenstein, and the latter camp includes later Wittgenstein, Grice, et al. (David Lewis makes an heroic attempt to marry them in Convention, and admits that he cannot.) For what it's worth, I'm in the latter camp, but see the sort of analysis the former produces as a useful strategy in some cases. — Srap Tasmaner

language as symbol system — Srap Tasmaner

But language is easy (!) compared to logic. It appears to me that research overwhelmingly supports the communication-first view, but there is no simple path from there to a similarly robust take on logic, not that I've found anyway. That's uncomfortable for me, but oh well. — Srap Tasmaner

And Kimhi seems to me mostly to be talking about a pretend world, or at least mistaking the simplifications (that is, fictions) we employ, like "grasping the truth of a proposition", for reality. — Srap Tasmaner

Shrug. That's how simplification works. It's a model; all models are wrong. — Srap Tasmaner

One of the interesting points that Novák makes is that there is a characteristic divide between the scholastics and the analytics with respect to natural language: — Leontiskos

In scholasticism the matters are rather more complicated. Generally speaking, the scholastics lacked the Russellian revisionist attitude towards natural language, and therefore they rarely explicitly challenged the obvious capacity of the natural language to refer to non-existents. Their approach was, generally, to explain and analyse, not to correct language – and so the standard scholastic theory of supposition (the mediæval counterpart of reference) naturally allows (via devices like ampliation etc.) for reference to non-existents.[18] — Lukáš Novák, Can We Speak About That Which Is Not?, 168-9

It's ironic you say this.

My deep dissatisfaction with everything I've read of Kimhi was precisely the emphasis on assertion, judgment (a word I've never had any use for because of its libertarian aura), and this "I" of logic.

I've been thinking a lot the last few days about the "we" of logic, but so far it's not in good enough shape for the thread I promised.

Anyway, this "I" stuff is why I'm not bothering about Kimhi anymore. — Srap Tasmaner

What that gets us, I'm not sure. If you say, for instance, that assertion "aims at truth" (which, perhaps mistakenly, I suppose is the sort of thing Kimhi will want to say), then a declarative sentence must be the sort of thing that can be aimed at truth, whatever that means. — Srap Tasmaner

“in order to express a thought, I have to realize that thoughts aim at truth" — Michael Potter as quoted in Rombout, 61

I always read the "language-game" analysis as an expansion of the context principle, so I have some sympathy with this view.

I do want to note the alternative approach, though, which is Grice's, and which I also have considerable sympathy with. Grice distinguishes sentence meaning from speaker's meaning, and defends the usual logical analysis of the meaning of a sentence as essentially correct, even if in a given context a speaker means something else by saying it.

An example I've used before: you're driving somewhere with a friend and ask, "Should we stop here to eat?" Your friend checks his phone and says, "The next town is like 70 miles." What he means by saying this is "yes", but that doesn't change the meaning of the sentence he uttered or of any of the words in it. --- Nor is "yes" logically implied by what he said; it is only implicated, and he might in fact be willing to wait.

I say all this because if you want to identify the meaning of a sentence with its use, as a move in a language-game -- what I think Kimhi might be pointing at with "actual occurrences" and so on -- you can get speaker's meaning right but skip entirely over sentence meaning, which in this case is a verifiable claim about geography.

It does seem like the principal subtext here is the picture theory of the Tractatus and its abandonment. — Srap Tasmaner

Eek. Not only is this part redundant but it requires classes to be objects, which pill, though bitter, even Quine swallowed for the sake of mathematics. But we don't have to go there just for this. — Srap Tasmaner

(It's also Quine who pointed out that names for individuals are eliminable. You just make a predicate like "Socratizes" that is satisfied by a single individual. That might not strike you as either intuitive or felicitous, but it's a typical math move, to subsume a particular problem into a more general one.) — Srap Tasmaner

However, in his reception of Russell’s ideas Quine makes one inconspicuous but crucial modification: any mention of “genuine” proper names is left out, to the effect that all proper names are in fact disguised descriptions. In this way, our language is finally devoid of any means whatsoever to genuinely and uniquely refer to a fixed individual; in Quine’s conception, individuals can only be reached via (quantified) variables. Thus, according to Quine, we are not only denied the capacity to speak of that which is not, but we also cannot, directly and by name, speak of individuals that are: this is manifested e.g. in Quine’s rejecting not just “possible entities”, but de re modalities in general.[13] — Lukáš Novák, Can We Speak About That Which Is Not? Actualism and Possibilism in Analytic Philosophy and Scholasticism, 166

Indeed it is so incomprehensible that I didn't even remember this was Frege's view.

Which suggests to me that "assertion" is really not a word we should be using at all here, given its modern meaning. — Srap Tasmaner

One adjustment to this I would probably make is to say the goal of assertion is to aim someone else at truth -- at what you take for truth, anyway, so that's another adjustment. — Srap Tasmaner

I may have missed it, but I suppose this applies to "judgment" as well, that you cannot judge as true what is false. — Srap Tasmaner

All of which points toward that favorite (never defined) word, "grasping". So it's about grasping the meaning of a proposition, grasping its truth, the difference between those, and so on. — Srap Tasmaner

The issue of two phases in the assertion [of] a sentence is also discussed in Wittgenstein’s Philosophische Untersuchungen [§22]. — Rombout, 61

So a better rewrite of the words addressed to Frege that I put in Kimhi’s mouth: “I disagree, if you’re saying that the only thing which gives the predicate its force is assertion. But as I read you, you needn’t be saying that at all. But you do, and Geach and other Fregeans have emphasized this additional point without seeming to realize that you could have stopped with your ‛observation’ and all would have been well.” — J

I interpret Frege differently here. To show how, let me start with a question. What do you think the status is of the term ‛The grass in my backyard’? Are you able to understand it? And now a second question: What do you think Frege would say? — J

The closest Frege's system can get to modeling something like this is to say, "There exists something which is both grass and green." Fregian logic has an especially hard time with individuals since it is built for concepts or classes. Given that the statement is not Fregian in the first place, it raises a whole host of issues. — Leontiskos

I’m starting to think so too, and see Boynton. He does a far better job than I thought possible at giving the term some intuitive appeal, especially when he likens it to “metaphysical”. — J

Who dug this rabbit hole? Lewis Carroll, apparently.

...

I'm not falling down it. Maybe I need a push?

Yes, 'Peter is a Jew; if Peter is a Jew, Andrew is a Jew; therefore Andrew is a Jew' says that Peter is a Jew.

Whereas, 'If both Peter is a Jew and if Peter is a Jew, then Andrew is a Jew, then Andrew is a Jew' doesn't.

So what? Why deny, in the latter case, that the sub-string 'Peter is a Jew' (considered as such, apart from its context) still says so? You could perfectly well admit that it does but still say the whole, larger sentence doesn't.

And if you have a reason, why shouldn't it equally well apply for sense, and disqualify the inner occurrence of the sentence from having the same sense as a free-standing occurrence? — bongo fury

Where in Frege the premises and the the conclusion, as well as the connection between them need to be asserted in order to constitute an inference, this demand is dropped [by Russell and Whitehead]. What is asserted in a syllogism is the connection between premises and the conclusion, not the sentences themselves. This seems to be an explanation for allowing for an abbreviated form, but in order to conclude so, it has to be considered whether a syllogism is an inference. — Rombout, 44-5

In grammar, the distinction is that between a verb and a verbal noun, between, say, “A is greater than B” and “A’s being greater than B”. In the first of these the proposition is actually asserted, whereas in the second it is merely considered. But these are psychological terms, whereas the difference which I desire to express is genuinely logical. It is plain that, if I may be allowed to use the word assertion in a non-psychological sense, the proposition “p implies q” asserts an implication, though it does not assert p or q. The p and the q which enter into this proposition are not strictly the same as the p or the q which are separate propositions, at least, if they are true. The question is: How does a proposition differ by being actually true from what it would be as an entity if it were not true? It is plain that true and false propositions alike are entities of a kind, but that true propositions have a quality not belonging to false ones, a quality which, in a non-psychological sense, may be called asserted. There are grave difficulties giving a consistent theory on this, for if assertion would in any way change a proposition, no proposition which can possibly in any context be unasserted could be true, since when asserted it would become a different proposition. But this is plainly false; for in “p implies q” p and q are not asserted, and yet they may be true. Leaving this puzzle to logic, however, we must insist that there is a difference of some kind between asserted and unasserted propositions.

(Russell, Principles, §38) — Rombout, 33

[11] This dissociation is the target of TLP 4.063, which purports to show that “the verb of a proposition is not ‘is true’ or ‘is false’ as Frege thought: rather that which ‘is true’ must already contain the verb” (Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, trans. Pears and McGuiness [Oxford: Blackwell, 2001], 29). — Kimhi, Thinking and Being, 8

[27] For Geach, Frege’s observation is meant to be restricted to occurrences of propositions in logical contexts that are identifiable as extensional or truth-functional. But understood as Wittgenstein’s point, Frege’s observation is not limited to a truth-functional context, and it implies semantic innocence, p is the same in p and in A thinks p. An expression of a generalized version of Frege’s observation, one that assimilates intensional and extensional contexts, can be found in the following note from Wittgenstein’s Notes on Logic:

<<When we say A judges that, etc., then we have to mention a whole proposition which A judges. It will not do to mention only its constituents, or its constituents and form but not in the proper order. This shows that a proposition itself must occur in the statement to the effect that it is judged. For instance, however “not- p” may be explained, the question “What is negated?” must have a meaning. (96)>> — Kimhi, Thinking and Being, 39

Since the subordinate propositions in a compound are treated as logical building blocks, so to speak, I will call this a spatio-logical account of truth-functional propositional complexity.[35]

[35] G. E. M. Anscombe uses the term “logical chemistry” to describe such an account:

<<Consider the explanations of propositions and truth-functions, or logical constants, which are commonly found in logic books. It is usual for us to be told: first, propositions are whatever can be either true or false; second, propositions can be combined in certain ways to form further propositions; and third, in examining these combinations, i.e., in developing the truth-functional calculus, we are not interested in the internal structure of the combined propositions. . . . Is there not an impression as it were of logical chemistry about these explanations? (An Introduction to Wittgenstein’s Tractatus [New York: Harper & Row, 1965], 53)>>

Anscombe correctly rejects a reading of the Tractatus that ascribes to it this “logical chemistry.” My suggestion is that the main features of such an account arise from Frege’s point. — Kimhi, Thinking and Being, 48

The notion that logic is not concerned with actual, historical occurrences of linguistic expressions but only with symbolical occurrences of expressions within larger symbolical contexts lies at the heart of Wittgenstein’s early work. Later he would note, for example, that the common or regular agreement between speakers in what they describe by the use of the predicate “. . . F,” is not logically external to the assertoric act of describing something as “. . . F.” And he insists that, in saying this, we do not lose the integrity of logic—we do not give in to psycho-logicism.[36]

[36] Compare Philosophical Investigations §242:

<<If language is to be a means of communication there must be agreement not only in definition but also (queer as this sounds) in judgments. This seems to abolish logic, but does not do so. It is one thing to describe a method of measurement, and another to obtain and state results of measurement. But what we call “measuring” is partly determined by a certain constancy in results of measurement.>>

The remark seems addressed to his own earlier separation of logic and psychology. — Kimhi, Thinking and Being, 51

Agreed. Good analysis. I'd only add that whether there is indeed a "wholeness of KG" is a central question, and Kimhi is trying very hard to argue for it, using pre-Fregean concepts of logic. — J

minutia-mongering — schopenhauer1

But [logic is] simply a tool — schopenhauer1

Frege, and logic, moved from prefixing"I know..." to something more like "I can write..." over time. — Banno

Satisfaction, and so to a great extent truth, enter into the process if at all at the level of interpretation. — Banno

As Banno points out, above, Frege didn't think in terms of actual illocutionary acts such as the one you're using as an example. — J

So we have two different things, sense and reference on the one hand, and illocutionary force on the other. The distinction between them is not, I think, explicit in Frege. It seems instead that the idea of illocutionary force was developed in Oxford and Cambridge in the thirties. — Banno

What's salient here is that making an assertion is as much part of the illocutionary force of an utterance as is asking a question or giving an instruction. One might see this as setting aside the "assertoric" aspect of the sentence in order to deal with other aspects of its structure - what it is about. — Banno

Could you say more about this? I’m not sure what sentence reification would be. — J

No, you’re right. In part, this thread for me has been a process of clarifying terminology. I now think it’s better just to speak of “force” understood as positive or negative predication rather than using the term “assertoric force.” This (my) sense of "force" might be close to what you’re calling intentional force, but I’m still not sure whether you mean “intentional” or “intensional”. Interestingly, either meaning might apply on this point! — J

Yes, you’ve got it, as your later post with the extensive Kimhi quotes shows. Kimhi agrees with what he calls “Frege’s observation” but not what he calls “Frege’s point.” His line of dialogue should read, “I disagree, if you’re saying that the only thing which gives the predicate its force is assertion. But as I read you, you needn’t be saying that at all. That’s a conclusion that Geach and other Fregeans have imposed on you.” And that’s what I’ve been saying too. — J

However, for Frege and Geach the observation amounts to something different. — Kimhi, Thinking and Being, 38-9

There’s an important question here. Yes, once an argument is attached to a predicate, we say it exists. But the question is, What was the status of the argument term before something was predicated of it? A rather Zen-like question, but what I’m arguing is that an infinite number of nouns (just to simplify it to nouns) are floating around in our language, their status unknown. To place one into a function grants it existence in the only way that Frege thought made sense. — J

So I do think it’s meaningful and important to speak about entities/nouns that may or may not exist – it will depend on whether they become arguments in a function. — J

2) we have to start with a logically grammatical proposition that fills the argument slot with a term, thus creating what Frege called a “name,” before we can say whether it exists or not. — J

I’m afraid this is probably true, but I’m still going to avoid as much of Kimhi’s terminology as possible, out of consideration for others following the thread. The “good reason!” you mention isn’t just his odd use of singular terms like “syncategorematic,” but his whole style of writing, which is dense, lacks examples, and asks you to remember his labels for complicated arguments (“Frege’s observation” vs. “Frege’s point,” for example). I agree that the ND review is a help. And everything you’ve cited from Thinking and Being here is absolutely on the mark, and important; I’m just afraid it will be opaque without context and a lot of reflection. — J

This is his “psycho / logical monism” put quite plainly. — J

...but it’s the same question about what, if anything, important follows from this. — J

I'm going to propose what I hope is an alternative view in a separate post, so as to please no one. — Srap Tasmaner

• KG: The grass is green
• FG: $\vdash$∃x(Grass(x) ∧ Green(x))

[math]\vdash[/math]

• FGH: —∃x(Grass(x) ∧ Green(x))

[Kimhi] is saying something like this: "Frege sucks all of the assertoric force out of its natural context within a statement and then plops it at the beginning of the declarative sentence in the form of a judgment-stroke." — Leontiskos

The languages known to me lack such a sign, and assertoric force is closely bound up with the indicative mood of the sentence that forms the main clause. — Frege, Posthumous Writings, 192

But [Fregian "judgment"] is something added on top of the logic. It's just not at the core, which is about manipulating symbols. — Banno

It does seem like the principal subtext here is the picture theory of the Tractatus and its abandonment. — Srap Tasmaner

. . .in the fifth chapter the simple logos apophantikos is characterized as revealing or showing (dêlôn) a single thing (pragma).

These motives [from Aristotle's De Interpretatione] will be familiar to readers of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, with its account of propositions as pictures. There is, I believe, an affinity between these works. . . — Kimhi, Thinking and Being, 73

This phrase "criteria for truth" -- what could that possibly mean? How can anyone have one of those? — Srap Tasmaner

The assertion [or judgment-stroke] symbol is a composite. But unlike every other composite sign in the Begriffsschrift, the composition of this symbol is not itself functional. The nature of its composition remains mysterious. Presumably it is unanalyzable in the same sense that “acknowledgment of something as true” is unanalyzable. — Kimhi, Thinking and Being, 40

This distinguishes it, within the Begriffsschrift, as the sole syncategorematic expression. The whole symbol governed by a judgment-stroke, for example, “⊢p,” is itself a syncategorematic unit since it cannot be embedded as a functional or predicative component within a logically complex whole. (In particular, it cannot be either a subject or a predicate term in a proposition.)

...

The categorematic / syncategorematic difference will emerge as the major concern of this work. But at this point it can be described simply as the difference between expressions that can and cannot be functionally embedded as part of a larger significant expression. For example, in the Begriffsschrift “-p” is a categorematic propositional sign because it can occur as a subordinate expression within a compound proposition. And, as I already mentioned, “⊢p” is a syncategorematic propositional sign. — Kimhi, Thinking and Being, 41-2

In order to see how this Fregean attempt to make our puzzlement vanish in fact fails to come to terms with the real difficulty, we shall need to appreciate how it turns on the assumption that being true or false originally involves a dissociation of what is true or false from the activity of thinking or saying that such-and-such is or is not the case; or in other words, on a dissociation of the intrinsic propositional unity of veridical being from its veridical being or non-being.[11] It will be essential to the project of this inquiry to show that this assumption is incoherent.

[11] This dissociation is the target of TLP 4.063, which purports to show that “the verb of a proposition is not ‘is true’ or ‘is false’ as Frege thought: rather that which ‘is true’ must already contain the verb” (Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, trans. Pears and McGuiness [Oxford: Blackwell, 2001], 29). — Kimhi, Thinking and Being, 8

Isn't this just the difference between validity and soundness? In computer science, for example, all that matters is the structure can be parsed using the correct language structure to manipulate the 0s and 1s when it is compiled to machine code/binary. That doesn't convey truth. Something else needs to be added. — schopenhauer1

It is necessary to recognize the truth of the premises. When we infer [schliessen], we recognize a truth on the basis of other previously recognized truths according to a logical law. Suppose we have arbitrarily formed the propositions

‘2 < 1′

‘If something were smaller than 1, then it is greater than 2’ Without knowing whether these propositions are true. We could derive[16]:

‘2 < 2′

from them in a purely formal way; but this would not be an inference because the truth of the premises is lacking. And the truth of the conclusion is no better grounded by means of this pseudo-ineference than without it. And this procedure would be useless for the recognition of any truths.[17]

[16] Note that Frege is using the word ‘schliessen’ (to infer) here, rather than ’ableiten’, which would mean something like: ’to deduce’. — Frege, Russell and Wittgenstein on the Judgment Stroke, by Floor Rombout, p. 14

Leontiskos - that masters thesis you linked is a good read. — fdrake

The idea is that we never handle statements independent of assertions, even when we are not asserting them. — Leontiskos

It is also not so clear, on a closer look, that a conception of thought and judgment along Fregean lines is able to dispose of the Parmenidean puzzle. Judgeable content is introduced as the highest common factor shared by thought and judgment. One can grasp a judgeable content without yet taking the further step of judging it to be true or false ("advancing to a truth-value"). Judgment is logically more complex than thought: it consists in a content grasped plus the recognition of the truth of what is thus grasped. This means that the logical unity of the content of an assertion, as conveyed by the predicative use of "is", precedes and is independent of the logical unity of the judgment to which this assertion gives expression, as conveyed by the assertoric use of "is" (8, 18). As Kimhi points out, however, it is far from clear that the notion of a judgeable content that is at once forceless and truth-apt is coherent. How can content show how things are if it is true prior to and independently of saying that they do so stand?

...

It is Kimhi's contention that the fundamental obstacle resides in the assumption that "All logical complexity is predicative or functional in nature" (15, 22), i.e., that every dimension of the logical complexity of a proposition can be rendered in function-argument form. Let us call this assumption the Uniformity Assumption (UA). This assumption, in turn, fuels the assumption that a simple proposition enjoys a unitary being, and so is individuated as the proposition that it is, prior to being true or false (39). On this assumption, the veridical being or non-being of what is said by a proposition (i.e., its being the case or not being the case) is extrinsic to its predicative being (i.e., the being expressed by the predicative use of "is") (8, 18). Let us call this assumption the Externality Assumption (EA). Correlatively, the veridical sense of being and non-being (i.e., being as being-true and being as being-false) is held to be at best secondary (69-70). Finally, EA induces a twofold thesis: it is countenanced (1) that every assertion articulates into two components, one of which conveys its semantical content and the other the force with which it is put forward (39); and (2) that the contexts in which a proposition can occur divide into two radically different kinds of contexts, namely, extensional, "transparent", truth-functional complexes, on the one hand, and intensional, "opaque", non-truth-functional complexes, on the other hand (12). Thus, UA is the ultimate source of the "psycho/logical dualism" (as the book calls it) that was systematically advocated by Frege and is nowadays more or less taken for granted (33-34). This dualistic view of judgment as decomposing into a subjective act and a truth-evaluable content drives a wedge between the psychological and ontological versions of the principle of non-contradiction (PPNC and OPNC respectively) (39). It is supposed to be the only way of steering clear of the pitfall of psychologism about logic (33).

This overall diagnosis is at once profound, original, and controversial. . . — Review of Kimhi's Thinking and Being, by Jean-Philippe Narboux

a proposition may occur in discourse now asserted, now unasserted, and yet be recognizably the same proposition.

(Peter Geach, “Assertion,” reprinted in Logic Matters (London: Basil Blackwell, 1972), 254–255.) — Kimhi, Thinking and Being, 37

It is worth noting that Geach is not using the term proposition in the Fregean sense of a thought or content, but rather, as he puts it elsewhere, “in a sense inherited from medieval logic, a bit of language identifiable in a certain recognizable logical employment.”[25] It is a bit of language—but not just a “string of words.” Different occurrences of the same words are recognizable as occurrences of the same proposition only within the larger logical context. (This is also what I mean when I talk of propositions and propositional signs.)[26]

The use of the term occur in Frege’s observation is ambiguous between occurrence understood as the actual concrete occurrence of a propositional sign and a symbolic occurrence of a propositional sign within a larger propositional or logical context. — Kimhi, Thinking and Being, 38

. . .Understood as a point concerning a proposition’s concrete occurrences it is the straightforward insight that having the character of an actual assertion, by contrast to having a semantical or logical identity, is characteristic of particular occurrences of a proposition that cannot be associated with the repeatable symbol. In other words, a propositional sign manifests, through its symbolic composition, the semantical character of each actual occurrence of the proposition, but not the force character of any those occurrences.

However, for Frege and Geach the observation amounts to something different. They want to say that anything within the composition of a propositional sign which is associated with assertoric force must be dissociated from that which carries semantic significance—that is, from everything directly relevant to its truth-value. In particular, they want to dissociate assertoric force from anything in the composition or form of that which is primarily true or false in a propositional sign.[27]

In what follows, I shall call the correct understanding of Frege’s observation Wittgenstein’s point, and I shall call the conclusion Geach and Frege draw from it—that assertoric force must be dissociated from a proposition’s semantical significance— Frege’s point. We shall see that Frege’s point is mistaken. It only seems necessary if we accept certain functionalist (and more generally, compositionalist) assumptions about logical complexity. Correctly understood as Wittgenstein’s point, Frege’s observation concerns actual occurrences of a proposition and amounts to the full context principle; misunderstood as Frege’s point it runs together the symbolic and actual occurrences of a proposition and limits the context principle to atomic propositions. — Kimhi, Thinking and Being, 38-9

Minor point, but yeah I should have been saying "declarative" all along! — Srap Tasmaner

I think we can say this: a world with declarative sentences in it, or a world in which they can be produced, is a world that also includes assertion. — Srap Tasmaner

What that gets us, I'm not sure. If you say, for instance, that assertion "aims at truth" (which, perhaps mistakenly, I suppose is the sort of thing Kimhi will want to say), then a declarative sentence must be the sort of thing that can be aimed at truth, whatever that means. One adjustment to this I would probably make... — Srap Tasmaner

So there's no sense talking about storage and retrieval in the first place. — Srap Tasmaner

And I'm just not sure what you're reaching for here with "handle", or "independent of", for that matter. Now and then I think you're making a sort of psychological or cognitive point: Hume noted that to conceive of an object is to conceive of it as existing; you almost seem sometimes to be saying that to conceive of a statement is to conceive of it as being asserted. Which might be true, but I don't believe this is what you're saying, or what the point of saying it would be. So what kind of "handling" of statements are you talking about, and how are possible assertions implicated? — Srap Tasmaner

We've sort of begun talking about the assertibility of a statement as an affordance, in direct analogy to screwdrivers. But we could instead think of the way simple objects in the Tractatus are said to sort of carry with them the possible states of affairs they could enter into. Just so, a sentence in a given language has what we might think of as chemical properties: there are other sentences it will have an affinity for, and bond with readily to create a narrative or an argument; there are sentences it will repel, sentences that if they bond it will reconfigure both into new configurations with new possibilities, and so on. Philosophers tend to treat statements as having built-in "affirm" and "deny" buttons, but that's surely a somewhat impoverished view, once you consider the wealth of ways sentences relate to each other. — Srap Tasmaner

I'm sure I'm leaving some out. I'm not sure which of these we've been talking about, which Frege has, which points made depend on whether you're talking about one or the other and which don't. We may have no choice but to wade into some of this -- though I'll note again that this is the sort of crap you don't have to worry about in mathematics, where Frege's machine is both happy and indispensable. — Srap Tasmaner

For example, I'll go ahead and note (not assert) that in a mathematical or logical proof, you will often have occasion to rely on statements, derived or not, that it would be odd to call assertions. When you say "And since 2 is less than 3, ..." you're not asserting that 2 is less than 3, you're not claiming that it is, you're reminding the audience that it is, and pointing out to them that you are relying upon this as fact. — Srap Tasmaner

There is something faintly Fregean about this, because of B. Frege's arguments for the "third realm" were often intersubjective: there is not "my pythagorean theorem" and "your pythagorean theorem" but "the pythagorean theorem"; — Srap Tasmaner

Impossible to address all the interesting points and questions, but I’ll do my best to respond to folks one by one. — J

The difference is that (1) is an assertion, couched of course in language, about something in the world, e.g. the green grass. (2) is an assertion, couched as affirmation or denial (which could be in symbolic language rather than words) of the sentence used in (1) about the grass.

The irony is that Kimhi claims there is no difference – this is his monism. He says there’s no “logical gap” between (1) and (2). But in order to appreciate how he could say such a thing, we first have to get clear on what appears to be the difference. Hope this helps. — J

I know, this is really hard to be clear about. When I suggested “adding a nuance to the vocabulary” that would separate force from assertion, I was suggesting a possible way to clarify. My idea was that we could then talk about “displaying force” without “asserting.” So, to respond to your paraphrase: No, not exactly. I‛m suggesting that we should stop thinking of “force” as something that only an assertion can create. The term “assertoric force” kind of twists our arm into thinking that there’s no force without assertion. So instead, “This statement has force [positive or negative predication] even before you pick it up and assert it.” — J

Right, but it’s the introduction of the argument into the function that allows us to claim it exists. I see how you could have read my “before we can say whether it exists or not” to mean that there would be a further decision process. But no, all I’m positing is that, for Frege, ontological commitment can only be shown through his predicate logic. — J

Hmmm. Well, ‛Fido exists’ isn’t a proposition, if I understand Frege. So for that very reason, we don’t have to do anything with Fido other than use him in a function in order to claim he exists. We do have to do that much, though.

Can you say more about this point? It’s possible I’m not following you. — J

Good questions. If you accept my proposal to disambiguate “force” from “assertion,” then we need to clarify the relations among all these terms, which is a headache, not just for Kimhi -- much less so than for Frege, as you point out. Just to repeat the point from above, though: I think Kimhi believes that something can have force (not assertoric force) without being asserted. — J

I agree with this, and it seems to support your understanding as well. Notice, though, that Roberts puts “explained” in scare-quotes. Fair enough: Is this really an explanation or just an “ontological move”? — J

I read the passage from Roberts as suggesting that Frege’s “ontological move” is a somewhat ad hoc or tendentious solution to a potential problem about psychologism. — J

So if we purport to describe thinking [that is, predicate something about it], or to explain it in terms of empirical categories, then whatever we purport to describe is by that very token not the formalism of pure thought. Ultimately, as Wittgenstein emphasized, thought in this sense can only be shown, or demonstrated in practice; it can never have things said about it. — Roberts

I’m not sure it’s enough simply to point out how tidy this makes everything, and how effective a weapon it is against psychologism. Frege was smarter than that. — J

I would also love to return, maybe in a fresh OP, to the wider implications of whether “carving the world at its joints” (Plato and Sider) is more than an ontological “move,” understood as something you just declare as useful methodology. — J

I'm not much concerned about this, but the single most interesting point, and relevant to this thread, is that the assertion stroke disappeared. Frege thought it was necessary and later logicians universally (?) don't. I'm no historian, so I'm not quite sure how this happened. — Srap Tasmaner

Yeah, when everything serves a religious end-goal, that does make debate sort of uninteresting. — schopenhauer1

stultifying — Joshs

Like It's not just that I don't like Wittgenstein because I disagree with him. I actually think what is considered profound is actually not that interesting an insight. — schopenhauer1