I don't want to get into this too much, but yes, in trying to keep conscious, attentive decoding out of it, I do make understanding sound too passive. I think the evidence is that understanding is pretty darn active (we predict the ends of sentences before we hear them, guess what the other person is going to say next, back-channel to guide their speech, and so on). It might still make sense to say that we don't choose to understand other people's speech this way, it's just what we do.

I was very impressed by Austin's claim that it normally doesn't make sense to say that I sat in the chair "voluntarily" or that I sat in the chair "involuntarily" -- as doctrinaire views on free will would require -- but each fits special circumstances which call for such an adverb. 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.

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.

Yep.

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. — schopenhauer1

This is a good discussion among you, @Banno, and @Srap Tasmaner. I'll just step in to say that the quoted passage sounds like it's on the right track to me. Kimhi does think there's something important -- indeed, fundamental -- missing in Frege, and that something has to do with the role of the thinker. Here's a passage from T&B that talks about this, perhaps unfortunately in terms of the syncategorematic:

The difference between "p" and "I think p" (and hence the difference between consciousness and self-consciousness) is syncategorematic -- and so too is the difference between p and not-p. This difference . . . cannot be associated with a difference in predicative content or form. . . . In the end we shall see that the various capacities which philosophical logic finds itself called upon to elucidate -- capacities for judgment, for language, for the deployment of logical words (such as "not" and "and") [Note: These would be syncategorematic in the traditional use of that term - J] , and for self-consciousness (and hence for the use of the word "I") -- are all one and the same capacity. To appreciate this is to appreciate the uniqueness of thinking. — T&B, p. 16

Kimhi is very blithe in his use of "hence" to arrive at the concepts of consciousness and self-consciousness. And many would take issue with the idea that philosophical logic is "called upon to elucidate" anything whatsoever about self-consciousness. But I think we can at least see what Kimhi believes his problem is about -- and the passage from Rodl, via Boynton, quoted earlier is also on point. As to whether this is reflected in Aristotle, I'm not qualified to say.

Didn't Frege believe truth is a concept that's too basic to define? It's just impossible to express a proposition without already understanding what truth is. There's no meta-cognition needed.

I just don't get what the "self-consciousness" aspect adds to it, other than a sort of call to more basic epistemological questions like "How do we even know what we know?". But I see logic as just a way to structure language so as to be clear. 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. Logic is more about clarity, not necessarily the "truth". That is why I said before this whole discussion (upon what I still don't know), that the more interesting and basic question is how we decipher truth (the thinking behind the scenes), not how we present it in some logical form. That part to me is simply how to present one's conclusions so as to be not contradictory to its own argument or what it is presenting.

Thinking can be messy, perhaps non-logical.. It can be pictures, intuitions, thought-patterns. Logic puts these into consistent non-contradictory presentation to other thinkers. Thus you may have an intuition or insight that turns into a rigorous physics/philosophical/mathematical proof, for example.

Edit: Socratically arguing with myself here.. I am sure Kimhi et al. would say something like the following:

But thinking IS logical.. It is self-reflective and there is a certain way we engage with the world (I am not sure what they propose that grand theory is, but I would be interested). And this way we engage with the world is ITSELF logic.. And thus something akin to either the Stoic's "Natural Reason" or Hegel's "dialectic" might capture this "inner logic". And it is THIS process of how we interpret the world that is not captured in formal logic (like Frege's).

Edit 2:
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)?

Edit 3:
And of course, behind all this is an old debate of "real" vs. "psychological/ideal" etc. And then this just goes right back to my initial question, "How do we discern truth"? And so for example, if Frege is a Platonist, then how does one discern the "real objects" of the abstract realm? The cat is on the mat, so is it just going back to the verification and/or falsification principles yet again?

It’s hard to tease out a direct answer here to my “What would Frege say about comprehending a singular term?” question, but here are a couple of things you do say:

Are you asking what your incomplete sentence is supposed to mean without any verb? Suppose you begin speaking a sentence very slowly, "The grass in my backyard..." We have a subject ("the grass"), an accidental modifier of place ("in my backyard"), and we are awaiting the verb and predication. — Leontiskos

if you want to talk about some x apart from any function then Frege will not have it. So if you want to conceive of your "term" of "The grass in my backyard" as a proper name, then Frege will ask you to say something about the proper name. — Leontiskos

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).

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?

I’ll drop this if the question still isn’t clear. This was all in aid of trying to build up a picture of how Frege regarded existence, but there are other ways to approach it.

[Kimhi contests] Frege's underlying assumptions of logic.. That logic is not psychological, according to Frege, but rather metaphysically real in some Platonic way... — schopenhauer1

Yes, Kimhi calls this "psycho / logical dualism" and rejects it. According to him, neither the Platonists nor the "it's just how we think" philosophers are correct, because the dualism is all wrong.

Yes, Kimhi calls this "psycho / logical dualism" and rejects it. According to him, neither the Platonists nor the "it's just how we think" philosophers are correct, because the dualism is all wrong. — J

Ok, so that is what he is against. What is the theory he is proposing. The name of the book is Thinking and Being... This reminds evokes ideas like Hegel's dialectic, or even Stoic's Natural Reason. If it's not psychological, what is it, other than some variation of "World Spirit", or Logos?

He is proposing what he calls "psycho / logical monism" and claiming Wittgenstein as a fellow monist. Understanding this is, for me, by far the most difficult part of the book, and Kimhi occasionally indulges in an obscurity worthy of, yes, Hegel. But what this tells me is merely that it's hard, and that Kimhi is not the greatest writer -- I'm by no means ready to dismiss his ideas just because I'm still working on them. Sorry not to be able yet to explain the monism part, but I undertstand it better each time I reread. The clue, once more, is that "The difference between 'p' and 'I think p' is syncategorematic," or metaphysical, rather than a matter of logical form. Kimhi wants to go on to show how this distinction will lead to a unity of thinking and being, in a very old tradition he traces back to Plato and Aristotle.

I'm hoping @Banno could speak to this. I'm pretty sure Frege thought truth was definable within his predicate logic, but that might not amount to the same thing you're talking about.

We could explore Frege's argument for the undefinability of truth if you're interested. It shows an infinite regress opening up if we insist that truth is teachable.

An alternate but kindred argument would be:

1. In order to express or discern a proposition, you have to understand what it means.

2. Meaning is found in truth conditions.

Therefore, communication requires understanding truth. So it isn't teachable. You can't define it in the sense of explaining it to someone who doesn't already know what it means.

I think we often frame our interactions with the world as if we're communicating with it. For instance when we're seeking something, we imagine that there is some unexpressed proposition that specifies the location of the lost object: it's located at x.

This would be a way of explaining why we sometimes lift propositions out of the domain of human speech. Sometimes it's the world speaking. There's a sort of connection there between truth and being.

- Yes, good.

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

You have this exactly backwards, and Rombout goes into it in detail. Frege writes the first and Russell ends up with the second. See also .

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

I think you are confusing '⊢' with Frege's judgment-stroke. You still seem to be fundamentally conflating Frege with your own approach. I suggest reading some Rombout.

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 is an important claim, because you are conceiving of 'p' in a particular way. I just want to mark this out.

As I said in the earlier thread, I think J needs to distinguish between committed Fregians and non-committed Fregians. I don't think Kimhi has the horsepower to convince committed Fregians (or truth-functionalists) such as yourself. So the parts of this thread that are aimed at convincing committed (post-)Fregians seem a little bit pointless to me, but whatever.

-

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

One represents a functional understanding of logic, the other a "psychological." One inquires into what it means to say that something is true, the other does not. For someone who sees logic as the art of human reasoning and knowledge, the question of truth simply cannot be neglected.

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

Your approach is already a truth approach. "The way things are" with regard to "the sky is blue," is precisely what you rejected in your previous post, namely that "the extension is a relation between a and a fact in the world that must obtain." "The sky is blue" is not about abstract sets. As you rightly note, it is about, "the way things are."

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

According to what source other than yourself? You consistently conflate metalogic or metamathematics with logic.

-

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

I also think Frege is closer to Aristotle than Kimhi allows, but the point is that for Aristotle judgment is implied. Propositions do not exist apart from judging subjects, and logic has to do with judging subjects.

-

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

If you read more of that review you will see that Kimhi disagrees rather strongly with McDowell. Boynton seems to merely be saying that McDowell is a genealogical point of departure for Kimhi and Rödl, not that they actually agree with McDowell's deflationism.

Along the same lines, @J is quoting from Boynton in places where he is making a case against Kimhi, and using those excerpts as support for Kimhi. For example, Boynton's point with 'p' is that Kimhi falls prey to Rödl's critique, not that Kimhi reflects that critique (and I agree).

-

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

The "uniqueness of thinking" is the primary thing I agree with in Kimhi, and I think it is a helpful way to capture his project. :up:

-

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

Part of the point is that thinking occurs not only in the form of intellection, but also in the form of inference. For example, drawing the conclusion of a modus ponens requires a very odd and opaque account of how the p's in the first and second premises relate. As soon as one begins to probe inferences of this kind Kimhi's project will arise spontaneously.

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

According to Rombout early Wittgenstein struggled with making sense of how logic and knowledge interrelate. He saw logic as tautological and knowledge as non-tautological (and therefore in some sense non-inferential), and never the twain shall meet. Plato and Aristotle wrestled with the same problems. But if logic is supposed to reflect correct thinking, then it cannot be divorced from knowledge (of the world).

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

Everything I said in my last post applies exactly the same here, as "Berlin" is no more a complete sentence than, "The grass in my backyard." See especially where Kimhi addresses the exact questions you are asking, as noted in my last post.

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

Here is what Frege would say:

Does "Berlin" have extension? If it does then it is not an object. If it does not then it is an object. All you are doing is trying to have it both ways. You want objects with inherent extension, which is impermissible.

Natural language is not Fregian. I'm not sure what else to tell you. For the Aristotelian this is no problem given that grammatical subjects have inherent form.

...of course, this is not prima facie insurmountable for Frege. So "Berlin" involves a concept-function. So what?

-

Edit:

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

Note that even in this post (and earlier posts) first-order logic creates a concept-function out of the subject. This is not controversial; it is just how first-order logic is done. That logic does not permit something like this: ∃(grass)(Green(grass)). Objects do not have inherent extension.

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

It's more about intention than words. If you say "Raining," is your utterance necessarily either an assertion or a non-assertion? Or is there something inbetween? Srap is asking a similar question:

...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

Is there then something between assertion and non-assertion?

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

I was trying to think of a way to put the exact same thing, and you've captured it perfectly. Most of the posters in this thread would say that Frege is too fat. Kimhi is arguing that he is too thin.

He is proposing what he calls "psycho / logical monism" and claiming Wittgenstein as a fellow monist. Understanding this is, for me, by far the most difficult part of the book, and Kimhi occasionally indulges in an obscurity worthy of, yes, Hegel. But what this tells me is merely that it's hard, and that Kimhi is not the greatest writer -- I'm by no means ready to dismiss his ideas just because I'm still working on them. Sorry not to be able yet to explain the monism part, but I undertstand it better each time I reread. The clue, once more, is that "The difference between 'p' and 'I think p' is syncategorematic," or metaphysical, rather than a matter of logical form. Kimhi wants to go on to show how this distinction will lead to a unity of thinking and being, in a very old tradition he traces back to Plato and Aristotle. — J

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.

Plato came closest out of the three people you mentioned. Logic is somehow grounded in an abstract logic whereby our intellects are part of, and can't help but reflect. It has a hierarchy and the highest forms of knowledge are simply "knowing" the Forms in a quietist/spiritual way (no longer in concrete or even abstracted form).

Aristotle, is harder to discern how his logic reflects a deeper sense of being. I leave it to the experts of Aristotle..

Wittgenstein is the most egregious in leaving out an explanation of how logic reflects what is the case in reality. It is truly unsupported assertion all the way down. One of my biggest gripes with Tractatus is there is no "there" there as to how the correspondence holds... Vaguely we get "states of affairs" and "objects" beneath "atomic facts", but for a modern philosopher, I expect more on what justifies this.

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

I would say that this is the most relevant part of Boynton's review for this thread:

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

As I said above, I don't see Frege saying that Pa cannot display an assertion. Be that as it may, 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.

Cf:

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

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

Isn't it self-evident that if logic is to be meaningful then there must be some relation between thought and reality? In any case, the context here is that Frege and Kimhi accept this as a mutual presupposition:

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 mean here an ACCOUNT, not just a self-evident conclusion. That seems ANTI-philosophical to just say, "Self-evident" wash one hands and make it the final word. In fact, it's the first word before we get to logic. I don't even mind if something like "evolution" is used, but I want an account, not just "because it makes sense RIGHT??!!!". I mine as well not do philosophy at all if all we are giving is "self-evident".

As a tie-in.. Apparently SIX YEARS AGO, I discussed similar issues, but tried to give an ACCOUNT. You may even be interested in the whole thread there:

However, I was trying to map his picture of human reality with other metaphysical and epistemological conceptions- namely realism, contingency, and necessity. One can construe Witt's metaphysics of these language-games to be be in purely nominalist or conventionalist terms. However, there may be some inherent, universal aspects to them which can characterize them to be necessary. It is necessary that humans inference, for example. It can be argued that general inferencing (this story/this phenomena/this observation is a specific or general case of X... This general case of X can be applied to specific cases of Y) may be a necessary human capability, dictated by evolutionary forces. In other words, in theory, any mode of survival is possible, in reality, evolution only allows certain modes of survival to actually continue. One such mode of survival, is inferencing. Since humans have no other recourse in terms of built-in instincts beyond very basic reflexes- our general processing minds, must recognize the very patterns of nature (through inferencing, and ratcheted with trial-and-error problem-solving, and cultural accumulated knowledge) which other animals exploit via instinctual models and lower-order learning behaviors/problem-solving skills.

....

This quote here, which I take to be a sort tie-in to my last post, seems to overextend its point. He is moving from primitive inferencing- something that is universal and even tribal cultures utilize, to Logic (capital "L") as conventionalized by Greek/Western contingent historical circumstances. Inferencing + cultural contingencies of the Greek city-states + further contingencies of history led to our current conventions of logic. So it is a mix of taking an already universal trait and then exposing it to the contingencies of civilizations that mined it thoroughly and saw use for it.

However, that's not all. ONCE these contingently ratchted inferencing techniques were applied to natural phenomena, we found not only that the conventions worked internally in its own language-game, but that it did something more than mere usefulness to human survival/language-game-following. It actually mapped out predictions and concepts in the world that worked. New techniques now harnessed natural forces and patterns to technological use, far beyond what came before. Math-based empirical knowledge "found" something "about the world" that was cashed out in technology and accurate predictive models. This is then something else- not just conventionalized language games. This particular language-game did something different than other language games.

My own conclusions from this is that the inferencing pattern-seeking we employ as a species, to survive more-or-less tribally and at the least communally, by way of contingency, hit upon real metaphysical patterns of nature. Thus my statement in another thread that while other animals follow patterns of nature, humans primarily recognize patterns of nature in order to survive. — Philosophical Investigations, reading it together.

Looking back at that thread.. Damn Streetlight X was an annoying asshole.. I don't care how well-read he was :lol:.

An account of what? First you say, "unless these philosophers explain WHY thought MUST reflect reality..." And then you go on to speak about "accounts." They are two very different things. A necessary argument with the conclusion that thought reflects reality is different from an account of thinking.

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

You haven't answered this question. Are you saying that logic would be meaningful even if there were no relation between thought and reality?

You seem to be saying, "Unless Kimhi gives a metaphysical proof for the basis of logic his book is not worth a dime." But that's not a reasonable challenge. All inquiry involves presuppositions, and "logic is a thing" is not a tendentious presupposition. Kimhi is saying, "We both agree that logic is a thing, but Frege's account doesn't account for this fact very well." It's not reasonable or relevant to come along and say, "Ah, but I won't grant that logic is a thing until you prove it!"

An account of what? First you say, "unless these philosophers explain WHY thought MUST reflect reality..." And then you go on to speak about "accounts." They are two very different things.
1 A necessary argument with the conclusion that thought reflects reality is
2 different from an account of thinking. — Leontiskos

I don't understand HOW these things are not connected...

You seem to be saying, "Unless Kimhi gives a metaphysical proof for the basis of logic it's not worth a dime." But that's not a reasonable challenge. All inquiry involves presuppositions, and "logic is a thing" is not a tendentious presupposition — Leontiskos

Why is it? I contend this. Everything is up for questioning. How unphilosophical.

Kimhi is saying, "We both agree that logic is a thing, but Frege's account doesn't account for this fact very well." It's not reasonable to come along and say, "Ah, but I won't grant that logic is a thing until you prove it!" — Leontiskos

I think it is precisely the issues I bring up that is missing from Frege, Witt, and perhaps Kimhi. And it is THESE questions that answer all three...

Does "Berlin" have extension? If it does then it is not an object. If it does not then it is an object. All you are doing is trying to have it both ways. You want objects with inherent extension, which is impermissible. — Leontiskos

I feel like I'm stuck in an Abbot & Costello routine! If this really represents what Frege would say to me when I ask him whether he comprehends the word printed on that slip of paper he found on the beach, I could only reply, "Well, yeah, but Herr Frege, I'm not asking about extension or objects or what's permissible or impermissible in your philosophy. Have pity on a fellow beachcomber and just tell me whether you understand the word on the paper or not."

And I'll leave it at that.

Sorry, I misunderstood the diction of your question to mean that, like me, you weren't quite sure about this. But obviously you know a lot about it. Yes, I'd very much like to hear your exploration of the indefinability of truth for Frege. Should it open a fresh OP? Or here is fine too.

is it possible to see that something is true before going on to assert it? — Leontiskos

There's a couple ways to read this, but at any rate, a couple obvious options:

1. Under the usual understanding of assertion -- just to get this out of the way -- it's perfectly ordinary for people to make claims the truth of which they do not know. They may indeed be aiming at truth, but when you loose the arrow, while you may feel some confidence of the result, you cannot know whether you've hit the target.

2. 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.

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.

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.

On the one hand, this seems a bit foolish. Pictures can show how things aren't, so why would they have to be claiming that things do so stand, how would they, and why would anyone care if they did: if all pictures claim to be true, you can ignore their claims. If, per impossible, a picture could show that it was the truth, that would be something to pay attention to. They can't, and claims are cheap.

On the other hand, in the wake of the Tractatus and Carnap and the rest, we got possible-world semantics; so you could plausibly say that a picture showing how things could be is a picture showing how things are in some possible world, this one or another.

The feeling of "claiming" is gone, but was probably mistaken anyway. In exchange, we get a version of "truth" attached to every proposition, every picture. Under such a framework, this is just how all propositions work, they say how things are somewhere, if not here. Wittgenstein's point could be adjusted: a picture does need to tell you it's true somewhere -- it is -- but it can't tell you if it's true here or somewhere else.

just tell me whether you understand the word on the paper or not — J

Are you puzzling over the context principle, is that it? Are you asking if Frege is literally saying a word isolated like this, not part of a sentence, is meaningless?

Don't worry about it. Frege is not that dumb. I believe Dummett's formula ends up being: "The meaning of a word is the contribution it makes to the truth conditions of the sentences in which it is used."

You can still get some straightforward compositional semantics out of that. But the approach Dummett is championing has to put sentences first: sentences have truth conditions, and words don't, so the sentence is where we start.

As for your "Berlin" example, you don't understand it. It could be a lot of things. Name of a city, name of a band, name of a book, an adjective describing a strain of flu. Without the context of a sentence -- and honestly much more context than that -- you can't know what referent "Berlin" is intended to pick out if any. You might know a lot of options, but even for a single word there are more possibilities than you can imagine.

That there is disagreement as to how to read Frege's most basic expressions does not bode well for anything more than bickering in this thread. Here's something very basic and quite important, something I pointed out pages ago...

Notice also that for Frege there is a structure literally hanging from the ⊢. So we have

read from bottom to top, for what we might now write as
∀A∀B(A→(B→A)).
In the modern version all the assertive paraphernalia on the left is removed. Along with it goes much of the implication of commitment. (again, stolen from SEP) — Banno

The judgment stoke occurs once in the expression, at the beginning. It affirms the whole expression, not each individual line separately.

To this I will add:

The horizontal stroke, from which the symbol judgement is formed, binds the symbols that follow it into a whole, and assertion, which is expressed by means of the vertical stroke at the left end of the horizontal, relates to this whole. — Quoted in SEP 1879a: §2

My bolding.

Again, Frege moves the intensional judgement to the left, so that it has within its scope the remainder of the expression, and so sets the judgement aside, allowing the expression to be understood extensionally - that is, allowing the to instances of "a" to be identical.

If you say "Raining," is your utterance necessarily either an assertion or a non-assertion? — Leontiskos

Good point: 'raining' does not have the assertoric grammatical structure that 'it is raining' could be said to have.

Are you puzzling over the context principle, is that it? Are you asking if Frege is literally saying a word isolated like this, not part of a sentence, is meaningless? — Srap Tasmaner

No, I'm confident Frege would never say such a thing, and I was trying to get @Leontiskos' agreement on what he would say. I thought about including something specifically about the context principle, just to show I wasn't making that connection, but I decided to keep it simple.

As for your "Berlin" example, you don't understand it. It could be a lot of things. — Srap Tasmaner

An interesting takeaway from this little sub-thread: It's harder than I would have expected to come up with a individual term that will simultaneously be recognizable to (pretty much) everyone and also unambiguous. So sure, "Berlin" can be comprehended different ways. But that isn't really the point. The point is that there would be a finite number of candidate meanings, and while Frege might well say, "I'm not sure which one this piece of paper is referencing," he would not say the equivalent of "Huh? No idea what this could mean. I can't 'comprehend' any of the candidate meanings."

If this still seems not nailed down, maybe we should imagine the beach example as involving an absolutely unambiguous term -- "the Hope Diamond," say -- and just stipulate that Herr Frege has learned this term prior to his walk. Now we pose the question to him about whether he comprehends it.

Lastly, and I've said this repeatedly, this wasn't supposed to be some kind of "gotcha" about how Frege is contradicting himself about the existence of individual terms, or terms outside of functions, or whatever. I was trying to build a case, step by step, to show that we have alternatives about how to understand "existence can't be predicated." This was meant to be an early step in the argument. It goes all the way back to that thread on quantifier variance.

To put it simply, I do not see Parmenides problem. We do think about things that are not the case.

If you have the Tractatus at hand, do a search for "logical space" – the space containing all possible propositions. Have a flick through the results. The way this appears to work is that some subsets of all the possible propositions can be put together consistently, providing a picture of reality, giving us then the task of choosing one picture of the world.

We can think that the cat is on the mat, or that the cat is not on the mat. We choose which to say is true. That judgement is distinct from the coherence of the picture in logical space.

So I am afraid it seems I, and I think others, do not see the problem.

I don't think he defines truth. Rather, he points out that, say, 2+2=4 and 3+3=6 have the same truth value - they are expressions that refer to the same thing. He goes on to point out that

We do not need a specific sign to declare a truth-value to be the False, provided we have a sign by means of which every truth-value is transformed into its opposite, which in any case is indispensable. — SEP

Hence he presumes two truth values without giving any account beyond reference. 2+2=4 names the true; 2+2=5 names the false.

I'm happy to be shown otherwise.