- Rombout's tries to set this out in the section on Kant (2.2.2).

- Thanks for the posts and attempting to wrestle with the bigger picture. :up:

In short, if you take this detour through intensional complexes, you get a specific failure of atomicity, which extensional complexes just require. — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, I think this is right.

So how does that lead to "in and of itself true or false"? I think it's just the claim that for p to work in an extensional context it has to be ready to provide a truth value. In particular, that truth value cannot depend on the truth value of any other proposition, so --- atomicity. — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, but why are we to think that Kimhi is committed to "atomicity"? That's what puzzled me about your first post. I am also unconvinced that Kimhi is a "proposition skeptic," although it is an interesting idea.

When I started reading Kimhi I received the impression that he knew what he was doing or where he was going. The more I read, the less sure of that I am. I think it was Boynton's review which questioned whether Parmenides was central to Kimhi's argument or more tangential, and that is one example of the difficulty. It is worth remembering that every single secondary source we have examined thinks Kimhi is wrong in significant ways, with the exception of Boynton who thinks he is wrong in a smaller way.

-

In a sense, this claim alone solves the Parmenides puzzles! Or at least the second one. By speaking, we can bring into existence an atomic proposition; we need only say that something is or is not the case. There is no reliance on anything else here, nothing that would be needed to support the existence of our atomic proposition (no "negative fact" for instance, no missing truthmaker). It is entirely within our power. — Srap Tasmaner

It is in our power, but I think most parties are agreed that in order to assert ~p there is a "reliance" on an understanding of p. This is the focus of Martin's paper, which seems to be very much on point.

---

Most competent speakers would have no trouble explaining it. We would say, “ ‛Assert’ can mean ‛say something that is true,’ or it can mean ‛say something purporting to be true’. It depends on the context, and usually it’s clear which meaning is intended.”

Which meaning does Frege have in mind with the judgment stroke? — J

Rombout points out that Frege is not merely attributing a belief to a subject with his judgment-stroke, and that Wittgenstein fails to recognize this (72). Kimhi seems to follow Wittgenstein in this. Indeed, Kimhi seems to be simply wrong when he says that the argument is inaccessible to Frege that, "She asserts p, therefore p is true" (where 'asserts' refers to Frege's judgment-stroke).

- :up:

Right, or it's that we have a proximate thesis but no remote thesis:

I think that in order for the critique to make sense it must be linked up to some goal of Kimhi's. Kimhi must be made to say, "This point in the OP matters because it can be linked up to my larger concern of X." — Leontiskos

One should apply the context principle to arguments and theses themselves. The meaning of a thesis can only be grasped in relation to the deeper conclusion it is meant to support. So we have Kimhi's proximate thesis: Frege mucked up assertoric force. But what hangs on this? What is the import? What does it matter if Frege did or did not muck up assertoric force? Until we understand this more remote thesis we can't even really understand the proximate thesis.

- Hanna represents something interesting and probably confused when he says that Kimhi's book, "effectively closes out a 100+ year-long tradition in modern philosophy [even though] all its central theses are false." The efficacy of false theses and the arguments that try to support them...?

I find this whole thing opaque in the absence of some clear motivations about where Kimhi wants to take us, what is at stake, etc. And I am not even particularly attached to the tradition that Kimhi is targeting! I think the sub-text needs to be brought to the surface.

- That all strikes me as a rather elaborate avoidance strategy. If someone doesn't care about a thesis then they won't find arguments for or against it interesting, especially when they profess to be unable to understand those arguments in themselves. It seems that you don't know why you find Kimhi's project interesting, and that is a fact more interesting than any polemic against "settled questions." I suggest finding out why you find Kimhi's project so interesting.

The point here is that this thread lacks a concrete thesis or question: we aren't at all sure what we are doing. I thought that if you knew what you were doing as the author of the OP it might provide us with a direction. It's not a trap so much as a question, "What's your motivation for asking the question?" (How to Write an OP).

I guess that's the target you asked about. — J

Hmm? What I got from that post was, "There is no target, so grab another arrow and keep shooting."

- So you found an exception or two to the rule. Congrats. :roll:

On Redrawing the Force Content Distinction, Christian Martin — Pierre-Normand

Good find. This is an important paper for this thread: link to Martin's paper.

-

This analogy seems problematic for the following reason: A mimetic gesture can indeed be performed as a basis for another act, while it can as well be performed without providing the basis for anything further. In contrast, an assertoric gesture is not such that it merely can occur as a basis for a further act. For if it were, it would amount to a forceless while logically contentful act on its own, which is exactly what seemed problematic about the Fregean conception. — On Redrawing the Force Content Distinction, by Christian Martin, 184

This is the point I made to @Srap Tasmaner earlier:

I am pointing to a fourth point, and it requires moving from the equivocity of the indicative mood to the univocity of statements. The idea is that we never handle statements independent of assertions, even when we are not asserting them. In that way a statement is like a tool with only one purpose. — Leontiskos

Before reading Martin I hadn't noticed that Kimhi falls into this himself.

Incidentally, Newman uses 'assent' rather than 'assert', which clears up a lot of the mud that Srap in particular was traversing. I think it also helps address the public/private counterargument.

By assuming that assertoric gestures can either occur “with” or “without” being assertoric acts Kimhi has subscribed to a view that allows for the occurrence of logical acts – namely, mere assertoric gestures – which, albeit generically tied to assertoric force, are not qua particular acts tied to an overarching logical act whose force they actually partake in. — On Redrawing the Force Content Distinction, by Christian Martin, 186

The same problem came up in a recent pm with Bob Ross, where he was tripping over the difference between a species of intentional act and a particular intentional act. Apparently what Wittgenstein sees as context Aquinas would see as intention, where intention is essential to an act and not truly separable from it. Thus a mimetic act and a non-mimetic act are two different kinds of acts.

A subsidiary argument which may not have been mentioned is, "Any species which develops systematic means to kill 70+ million of its own fetuses each year is messed up." A species which so buttresses the killing of its own offspring is not in good shape. For a species to intentionally kill its own fetuses is exceedingly unnatural.

I’ve fallen behind, but I like the way that recast the discussion from a birds-eye view. I will try to do something similar in this post. For me the discussion has been an ongoing attempt to frame Kimhi’s critique in ever more precise and interesting ways, yet without ever managing to explain why such a critique is supposed to matter.

I was revisiting Newman’s Grammar of Assent on Anthony Kenny’s recommendation, and it got me to thinking about modus ponens. One point Newman makes is that while inference can be purely formal, with no concrete content (he gives the transitive property of identity as an example), assent requires such content. Assenting to some proposition requires an actual proposition; just ‘p’ will not do. In his review Boynton quotes Rödl, “. . .the letter p. There is an insouciance with respect to this fateful letter. It stands ready quietly, unobtrusively, to assure us that we know what we are talking about. . .” As I noted earlier in the thread, this is a criticism of Kimhi. Kimhi tries to critique Frege from a Fregian point of view, and because of this his critique has no force.

Like p, modus ponens is a very odd abstraction. From the perspective of concrete judgments it seems to say nothing at all, and Wittgenstein is here instructive:

5.132 If p follows from q, I can infer p from q; conclude from q to p.
The method of inference is to be understood from the two sentences alone.
Only they themselves can justify the inference.
Laws of inference, which - as in Frege and Russell - are to justify the conclusions are meaningless and would be superfluous. — Frege, Russell and Wittgenstein on the Judgment Stroke, by Floor Rombout, 57

(Rombout points out that Wittgenstein is interested in the consequence-relation and not inference, and although this is true there is nevertheless a way in which modus ponens seems to lend itself to a consequence-relation framing, which looks to be a problem for Frege.)

To some extent Wittgenstein is right. Put bluntly, modus ponens is not a form of reasoning so much as a form of post hoc reasoning or rationalization. It is an ad hoc response to the problem of the Meno. “How did you get to B from A?” “By holding that B follows from A!”

Rombout argues that Frege, Russell, and Wittgenstein have different conceptions of what logic is, and the problem here may be that Kimhi’s conception of logic is too close to Frege’s to critique it. The deeply Aristotelian response to modus ponens is to reject the form, not to quibble about the assertoric force of different p’s. “Follows from” is the meta-form of all logic, not a rule of inference. For Aristotle, logic is supposed to say why B follows from A, not that B follows from A. This critique of Kimhi’s therefore has more to do with modus ponens than Frege.

Quasi-subjective moves are not at home in logical systems which favor consequence over inference. Frege’s judgment-stroke or Kimhi’s self-consciousness don’t make any sense with respect to ‘p’, because p was not made for such quasi-subjective moves. p is just a true/false abstraction. There’s nothing there to judge.

(What Kimhi is failing to recognize is that his subject-predicate predilection cuts against the things like modus ponens and not just Frege, even though modus ponens was central for Frege. That whole approach deviates from the act of thinking which so interests Kimhi.)

()

A hodgepodge...

I have gotten so frustrated with Kimhi over the past month that I've literally screamed, trying to untangle him. But I insist it's worth it. — J

At this point I very much want to know what motivates you to have faith in Kimhi. Or more precisely, "Suppose Kimhi's arguments fail. How would you try to salvage his project, and what would the aim be?" What's the target here, for you?

-

- This is informative and helpful, but I am still curious about the question I asked, "Where, historically, would you say that essential connection gets dissolved or weakened?"

-

the magnitude of the platonism at issue. The old war still rages — Srap Tasmaner

but I truly don't think platonism (including Fregean platonism) needs to be anyone's opponent. — J

And I would say that Kimhi is not occupying the Platonist position; Frege is. Kimhi is offering the Aristotelian alternative, or at least attempting to.

Note too that the starting point for Aristotle is that we do know things and we do grow in knowledge (i.e. learn things). For Aristotle logic is simultaneously an explanation of how this is possible and a roadmap to learning. By the time we get to Wittgenstein it is not. Frege is somewhere inbetween.

Kimhi talks about "pragmatic contradiction" as the reason you can't attach a judgment stroke to "p & ~p"; if you use the stroke, you show that you know what it means to understand a logical expression. — J

I still maintain that <this thread> is a great testament to Kimhi's point here. It is living proof of the deep problems that arise in a truth-functional context.

-

If thoughts as such are tied to some force or other, while embedded thoughts (e. g. p qua part of not-p) do not directly come along with a force of their own, it must be clarified how the indirect connection to force, which embedded thoughts must indeed come along with, is to be understood. That is, it must be clarified how dependent logical acts that have an embedded thought as their content, and the overarching logical act that does indeed bear a force of its own interlock with each other such as to provide for the unity of a propositionally complex thought." — Pierre-Normand

Yes, good. :up:

-

I would assume it does, until something stops it. — bongo fury

:up:

-

Is it my imagination, or is Frege sounding a bit defensive here? — J

He is, and that makes sense in context, for he is responding to a criticism similar to yours. Still, it's a good question whether one can be more than defensive in such a situation.

-

whether their accounts of this self-conscious propositional unity constitutes an improvement over the charitable accounts, put forth by Evans and McDowell, of what Frege was trying to accomplish when he sought to individuate thought/proposition — Pierre-Normand

Right.

-

It might be closer to the argument given to say that Frege, in particular, does not set aside force (even if other and later logicians do) but that he brings it in in a way that is somehow at odds with the unity of force and content in our utterances. — Srap Tasmaner

I think so. :up:

-

- Good posts, and we spoke about the difference between denial and negation earlier. Kimhi (and Wittgenstein) accuse Frege of flubbing this distinction, but Rombout points out that Frege never did, since he allows negation but not denial (i.e. not judgments of falsity at the level of the judgment-stroke). What's curious is that, if I am right, Frege didn't understand the difference between denial and negation and sort of "got lucky" insofar as he thought denial would be superfluous.

-

I just think we should quit throwing around 'proposition' and 'judgment' and 'inference' in ways that allow people to give those words their preferred reading. — Srap Tasmaner

Yep. :up:

-

Kimhi believes that Fregean logic doesn't permit the inference (1) S is F; (2) A thinks that S is F; (3) Thus, A truly thinks that S is F. — J

I don't think Kimhi appreciates the objectivity of Frege's judgment-stroke, and therefore this critique seems misplaced. I think that inference holds for Frege, it's just that he may not want to draw out such metalogical implications.

-

So the words are a bit wooly because Frege's allegedly made a model of something wooly that has no wool in it, and our fellow travellers are seeking and analysing the wool. — fdrake

:up:

Objection 2 reads, “The essence is the middle term of demonstration,” not, “The essence of a demonstration is the middle term.” For example:

• All dogs are animals
• All animals are warm-blooded
• Therefore, All dogs are warm-blooded

The essence (“what it is”) of ‘animal’ is the middle term of the syllogism.

Aquinas responds to the objection by noting that one never appeals to an essence when proving the existence of a cause from an effect. This is because an essence presupposes existence and therefore when proving existence one cannot make use of essence as the middle term, but must instead use, “the meaning of the word.” This is a rather important aspect of Aquinas’ proofs for God’s existence, often overlooked.

- Ignoring was option (2). The OP already accounts for it.

2). Ones hand is forced - ie the decision is inescapable — Benj96

Just think necessity. Necessity forecloses on (practical) choice, which is the species of choice I think you're referring to. And necessity imposes ultimatums every day for everyone all the time. — tim wood

There is a conflation occurring between a necessary act and a necessary choice. "Forcing one's hand" refers to a movement ad unum (towards one thing or one external act). It does not generally refer to something which must be decided. "You need to do this," is very different from, "You need to make a decision about what to do." An ultimatum forces a decision, not an external act. Here there is the very large difference between choice and coercion.

We might say that Frege thereby secures the essential connection between logic as a formal study of the syntactic rules that govern the manipulation of meaningless symbols in a formal language and the rational principles that govern the activity of whoever grasps the meanings of those symbols. — Pierre-Normand

Where, historically, would you say that essential connection gets dissolved or weakened?

I don't think those two quotes speak against the claim that Frege is equating propositions with thoughts in the specific sense in which he understands the latter. The quote in Foundations of Arithmetic seems meant to distinguish the thinking of the thought from its being true. — Pierre-Normand

Well, I think this avoids the force of my point a bit. Frege said, "A proposition may be thought..." He did not say, "A thought may be thought..." There are apparently good reasons why he didn't use the latter formulation, and they point a difference between a proposition and a thought. Specialized senses can "solve" this, I suppose, at least up to a point. (Nor am I convinced that IEP is using 'proposition' in a non-Fregian way, but I don't want to get bogged down in this.)

However the OP outlined a non-cynical option: option 1. In this case (with no opposition and malice) the frame is quite optimistic. — Benj96

Er, but only as a preliminary. You go on to say:

Now for the high stakes:
1). Those who choose option one catapult me into fame and recognition/acknowledgement - as the word of my proof spreads from person to person.
2). Those who choose option two are none the wiser, and unsure of what is going on ( "?" )
3). Those who choose option three: are inherently my antagonists - and must silence/eradicate the truth by any means necessary to protect their own agenda/self-interest/narrative. Meaning I will likely be assassinated/martyred based on your collective choices.

...

In this way I believe notable historical figures in not just scripture but also politics wielded mass psychology to empower themselves... — Benj96

The whole thing is supposed to be "designed," "wielded," etc., to produce some dramatic effect.

My point is that an ultimatum need not be designed to produce some dramatic effect. It might just be true, and in being true may end up producing a dramatic effect. Ultimatums are impactful by their very nature, yes, but you seem to be saying that an ultimatum is necessarily wielded as an instrument towards something other than truth. I would say an ultimatum can be instrumentalized in that sense, but need not be.

I agree that an ultimatum is impactful, but I don't think it needs to be reduced to a sociological tool. Maybe I am misreading you, but much of your OP goes beyond looking at ultimatums, and goes on to look at the motives of those wielding ultimatums.

- :up:

---

You appear to be agreeing that we can't have unasserted propositions in real life, even if the assertion is only hypothetical or potential. — frank

The answer here is, 'No, that's not what Russell was saying at all, whether we take your "proposition" in Russell's sense or Frege's sense.'

This thread has taken plenty of care in avoiding ambiguous language like "proposition," and this is because the language of the thread is in no way controlled by Frege's usage. It is controlled by Kimhi's usage, the publicly available sources, and common usage.

I don't think those two quotes speak against the claim that Frege is equating propositions with thoughts in the specific sense in which he understands the latter. — Pierre-Normand

If "thought" is understood in a specialized sense then, sure, if you like. Again, my point is that these invisibly specialized senses of "proposition" and "thought" are not getting us anywhere.

Frank is just trying to uphold his idea that in "real life" we don't talk about unasserted declarative sentences, without actually going through the work of defending it.

- Global warming or climate change is on a par with your OP. It is often presented as an ultimatum. Nevertheless, a cynical reading is not the only option, nor does it invalidate the claim. Trying to make it invalidate the claim or the approach is more psychologizing than philosophy.

- Early Frege did not distinguish sense and reference and may have spoken of propositions simply as thoughts, but this is not true for later Frege, which is what my IEP quote reflects. But none of this really helps you with your vague term "proposition," for "thought" is equally vague (as the quote from the OP shows, where Frege literally says that propositions need not be thought).

You seem bound determined to be vague and ambiguous in your claims. I'll leave you to it.

On the other hand, what if something important has happened that should be passed on? Is that a possibility or not? I don't see how a strange argument bogged down in cynicism is going to undermine such a possibility.

When he mentions the first chapter, Soames is talking about an examination of the relationship between utterances, sentences, and propositions, with the goal of explaining why the concept of a proposition is indispensable. — frank

Your quote nowhere says that for Frege a proposition is a thought. Do you realize that?

Did you have some source that conflicts with that? — frank

Have you read the OP?

Frege says, “A proposition may be thought, and again it may be true; let us never confuse the two things.” (Foundations of Arithmetic) — J

Here is IEP:

For this and other reasons, Frege concluded that the reference of an entire proposition is its truth-value, either the True or the False. The sense of a complete proposition is what it is we understand when we understand a proposition, which Frege calls “a thought” (Gedanke). Just as the sense of a name of an object determines how that object is presented, the sense of a proposition determines a method of determination for a truth-value. — Frege | IEP

-

Those who find that language distasteful probably shouldn't be discussing Frege at all. — frank

Those who don't know what they are talking about probably shouldn't be giving lectures.

If you find a logical system that says "The sky is blue" and the "snow is white" and all you are doing is writing expressions like, "This is a fact." "this is a true assertion".. what the duckn difference does it make if you cannot show why it's true, or how it's true? — schopenhauer1

Why shouldn't it make a difference? Is justification the only thing that matters? The only thing we can talk about? If you want a thread on justification then you should start it. This thread is not about justification.

When Frege talked about propositions, he was talking about thoughts. — frank

I will simply note that, yet again in misrepresenting Frege, you provide no source for your claims. Cf.

- was right on the money when he said that your desire to keep using that word "proposition" gets us nowhere, as it is used very differently by different authors.

although I think you can remove the assertion in "real life" too.
— Leontiskos

Can you give an example of that? — frank

Here is Russell:

In language, we indicate when a proposition is merely considered by “if so-and-so” or “that so-and-so” or merely by inverted comma’s. (PM, p. 92) — Frege, Russell and Wittgenstein on the Judgment Stroke, by Floor Rombout, 45

-

Ordinarily we must take something away from a statement in order to sequester the assertoric force, because the assertoric force is a natural part of a declarative sentence. In Russell and Wittgenstein's misunderstanding Frege's judgment-stroke is something added on to a proposition or "assumption," and hence becomes a symbol in its own right.

For Frege it is more complicated. For Frege it is a stroke, not a symbol. It is "syncategorematic" (Kimhi) and hence is in no way on the same plane as the symbols of the sentence. The difference between a mere horizontal and the horizontal with the judgment-stroke added is a distinction in mente, and exists for the purposes of logic and inference. The judgment-stroke is sui generis, and this reflects Kimhi's emphasis on the fact that thinking is unique. It is a bit of performative language rather than descriptive language.

If there is some problem (qua Kimhi) with Frege's judgment-stroke it is an incredibly minor and subtle problem. Wittgenstein's complaint is more intelligible, but it is a one-way ticket to a destination that Kimhi will have no part of (which is apparently why he snips Wittgenstein's critique out of its context each time he references it in his book).

- Yes and yes. :up:

- I am content with the response I already gave to that tangential topic.

I just reread my OP, which included my optimistic belief that we didn’t have to be concerned with “what Kimhi says” in order to understand the question I was raising. Ha! — J

I think that in order for the critique to make sense it must be linked up to some goal of Kimhi's. Kimhi must be made to say, "This point in the OP matters because it can be linked up to my larger concern of X."

But I thought, and still think, that a much deeper question is being raised here, a metalogical one about how what we think and can say is related to our existence claims about what is. — J

Does Kimhi ever directly attack Frege on that front? On the existence-predicate?

This is the tangent that most interests me in this thread: How is it that logic becomes separated from thinking, judgment, and consciousness?* Ironically Rombout seems to trace this to Wittgenstein, in which case, pace Kimhi, (early) Wittgenstein does not save us from Frege, he takes Frege to the place that Kimhi finds most problematic. — Leontiskos

The difficulty I have with Kimhi is that we are considering the foundation of his project, and that foundation seems to be based on two misreadings: first, Wittgenstein's misreading of Frege that Kimhi follows unquestioningly, and second, a misreading of early Wittgenstein. If Frege is bad then early Wittgenstein is much worse, and it is muddled for Kimhi to think that early Wittgenstein is his ally against Frege. Kimhi thinks Frege is too thin, whereas early Wittgenstein was saying that he is too fat. I see concentric circles of the "any stick to beat the devil" fallacy, where one affirms a thinker whose conclusion they desire, even if the arguments to get there do not hold up.

Kimhi is right that Wittgenstein disagrees with Frege's judgment-stroke, but he seems to have overlooked the fact that it is for a completely opposite reason than his own. And Kimhi is right that there are problems with first-order logic, but I don't know that Kimhi's critique itself holds water, at least on this assertoric front. In longer-lasting systems of thought such as Catholicism one comes to be very careful about genealogical arguments, and the OP seems to represent a poor genealogical argument. Kimhi sees a problem with first-order logic, and he wants to trace it to its root. But there is no obvious root, and in tracing it to Frege's judgment-stroke Kimhi seems to have alighted on a false genealogy.

I think Rombout gives a much sturdier genealogy: the cleavage of epistemology from logic comes from Russell and Wittgenstein's misappropriations of Frege. Is some of it Frege's fault? Probably, but Wittgenstein is the central actor here. Wittgenstein's "solution" to the foundational Meno dilemma is to have a radical divorce between epistemology and logic. This is simply a non-starter if logic is supposed to provide an account of how progression in knowledge occurs. As Rombout says, Frege and Wittgenstein have an entirely different understanding of what 'logic' even means.

...and the more Frege I read, the stronger he stands against Kimhi. To take one example, Narboux's Notre Dame review ends by pointing out a problem in Kimhi's Wittgenstenian-colored idea of propositions being understood in large part in light of negation. This is a mistake that Frege, Thomas, Augustine, Parmenides, and probably also Aristotle all avoided. Frege's understanding of 'p' in that metalogical sense seems to in fact be better thought out and more robust than Kimhi's (although if Frege did not understand the difference between denial and negation then part of this was a happy accident for him).

Welcome!

My advice would be simple: be transparent and honest. Don't pretend to know what you don't know, and don't be afraid of saying something that may turn out to be wrong. That way people will know what you are thinking and they will be able to engage with it. A thread I wrote is related: Argument as Transparency.

Belief in a story would be a different flavour of belief than the one in this thread anyway. Telling a story is, at least, a sequence of sentences presented with different forces and roles, and we've been dealing with single sentences with possibly a single illocutionary force. — fdrake

This is part of what I was trying to get at when I said that fiction is much less univocal than logic. :up:

The boring deflationary answer is just to say that understanding a given text as a story means just the following: belief in any presented sentence in that text is equivalent to believing that that sentence is a part of the text. Line of the story as story event. I believe that Gollum lied and cheated if and only if it says so in the book.

Suspension of disbelief works in opposition to the latter boring answer. Like the deus ex machina eagles at the end of Lord of the Rings. A flight of massive eagles coming in and saving the day, really? You only doubt it, "c'mon, really?" because you believe it happened in the story, but it could be felt to collide with the story's narrative. No one would doubt the eagles came, they just would doubt whether in some sense they should've. — fdrake

Yes, good, and we can take this in a Platonist direction contrary to your second deflationary theory. The question of whether logic or fiction is more 'real' can be assessed according to the question of whether logical analysis or narrative is more foundational to human life. If narrative is the meta-category of human life, then any genre of story (including fiction) will be more real than logic. On the other hand, if scientia is the telos of human life, then logic has a primacy over fictional narrative. I think there is a very strong case to be made in favor of the view that narrative, not logic, has the primacy.

My point is that first and foremost the fiction writer *pretends* to have such warrant. In early prose fiction this is almost universal (in English anyway). — Srap Tasmaner

Granted, and I pointed to the same thing early on in the discussion:

Yes, and it is interesting that in recent history fiction was thought to require a kind of disbelief-suspension-bridge (I forget the real name that is used). Some plausible device was used to connect the fiction to the real world. — Leontiskos

-

Nowadays, we're used to how fiction works and it's dramatically less common to go through this little dance. — Srap Tasmaner

Sure, but it's worth recognizing that it was never anything more than a dance.

It's not novel to say that something is stripped away when we engage in logical analysis. It's more or less the point. The question is whether what you have left, that you'll submit to logical analysis, is what you think it is, and whether the pieces fit when you try to reassemble the living use of language. — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, that's a very good way to put it. :up:

So if we take our shears to an asserted sentence we can apparently remove the basic assertoric force. Then if we take our shears a second time we could apparently remove the grammatical aspect and achieve the result of "mere words." Then a third time, and be left with mere tokens or letters. One way to phrase the question is this: Is the "sharpness" of Frege's shears intelligible or arbitrary?

-

It's in the TLP (according to my lazy history of logic) that we get the presentation of tautology as a true statement that says nothing. And if it says nothing, evidently not a picture. So the truths of logic are something else entirely, and it is only there, among these whatever-they-ares, that we get self-evident truth. — Srap Tasmaner

This is the tangent that most interests me in this thread: How is it that logic becomes separated from thinking, judgment, and consciousness?* Ironically Rombout seems to trace this to Wittgenstein, in which case, pace Kimhi, (early) Wittgenstein does not save us from Frege, he takes Frege to the place that Kimhi finds most problematic.

* But not construed as Banno's full-on logical nominalism, where logic is merely symbol manipulation. That is called metalogic or metamathematics and is not generally seen as logic itself. The result was not logical nominalism, but instead a sort of reification of truth as something that exists independently of subjects and minds. A kind of overcorrection of "psychologism."

Yes, which is why I keep trying to find some better, more perspicuous ways to carve up "force." I was leaning toward believing that "force" itself should be strictly separated from both assertion and illocution -- or that, at least, Kimhi would want us to think of it that way. I'm no longer sure, based on the many interesting comments from yourself, leontiskos, @srap tasmaner, @frank and others. — J

In those terms the question is simply whether Kimhi sees something which "displays (assertoric) force [without being a self-identifying display]" as having some kind of force. Regardless of words, Kimhi's point seems to be that Frege's Point excludes the possibility that a sentence displays assertoric force. I don't see Kimhi in any way moving away from assertoric force to some kind of general force.

This is more or less where I was going with my hard-to-follow speculations about the universal quantifier. Russell's TDD postulates existential quantification for proper names, if I'm remembering rightly. And you had said that "so far as existence is defined, it is defined in terms of the universal quantifier." So my question was, If Frege does not accept the TDD, can we spell out how universal quantification might still give us something to think about when we think about names? — J

In the parts of Frege that I have read he shows no interest in the epistemic aspect of a proper name, which is probably a credit to him. He takes it for granted that a proper name can designate an object.

A lot of what Kimhi (and Rodl) are doing is probing presuppositions of formal logic. There is a lot of magic involved in formal logic, and I suppose the question asks how much presuppositional magic is to be granted. Kimhi's broader thesis is that by adopting a Fregian approach first-order logic has merely side-stepped some of the biggest problems of philosophy, which persist as elephants in the room rather than vanquished foes.

-

Can't you have a mistaken or in-part inaccurate understanding of what truth is, and discover in the course of my lecture what the "truth about truth" is? — J

Frege understands that prefixing "It is true that..." to a sentence both adds something and doesn't add something. It is slippery. But the odd parallel is that his judgment-stroke also adds something and doesn't add something, in just the same way.

Folk seem too keen on claiming that one cannot understand what a statement is about without deciding if it is true or false. — Banno

I don't think anyone has claimed this. The point that Wittgenstein makes has to do with conditions for truth or falsity, not a decision.

I don't think anyone has made that claim. You probably need to understand the truth conditions, but not whether it's true or false. — frank

Yes, exactly. :up:

Frege makes a very interesting comment in the context of dissociating assertoric force from the predicate, and it relates to Kimhi:

. . .Assertoric force is to be dissociated from negation too. To each thought there corresponds an opposite, so that rejecting one of them is accepting the other. One can say that to make a judgement is to make a choice between opposites. Rejecting the one and accepting the other is one and the same act. Therefore there is no need of a special name, or special sign, for rejecting a thought. We may speak of the negation of a thought before we have made any distinction of parts within it. To argue whether negation belongs to the whole thought or to the predicative part is every bit as unfruitful as to argue whether a coat clothes a man who is already clothed or whether it belongs together with the rest of his clothing. Since a coat covers a man who is already clothed, it automatically becomes part and parcel with the rest of his apparel. We may metaphorically speaking, regard the predicative component of a thought as a covering for the subject-component. If further coverings are added, these automatically become one with those already there. — Frege, Introduction to Logic – Posthumous Writings, 185

Soon after this, Frege expresses frustration that 28 years after he introduced the material conditional mathematician and logicians continue to resist it as something bizarre! Curiously, in speaking of his “conditional stroke,” he claims that the relation designated by the conditional stroke is not strictly speaking something that obtains between thoughts, but rather that the sign for the conditional stroke connects sentences. This seems to indicate that he posits a non-assertoric difference between the two p’s in the premises of a modus ponens.

- Sure, but given that Frege understands language differently than the subject-predicate model of ordinary language which he intentionally diverges from, what more is there to say?

Here is Frege on this issue:

Therefore when Kerry says that my criterion does not meet the case, claiming that in the sentence ‘The concept that I am now talking about is an individual concept’ the name composed of the first eight words surely means a concept, the contradiction does not lie in what I have laid down; it obtains between the sense I attach to the word ‘concept’ and that adopted by Kerry. But nobody can require that my stipulations shall be in accord with Kerry’s mode of expression, but only that they be consistent in themselves. True, we cannot fail to recognize that we are here confronted by an awkwardness of language, which I admit is unavoidable, if we assert ‘the concept horse is not a concept’, whereas, e.g. the city of Berlin is a city, and the volcano Vesuvius is a volcano. Language is here in a predicament that justifies the departure from what we normally say. The peculiarity of our case is indicated by Kerry himself by means of the quotation-marks around ‘horse’. (We have used italics here to the same end.) There was no reason to mark out the words ‘Berlin’ and ‘Vesuvius’ in a similar way above. In logical discussions one quite often needs to assert something about a concept, and to express this in the grammatical form usual for such statements, so that what is asserted becomes the content of the grammatical predicate. Consequently, one would expect the concept to be the content of the grammatical subject; but the concept as such cannot play this part, in view of its predicative nature; it must first be converted into an object, or, speaking more precisely: an object that is connected with it in accordance with a rule must be substituted for it, and it is this object we designate by an expression of the form ‘the concept x’. (Cf. p. X of my Grundlagen.)

So the phrase ‘the concept horse’ must be regarded as a proper name, which can no more be used predicatively than can, say, ‘Berlin’ or ‘Vesuvius’. If we say that Bucephalus falls under the concept horse, then the predicate here is clearly ‘falling under the concept horse’, and this has the same meaning as ‘a horse’. But the phrase ‘the concept horse’ is only part of this predicate.

When I wrote my Grundlagen, I had not yet made the distinction between sense and meaning; and so, under the expression ‘content of possible judgement’, I was combining what I now distinguish by the words ‘thought’ and ‘truth-value’. For this reason I no longer hold my choice of expressions in the second footnote to p. 77 to be quite suitable, although in the main my view remains the same: a concept is essentially predicative in nature, whilst the very opposite is true of an object, so that a proper name (sign or name of an object) can never contain the whole predicate. — Frege, On Concept and Object – Posthumous Writings, 97 – footnotes omitted

1. The concept horse is not a concept
2. [The concept horse] is not a concept
3. The city of Berlin is a city
4. [The city of Berlin] is a city

Frege interprets the parts in brackets as, “A proper name in the logical sense,” which, “is a sign for an object.” Ergo: if the last three words of (3) and (4) were absent we would not know that 'Berlin' is a city (because proper names are not predicative). Frege grants that (3) is unintuitive given its redundancy, but he is unperturbed.

- @J seems to want us to say that Frege would have it that 'Berlin' has meaning and significance even apart from any predicate or quantification, as it does in everyday language.

It's fairly clear that assertion is integral to a proposition. The question is: what does it mean to separate them? By what means does Frege do that? If it's by way of a stipulated logical domain, yes you can separate them. In real life? No, you can't. — frank

I think these are the right considerations, although I think you can remove the assertion in "real life" too.

Kimhi's argument is something like this:

1. In order to assert a (declarative) sentence, I must first judge whether it is true or false
2. In order to judge whether it is true or false, it must have a judgable content
3. In order to have a judgable content, it must display assertoric force
4. In order to display assertoric force, it must contravene "Frege's Point"
[5. Therefore, "Frege's Point" prevents one from judging and asserting declarative sentences and engaging in the activity of logic] — Leontiskos

We could look at this from a different angle: What would it mean for someone to hold to "Frege's Point" to the extent that (4) is true? According to Kimhi, it would mean that they cannot do logic, for logic requires the ability to judge and assert declarative sentences (cf. 5).

Is it plausible to attribute such a doctrine to Frege? Does he really want to divorce assertoric force from sentence to such an extent that the sentence cannot be judged true or false? If not, does he have the resources to stop short of that pitfall? Kimhi seems to say, "no."

(I agree with Kimhi that Frege's analysis of assertoric force is not "natural," but beyond that I'm not convinced that it is as detrimental as Kimhi claims.)

Again, it is important to note that the very same sentence may have more than one logical treatment. ↪Leontiskos seems to miss this. — Banno

One can speak about modus ponens in terms of logical consequence or logical inference. Both make sense in their own context, but Frege actually adopts the latter approach. For Frege a modus ponens requires three judgment-strokes. — Leontiskos

It can only occur once for an expression, but the question is whether a modus ponens is a single expression. — Leontiskos