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
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
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
However the OP outlined a non-cynical option: option 1. In this case (with no opposition and malice) the frame is quite optimistic. — Benj96
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.
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In this way I believe notable historical figures in not just scripture but also politics wielded mass psychology to empower themselves... — Benj96
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
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
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
Did you have some source that conflicts with that? — frank
Frege says, “A proposition may be thought, and again it may be true; let us never confuse the two things.” (Foundations of Arithmetic) — J
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
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
When Frege talked about propositions, he was talking about thoughts. — frank
although I think you can remove the assertion in "real life" too.
— Leontiskos
Can you give an example of that? — frank
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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 made that claim. You probably need to understand the truth conditions, but not whether it's true or false. — frank
. . .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
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
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
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
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
Pretending, as your examples demonstrate, is complicated, but I think it's actually very important to logic because of hypothetical reasoning (not to mention counterfactuals). I think it's very difficult to give an account of what happens when we entertain an hypothesis, but it looks a bit like pretending. — Srap Tasmaner
So yes, somewhere back in the chain of how I come to be telling this story, to be in a position to tell this story, there must be witness or even participation. I was there and I saw it, or I had it from a guy who was there. The storyteller pretends to be such a person.
This is, perhaps, a more colorful version of the Parmenides stuff.
One consequence of such a view might be that it's not really the tale we believe but the teller. We do not adopt a propositional attitude of "belief" toward the story, except perhaps as a consequence of adopting a social attitude of "trust" toward the storyteller. — Srap Tasmaner
It appears there are two-brands of "democracy" in conflict, the one that favors the power of the people, the other that favors the institutions that have arisen in representative democracies, for instance elections and parliaments and the credibility of those in power. It's an interesting conflict. — NOS4A2
the pretense is that you are removing something and pretending you haven't — Srap Tasmaner
A better form for my question would be, what have you removed? What's missing, that everyone kinda pretends isn't, when you tell a (fictional) story? Does it overlap with what's left out when you only have a record of the words spoken, the bare, lifeless sentences? — Srap Tasmaner
And one last point -- sorry for the multiple posts -- the whole point of my view of fiction is that it is parasitic on candid account giving or reporting. If we did not already have such a practice of reporting on real events that happened to real people in real places, and so on, we could not pretend to report on events we've made up (and maybe people and places as well). — Srap Tasmaner
Yeah that was the idea. Is assertion something added on to the words? — Srap Tasmaner
If you can add on assertion, are there other things you could add on? — Srap Tasmaner
Another way to look at it: if you're not sure whether assertion is something we add on (rather than being built in), does showing that we can add something instead of assertion show that assertion is something we add? — Srap Tasmaner
My view is that in a work of fiction the author pretends to be telling a story, as she might tell a story about something that really happened. We pretend to believe she's telling a story. — Srap Tasmaner
(I think it's a pretty sophisticated thing, and it's easy to be culture-bound and miss how unusual it is.) — Srap Tasmaner
A relevant (for this thread) question might be: what exactly is an author pretending to do that he isn't? Can we say, there's the sentences you speak and the order you speak them in, on the one hand, and something else that makes your speaking "reporting a sequence of events" or "(merely) telling a (fictional) story" on the other? — Srap Tasmaner
The more natural move for later Wittgenstein is to say that sometimes we see something as a picture of something else, sometimes we don't — Srap Tasmaner
I must be missing something. I can see no more of a problem with fictional assertions than I can with fictional imaginings, fictional events, fictional places, fictional characters and so on. — Janus
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." — J
'assertoric force follows if a proposition expressed by an indicative clause is presented as relevant in a context made up of a subset of the hearer's factual assumptions." — frank
The judgment stoke occurs once in the expression, at the beginning. It affirms the whole expression, not each individual line separately. — Banno
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
My bolding. — Banno
Instead of writing the whole inference, consisting of the three assertions “ ⊢ p”, “ ⊢ (p ⊃ q)” and “ ⊢ q” , Russell and Whitehead propose an abbreviation containing the assertions of the two atomic propositions connected by an implication: “ ⊢ p ⊃⊢ q”. Frege would consider this a category mistake; in the Begriffsschrift it is not possible to have a judgment stroke within the scope of a conditional.
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A reason why Russell and Whitehead consider this abbreviation acceptable can be found in their explanation of syllogisms:
<<It should be observed that syllogisms are traditionally expressed with ‘therefore’, as if they asserted both premises and conclusion. This is, of course, merely a slipshod way of speaking, since what is really asserted is only the connection of premises with conclusion.[36]>>
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 [Russell's] 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
As I understand it, 0th level terms - a,b,x - name individuals. Included amongst those individuals are propositions, which in turn name a truth value. So (2+2=4)=(5-3=2)= ⊤. These all name the same individual. So "Berlin" might name the city, and "2+2=5" might name the false.
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On this account, both "Berlin" and "2+2=4" are names. — Banno