4 Dummett

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4Dummetts Frege
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The Background

• The mentalist conception
• It is a code conception of language (telepathy
  doesnt need language).

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• Wittgenstein (who criticizes it)
• We are so much accustomed to communication
  through language, in conversation, that it looks
  to us as if the whole point of communication lay
  in this someone else grasps the sense of my
  words which is something mental he as it were
  takes it into his own mind. If he then does
  something further with it as well, that is no
  part of the immediate purpose of language.
  (Wittgenstein PI 363)

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• Locke
• Words in their primary or immediate
  signification, stand for nothing but the ideas in
  the mind of him that uses them ... nor can anyone
  apply them as mark, immediately, to anything else
  but the ideas that he himself had. (Locke 1894
  III.ii.2)

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• ...
• The chief end of language in communication
  being to be understood, words serve well for that
  end, neither in civil nor philosophical
  discourse, when any words does not excite in the
  hearer the same idea which it stands for in the
  breast of the speaker. (Locke 1894 III.ix.4)

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Ideas vs. Senses

• Frege criticises the code conception of language.
• To do so he distinguishes between
• (i) a Vorstellung (Idea) qua private/subjective
  entity, and
• (ii) a Sinn qua objective entity (mind and
  language independent, eternal).

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• grasping a sense
• one need to be familiar with the language.
• So we need a medium.

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Main Question

• Is it possible to deal with the objectivity of
  senses/thoughts without endorsing, pace Frege,
  Platonism?

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• The avoidance of Platonism
• Dummett thinks it is possible to avoid
  Platonism.
• He shows how to bring senses/thoughts down to
  earth.

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Meaning

• A theory of meaning is a theory of understanding
  (cf. Dummett 1973 ch.5)
• Theory of understanding what does it mean to
  know a language?

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• This account can only be given in terms of the
  practical ability which the speaker displays in
  using sentences of the language and, in general,
  the knowledge of which that practical ability is
  taken as a manifestation may be, and should be,
  regarded as only implicit knowledge. (Dummett
  1978 101)
• The meaning of a word/sentence is part of what is
  understood.

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• Three components of meaning
• 1. sense it is objective (vs Ideas) sense is
  what is relevant to the determination of truth
  value.
• 2. tone (lighting, coloring) it is not relevant
  to truth value tone is used to convey attitude,
  evocative use of language,
• 3. force it applies to sentences declarative
  vs. interrogatives/imperatives/... sentences.

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• meaning vs. reference
• reference is not an ingredient of meaning. To
  understand a word doesnt merely consist in
  associating to it a worldly entity.
• reference vs. sense
• sense is part of the meaning which needs to be
  grasped in order to compute the truth value. As
  such sense is the part of the meaning which
  determines reference.

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• Identification
• In grasping the sense of a word (e.g. a proper
  name) we connect the word with a way of
  identifying the referent.
• So sense is associated with a method of
  identifying an object.

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• There is no condition sufficient for
  identification which anybody must know and, since
  different individuals may chose different routes
  to single out a referent, the sense of a word
  cannot be the knowledge possessed by a single
  individual.
• Sense belongs to the social community it is the
  common stock of information.

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The Linguistic Turn

• Frege is the father of analytic philosophy, for
  the latter began with the linguistic turn.
• The priority of language in order of explanation.

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• Two axioms of analytic philosophy
• 1. A philosophical account of thought can be
  attained through a philosophical account of
  language
• 2. A comprehensive account can only be so
  attained.

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• Three features contribute to the linguistic turn
• 1. The structure of a thought is reflected in
  the structure the sentence expressing it.
• It would be difficult, if not impossible, to
  discuss the structure of a thought without making
  allusion to its verbal expression.
• A thought is grasped in grasping the semantic
  properties of the sentence expressing it.

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• 2. A thought is primarily said to be true or
  false.
• Frege always starts by explaining the
  referential relation between sentences/words and
  their referents.

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• This order of explanation is demanded by his
  conception of sense as the way in which the
  referent is given
• we first must know what it is for a sentence to
  be true and what it is for an expression to have
  a reference before knowing what it is for it to
  express a thought/sense.
• A sense can be grasped only as the sense of an
  expression to which reference can be ascribed.

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• 3. The objectivity of sense is not enough to
  guarantee the objectivity of communication
• The sense ought to be (objectively) attached to
  an expression.
• Hence we need to explain what it is for a sense
  to be attached to an expression.
• To do so we need to explain what it means to
  know a language.

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• Moral we cannot give an account of naked
  thoughts.
• sense is what is grasped
• A sense which cannot be grasped is a chimera.
• We know what a sense is in knowing what it means
  to grasp it.
• So the study of the language in communication is
  an essential feature of Freges philosophy.