Past Events

Speaker:
Marco Ruffino (University of Campinas)

Abstract:

As important as understanding the elements of natural language (such as variables, quanEfiers, negaEon, etc.) that Frege decided to incorporate in his very first formulaEon of a logical language (in the Begriffsschri*, from 1879) is also to understand the elements of natural language that he decided to leave out and, even more importantly, his jusEficaEon for doing so. One popular interpretaEon of Frege’s view is that he harbors a contempt for natural language as something inadequate and uninteresEng for logic and semanEcs (hence, for philosophy in general). This popular view was promoted not only by several formal logicians that came aRer Frege (such as the first WiTgenstein, Tarski, Carnap, etc.) but also by ordinary language philosophers (such as the second WiTgenstein, Strawson, AusEn, etc.). It depicts Frege as a purely Platonic logician insensiEve to the richness of fundamental non-truth-funcEonal relaEons essenEal to ordinary language and communicaEon.

I shall argue that the popular view is fundamentally wrong. The purpose of this presentaEon is to examine Frege’s jusEficaEon for excluding some basic aspects of natural language (e.g., the subject/predicate structure of judgements) from his first formulaEon of the conceptual notaEon. A careful examinaEon will reveal a much more sophisEcated percepEon of semanEc relaEons than the one ordinarily aTributed to him. Indeed, in fixing the limits of his logic Frege anEcipates a very subtle—if someEmes negaEve—characterizaEon of pragmaEc phenomena such as convenEonal implicatures, presupposiEons and illocuEonary force. These phenomena will be rediscovered about a century later in the works of philosophers and linguists such as Strawson, AusEn, Grice, KarTunen and Levinson, although they are in general not fully aware of the Fregean roots of the topic.