Frege on Absolute and Relative Truth: An Introduction to the Practice of Interpreting Philosophical Texts

267 Pages·2012·1.82 MB·English

by  Ulrich Pardey (auth.)

Series Editor: Michael Beaney
Titles include :
Stewart Candlish
THE RUSSELL/BRADLEY DISPUTE AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE FOR
TWENTIETH-CENTURY PHILOSOPHY
Annalisa Coliva
MOORE AND WITTGENSTEIN
Scepticism, Certainty and Common Sense
George Duke
DUMMETT ON ABSTRACT OBJECTS
Sébastien Gandon
RUSSELL’S UNKNOWN LOGICISM
A Study in the History and Philosophy of Mathematics
Gregory Landini
FREGE’S NOTATIONS
What They Are and What They Mean
Sandra Lapointe
BOLZANO’S THEORETICAL PHILOSOPHY
An Introduction
Omar W. Nasim
BERTRAND RUSSELL AND THE EDWARDIAN PHILOSOPHERS
Constructing the World
Ulrich Pardey
FREGE ON ABSOLUTE AND RELATIVE TRUTH
An Introduction to the Practice of Interpreting Philosophical Texts
Douglas Patterson
ALFRED TARSKI
Philosophy of Language and Logic
Graham Stevens
THE THEORY OF DESCRIPTIONS
Nuno Venturinha ( editor )
WITTGENSTEIN AFTER HIS N ACHLASS
Pierre Wagner (e ditor )
CARNAP’S L OGICAL SYNTAX OF LANGUAGE
Pierre Wagner (e ditor )
CARNAP’S IDEAL OF EXPLICATION AND NATURALISM
Forthcoming:
Andrew Arana and Carlos Alvarez (e ditors )
ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY AND THE FOUNDATIONS OF MATHEMATICS
Rosalind Carey
RUSSELL ON MEANING
The Emergence of Scientific Philosophy from the 1920s to the 1940s
Giusseppina D’Oro
REASONS AND CAUSES
Causalism and Non-Causalism in the Philosophy of Action
Anssi Korhonen
LOGIC AS UNIVERSAL SCIENCE
Russell’s Early Logicism and Its Philosophical Context
Sandra Lapointe (translator)
Franz Prihonsky
THE NEW ANTI-KANT
Consuelo Preti
THE METAPHYSICAL BASIS OF ETHICS
The Early Philosophical Development of G.E. Moore
Erich Reck (e ditor )
THE HISTORIC TURN IN ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY
Maria van der Schaar
G.F. STOUT: ON THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ORIGIN OF ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY
History of Analytic Philosophy
Series Standing Order ISBN 978–0–230–55409–2 (hardcover)
Series Standing Order ISBN 978–0–230–55410–8 (paperback)
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Frege on Absolute and
Relative Truth
An Introduction to the Practice of
Interpreting Philosophical Texts
Ulrich Pardey
Ruhr Universität Bochum, Germany
© Ulrich Pardey 2012
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2012 978-1-137-01222-7
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First published 2012 by
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ISBN 978-1-349-43653-8 ISBN 978-1-137-01223-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9781137012234
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To Barbara, Eva and Katja
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Contents
Series Editor’s Preface xi
Preface xiv
Acknowledgments xix
Texts and Translations xxi
List of Logical Symbols x xiv
1 Introduction: In Tarski’s Shadow 1
1.1 Frege’s critique of the correspondence theory 1
1.2 Six incredible errors 4
2 The Context: The Question of Truth Bearers 6
2.1 Psychologism – Frege’s major target 6
2.2 Relative and absolute truth 7
2.3 Excursion: relativizations of truth 9
2.4 Regions of truth 12
2.5 Two notions of truth 13
2.6 T he truth of pictures and ideas in terms
of correspondence 15
3 Frege’s Text and Its Argumentative Structure 1 7
3.1 The text 1 7
3.2 Discussion of the structure: demarcating the arguments 20
3.3 Three definitions of I-truth in terms of correspondence 2 4
4 The First Argument: Scientific Truth Is Absolute 2 6
4.1 The text 26
4.2 The absoluteness of scientific truth 26
4.3 Soames’s and Künne’s criticisms of Frege’s
first argument 29
5 The Second Argument: Scientific Truth Is Perfect 3 4
5.1 The text 3 4
5.2 The perfection of scientific truth 34
5.3 Soames’s reconstruction of the second argument 3 6
5.4 Stuhlmann-Laeisz’s critique 3 8
vii
viii Contents
6 The Third Argument: Scientific Truth Is Independent 41
6.1 The text 4 1
6.2 The connection between the second and
third arguments 4 3
6.3 The dependency of I-truth 44
6.4 The omnipresence of truth and Dummett’s
alleged regress 4 9
6.5 The distinction between I-truth and S-truth 53
6.6 The independence of scientific truth 5 5
6.7 The game and its potential restart 56
6.8 The connections between the first
three arguments 5 8
7 Parallels in Frege’s ‘Logik’ 62
7.1 Similarities between the parallel arguments 62
7.2 The connection between the two arguments 66
7.3 Differences between the definitions 69
7.4 Proof structure of the arguments 7 4
7.5 The error in the circle objection in ‘Logik’ 77
7.6 The transition from ‘Logik’ to ‘Der Gedanke’ 80
7.7 The respective contexts in ‘Logik’ and
in ‘Der Gedanke’ 83
7.8 Concluding comparison of L and G 8 7
7.9 The treadmill 8 8
8 The Fourth Argument: The Circle Objection 96
8.1 The text 96
8.2 An analytic definition with two one-place
predicates 97
8.3 The inapplicability of the circle objection
to a non-analytic definition 102
8.4 Künne’s critique 1 10
8.5 A generalization of the circle objection 114
9 The Omnipresence of Truth 118
9.1 The circle in the application process 118
9.2 Propositional questions (1) 119
9.3 Decisions and applications 121
9.4 Propositional questions (2) 1 23
9.5 The form of assertive sentences 124
Contents ix
10 Dummett’s Regress 1 26
1 0.1 Dummett’s reconstruction and critique
of Frege’s arguments 126
1 0.2 Dummett’s and Soames’s neglect
of Frege’s definitions 1 28
1 0.3 D ummett’s way of connecting the third
and fourth objections 129
1 0.4 Dummett’s regress as a beginner’s mistake 130
11 The Reduction of I-Truth to S-Truth 134
1 1.1 The text 134
1 1.2 True ideas and true friends 135
1 1.3 The reduction of I-truth to sentence truth 1 35
1 1.4 The relativity of sentence truth 136
1 1.5 The truth we really mean 140
1 1.6 The answer to the initial question 144
12 The Fifth Argument: Frege’s Regress 145
1 2.1 The text 145
1 2.2 The regress argument 145
1 2.3 On the distinction between circle and
regress arguments 1 52
1 2.4 T he context: Frege’s major thesis
in ‘Der Gedanke’ 155
13 The Road to a Novel Interpretation 1 58
1 3.1 Contrapositing an interpretation 158
1 3.2 A road to the first argument 1 62
1 3.3 A road to the third argument 1 72
14 Absolute or Relative Truth? 181
1 4.1 A generalized formulation of Frege’s objections 1 81
1 4.2 Absolute truth of thoughts versus relative
truth of predication 184
1 4.3 Another objection 1 86
1 4.4 The liar as the key witness against absolute truth 187
15 Tarski’s Definition of Truth and Frege’s Critique 1 91
1 5.1 Frege’s absolute truth and Tarski’s hierarchy
of languages 191
1 5.2 The impact of Tarski’s recursive definition of truth 195