Frege goes to great lengths in discussing several different examples and how his proposed ideas apply to each. The main point of the article seemed to me to be about the difference between a referent (the object itself), sense (what is in-between the referent and conception; our perceptions), and conception (what we individually think of the object) of an object. Given the multitude of examples, I understand and agree with the general outline of identity that Frege is proposing.
I disagree with Frege when he says that a 'truth value' of a sentence can only be true or false. While he slightly changes this idea throughout the article and applies it to components smaller than the 'sentence' level, my issue with this is that he never undergoes an example of conjunctions. Presumably if there is a sentence with anything false in it, it would be considered false. But what does that mean for the true portion of the sentence? He also almost immediately goes back on the idea of a 'truth value' when mentioning art and poems, but I think he considers those to be separate from the topic in language that he is discussing.
In clarifying what a 'conception' is Frege states "It is indeed sometimes possible to establish differences in the conceptions,
or even in the sensations, of different men; but an exact
comparison is not possible, because we cannot have both conceptions
together in the same consciousness" (Frege 1948, pg 30 / 213). I'm curious what the exact implications of this are. Is this to say that it is possible for us to recognize a difference between conceptions, but impossible for us to understand it? Or is he saying that in understanding another person's conceptions we are thereby changing our own, making a comparison to our previous conception(s) impossible?
I agree! His understanding of truth-hood/falsehood seems to be rather inconsistent, and almost wanders around. However, I think he sees art as part of his work, to the extent to which art can play with the referent and sense of a phrase, meaning that it's merely unaddressed rather than unconnected. (Weather that's good or bad, I suppose, is determined by one's contentedness for art.)
ReplyDeleteI agree with your concern about truth values in Frege. The lack of a middle ground in sentences that contain both true and false components seems to highlight a potential flaw in his theory. While relying on truth values is useful for logic and mathematics, when we use language, we are able to grasp a varying level of "truth" within sentences. For example, we can understand someone when they say another person is both tall and not tall. On the surface, only one of those statements can be true, but we are able to understand that this person may be tall compared to X but not tall compared to Y, or they could be a tall figure metaphorically, but short psychically. I think Frege would struggle to explain how we can understand something like that because to him the truth is The Truth, and one cannot have both properties of "tall" and "not tall".
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