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Frege and the Description Theory: an Attempt at Rehabilitation

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Frege and the Description Theory: an Attempt at Rehabilitation Grazer Philosophische Studien 92 (2015), 109–116. FREGE AND THE DESCRIPTION THEORY: AN ATTEMPT AT REHABILITATION Ari MAUNU University of Turku Abstract I question the received view that Frege advocates the description theory of proper names. First, I argue that the textual evidence for this view from Frege’s writings is not conclusive. Secondly, I propose that the Fregean Sinne (of proper names) may be understood nondescriptionally in terms of symbolhood. Finally, I suggest that in the notorious passages where Frege is apparently supporting the descrip- tion theory he is just indicating the potential problems with communication with proper names. Keywords: Frege, Gottlob; sense and reference; description theory; proper names; defi nite descriptions; symbolhood. 1. Introduction Th e very rarely questioned received view has it that Frege advocates the description theory of proper names, that is, that the contents, or Sinne in Frege’s terminology,1 of ordinary proper names coincide with the contents of some appropriate defi nite descriptions. The evidence for this received view appears to consist mainly in the notorious second footnote of “Über Sinn und Bedeutung” (1892), where Frege seems to identify the Sinne of proper names with those of defi nite descriptions. My purpose in this paper is to question this received view. In Section 2, I bring up some counter-evidence from Frege’s writings. In Section 3, I suggest an interpretation of Frege’s notion of Sinn, according to which 1. I use Frege’s German words Sinn (Sinne in plural), Bedeutung, Gedanke, Begriff instead of their usual translations sense, reference (or meaning), thought, concept in order to emphasize that Frege uses them as technical terms, as he tells us, with regard to ‘Gedanke’, in his manuscript “Logik” (NS 147f. / PW 135–37, 1897). Sinn is to be understood nondescriptionally in terms of symbolhood. Armed with this interpretation, I explain in Section 4 what I think Frege is up to in the mentioned footnote as well as in the relevant passage in “Der Gedanke” (1918). 2. Evidence and Counter-Evidence Frege writes in the second footnote of “Über Sinn und Bedeutung” as follows (KS 144n / CP 158n): In the case of an actual proper name such as ‘Aristotle’ opinions as to the sense may diff er. It might, for instance, be taken to be the following: the pupil of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. Anybody who does this will attach another sense to the sentence ‘Aristotle was born in Stagira’ than will a man who takes as the sense of the name: the teacher of Alexander the Great who was born in Stagira. On the face of it, this footnote is not much of evidence if the Frege cor- pus is taken as a whole. Or, in any case, it is extraordinarily uncharitable to impose a view regarded as important on a major philosopher (prac- tically) on the basis of a single footnote. Yes, there is also the Gustav Lauben passage in “Der Gedanke” (1918), where Frege might be taken to endorse the description theory—however, there is nothing in that pas- sage (to be discussed in Section 4 below) that could be taken as an explicit endorsement. Evidence for the claim that Frege was not a description theorist is read- ily available in Frege’s writings. In “Logic in Mathematics” (NS 243 / PW 225, 1914) Frege writes: ‘Copernicus’ and ‘the author of the heliocentric view of the planetary system’ designate the same man, but have diff erent Sinne; for the sentence ‘Copernicus is Copernicus’ and ‘Copernicus is the author of the heliocentric view of the planetary system’ do not express the same Gedanke. If one wanted to propose a defi nite description as an “abbreviation” of the name ‘Copernicus’, wouldn’t ‘the author of the heliocentric view’ be the fi rst that comes to mind?2 2. Also, NS 208 / PW 192, 1906: “Th e sentence ‘Mont Blanc is over 4000m high’ does not express the same thought as the sentence ‘Th e highest mountain in Europe is over 4000m high’, although the proper name ‘Mont Blanc’ designates the same mountain as the expression 110.
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