Wittgenstein&ianism

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Kripke’s Frege

I have to apologize, to start with, for the way I am writing this section of my blog: While the style of my contributions in German and in Spanish may be lacking, I think I may say with some justification that I do dominate these languages. It is true, though, that definitively my German is still better than my Spanish. It’s a different story with English. Thank you for your tolerance. If you go through the trouble of commenting on my mistakes in syntax, grammar, idiom, etc., I will greatly appreciate your help.

I have been commenting on Kripke’s proposal to treat Fregean senses as objects of direct acquaintance in Russellian style, sort of, in the Spanish section of this blog. I plan on initiating the English section of the blog with a more explicit and ample discussion of Kripke’s idea. My main point, though, will not be whether Kripke is right or wrong; I think that would be something that cannot be established. But rather, why I think dealing with Frege’s doctrine in a way that would make it more compatible with Russell’s system is leading Frege scholarship in particular and philosophy in general in a wrong direction.

But, of course, what I’m going to try in concrete is to show that Kripke’s arguments, one by one, are not helping Frege’s doctrine to become more acceptable, but make it look even crazier than it already does under the “standard” interpretation. And that neither his reading of Frege will therefore go as a piece of scholarship, nor will the “standard” interpretation be able to withstand in the long run the criticism flowing from a more balanced view of Frege.

The paper by Kripke I’m going to discuss here is

Saul A. Kripke; “Frege’s Theory of Sense and Reference: Some Exegetical Notes” in Theoria, 2008, 74, 181–218 based on a transcript of a lecture given in Stockholm, Sweden, on 24 October 2001. The article is also re-published in Saul A. Kripke; Philosophical Troubles; Collected Papers, Volume I; Oxford University Press; Oxford, New York; 2011.

‘”Standard” interpretation’ is not meant as a clearly defined term. It refers vaguely to the opinion that some parts of Frege’s doctrine cannot seriously be held; such as: that sentences are names of truth values if they have a meaning at all, that truth values are objects, that the concept horse is not a concept, things like these, that can be found already argued against in Russell’s Appendix A of Principles of Mathematics or in Anscombe’s An Introduction to Wittgenstein’s Tractatus.

The English section of my blog has to compete for my time and energy with the Spanish and German Sections and my multiple other obligations. I am therefore not sure how regularly I will be able to work on this part of my blog. I do hope to make some progress little by little over time. All your commentaries are welcome.