Frege's Realism Revisited: A Critique of Recent Trends in Frege Scholarship

Chapman Waters, Purdue University

Abstract

According to the historically dominant interpretation of Frege’s philosophy—The Traditional Interpretation (TI), as I call it—Frege held a variety of metaphysical theses typically associated with the labels “realism” and “Platonism.” According to a more recent trend in Frege scholarship, the traditional reading of Frege’s metaphysics has got it wrong. Proponents of this brand of interpretation—what I call The Revisionist Interpretation (RI)—hold that Frege was fundamentally opposed to views of the realist/Platonist sort. Through critically evaluating and assessing the motivation for RI, one goal of my dissertation is to undermine this growing trend among Frege scholars. Another is to mount a defense of the traditional reading of Frege’s metaphysical outlook. In so doing I aim to not only vindicate TI against RI, but also to dislodge a number of unwarranted assumptions which have a strong hold in contemporary Frege scholarship. In the first chapter, I show that the debate between TI and RI converges on a single aspect of Frege’s thinking: his conception of mind-independence or objectivity (Objectiviät). What is important about Frege’s conception of objectivity—what I dub “gottlobjectivity”—is its metaphysical implications. If gottlobjectivity commits Frege to mind-independently existing items such as numbers and propositions, then he is a realist and Platonist. Proponents of RI are united in denying this, holding that gottlobjectivity is incompatible with metaphysical theses of either sort. The central claim that I aim to establish in my dissertation, then, is this: gottlobjectivity commits Frege to a variety of metaphysical theses falling under the rubrics “realism”/“Platonism.” The second chapter outlines two widely endorsed arguments for RI. According to the first—“The Truth-Theoretic Challenge to TI”—Frege’s conception of truth precludes him from being a realist. According to the second—“The Epistemological Challenge to TI”—certain of Frege’s epistemological doctrines are only acceptable on an RI-friendly interpretive scheme. The third chapter then turns to a critical assessment of The Truth-Theoretic Challenge to TI. To this end, I first show that proponents of this challenge have failed to properly distinguish Frege’s semantic theory from his metaphysical views. The reason for this, I argue, is that these interpreters have falsely assumed that realism is a semantic thesis. Once we drop this assumption, it is clear that the challenge altogether fails to undermine TI. The fourth chapter examines a much neglected aspect of Frege’s thinking, namely, his philosophy of aesthetics. Here, I first defend the claim that Frege endorsed a rather extreme version of aesthetic non-realism: subjectivism. Second, I demonstrate that Frege’s claims about the subject matter of aesthetics, when conjoined with his claims about truth, entail that he was a Platonic realist about truth. Finally, in light of these results, I defend the view that gottlobjectivity commits Frege to a variety of metaphysical theses falling under the rubrics “realism”/“Platonism.” In the final chapter, I return the second widely endorsed argument for RI, The Epistemological Challenge to TI. There, I argue that the revisionist claims concerning Frege’s epistemological doctrines are unfounded. The mistake here is that Frege simply did not have the epistemological concerns that contemporary philosophers associate with realist/Platonist doctrines. And once we take this into consideration, it is clear that Frege’s epistemological outlook is well accounted for on TI.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Bertolet, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Epistemology|Metaphysics|Philosophy

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