Building on Frege. New essays on sense, content, and concept. (English) Zbl 1033.03002

Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications (ISBN 1-57586-311-1/pbk; 1-57586-312-X). xxiv, 351 p. (2001).

This volume gathers 17 papers, most of them read at a meeting in Bonn in October 1998 on the occasion of G. Frege’s 150th birthday. The papers, organized in five sections, focus on epistemological and semantical issues. Most of the papers are mainly systematically interested, they go beyond historical and interpretational matters.
In Section I, entitled “Frege and the philosophical tradition”, W. Carl and G.Gabriel disagree about the question as to whether Frege was a neo-Kantian or not. According to Carl the standard readings of Platonism and Idealism do not fit Frege’s philosophy. He also sees great differences between Frege’s philosophy and some eminent neo-Kantian directions like W.Windelband’s, H.Rickert’s and H.Cohen’s. Gabriel, on the other hand, argues that Frege stood in the tradition of the neo-Kantian H.Lotze. He finds furthermore anticipations of Frege’s Context Principle in Lotze and Hegel. Frege’s relation to Kant is the topic of the papers of W.Malzkorn and T.Burge. Malzkorn argues that Frege’s ideas concerning the grasping of thoughts should not be read in a Kantian way. For Burge, Frege had a Leibnizian notion of the apriori, and not a Kantian.
Section II on “Sense and propositional content” combines six papers. G.Bar-Elli distinguishes two kinds of the notion of sense in Frege’s writings. A.Newen applies these notions to proper names and indexicals, J.Perry the Fregean notions of sense and reference to cognitive values. R. Rheinwald connects Frege’stheory of proper names to Kripke’s conception of proper names as rigid designators. U. Nortmann deals with the sense of predicates. F. Récanati discusses the new “deferential” mode of presentation in the context of a Frege-style semantics.
Section III on “Empty names and the context principle” contains three papers. R. M. Sainsbury discusses problems of causal theories of reference and other “object based” semantics with negative existential statements like “a perpetuum mobile does not exist.” E. Morscher deals with the puzzle that affirmative existence sentences can be false, whereas negative existence sentences can be true. He compares Frege’s solution with the one by B. Bolzano. R. Stuhlmann-Laeisz discusses different variations of the context principle showing that none of them is able to solve the Julius Caesar problem according to which it is impossible in the Fregean system to decide whether a concept has the number Julius Caesar, or whether the famous emperor is a number at all.
The papers of Section IV deal with concepts. W. Künne compares constituents of concepts in the theories of Bolzano and Frege, especially with respect to the reciprocity thesis. U. Haas-Spohn and W. Spohn oppose anti-individualistic theories of concepts and beliefs with their conception of internal concepts with “narrow contents.”
The topic of the last section, “Sets, truth and logic”, is the epistemic status of mathematics. F. von Kutschera discusses a set theory suitable for reforming Frege’s notion of set “in a philosophically satisfactory way” (p. 319). U. Meixner criticizes in the final paper Frege’s claim that logic is the science of the laws of truths.
Contents: W. Carl, “Frege – a Platonist or a neo-Kantian?” (pp. 3–18); G. Gabriel, “Frege, Lotze, and the continental roots of early analytic philosophy” (pp. 19–33); W. Malzkorn, “How do we ‘grasp’ a thought, Mr. Frege?” (pp. 35–51); T. Burge, “Frege on apriority” (pp. 53–87); G. Bar-Elli, “Sense and objectivity in Frege’s logic” (pp. 91–111); A. Newen, “Fregean senses and the semantics of singular terms’; (pp. 113–140); J. Perry, “Frege on identity, cognitive value, and subject matter” (pp. 141–158); R. Rheinwald, “How to Kripke a Frege-Russell” (pp. 159–174); U. Nortmann, “Concepts and their modes of presentation” (pp. 175–195); F. Recanati, “Modes of presentation: Perceptual vs. deferential” (pp. 197–208); R. M. Sainsbury, “Sense without reference” (pp.211–230); E. Morscher, “How can ‘\(a\) exists’ be false?” (pp. 231–250); R. Stuhlmann-Laeisz, “The context principle” (pp. 251–264); W. Künne, “Constituents of concepts: Bolzano vs. Frege” (pp. 267–285); U. Haas-Spohn and W. Spohn, “Concepts are beliefs about essences” (pp. 287–316); F. von Kutschera, “Concepts of a set” (pp. 319–327); U. Meixner, “Is logic the science of the laws of truth?” (pp. 329–344).
The articles of this volume will not be indexed individually.

Reviewer: Volker Peckhaus (Paderborn)

MSC:

03A05	Philosophical and critical aspects of logic and foundations
00A30	Philosophy of mathematics
03-02	Research exposition (monographs, survey articles) pertaining to mathematical logic and foundations
03-06	Proceedings, conferences, collections, etc. pertaining to mathematical logic and foundations

Keywords:

semantics; epistemology; Building on Frege