Abstract

Why did Frege offer only proper names as examples of presupposition triggers? Some scholars claim that Frege simply did not care about the full range of presuppositional phenomena. This paper argues, in contrast, that he had good reasons for employing an extremely narrow notion of ‘Voraussetzung’. On Frege’s view, many devices that are now construed as presupposition triggers either express several thoughts at once or merely ‘illuminate’ a thought in a particular way. Fregean presuppositions, in contrast, are essentially tied to names.

Highlights

  • A striking thing about Frege’s account of presupposition is this: while the modern notion of presupposition has become the habitat for a veritable ‘zoo’ of presupposition triggers, Frege’s precursor notion of ‘Voraussetzung’ (: F-presupposition) seems more like a small glass bowl in which a single fish, bearing the strange name ‘Proper Name’, is solitarily swimming around

  • Synthese presupposition triggers Frege discusses would be due to a lack of interest on Frege’s part

  • I claimed that only proper names are F-presupposition triggers

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Summary

Introduction

A striking thing about Frege’s account of presupposition is this: while the modern notion of presupposition has become the habitat for a veritable ‘zoo’ of presupposition triggers, Frege’s precursor notion of ‘Voraussetzung’ (: F-presupposition) seems more like a small glass bowl in which a single fish, bearing the strange name ‘Proper Name’, is solitarily swimming around. Why is that so? This question has received surprisingly little attention. Described [presupposition] in such a way that the [existential presupposition carried by descriptions] is the paradigmatic case It is not clear whether he thought that presuppositions went beyond this sort of example. In what follows I will argue that, contrary to Kripke’s suggestion at the end of this passage, the existential presuppositions carried by names are the only examples of F-presupposition, and the reason for that is briefly mentioned by Kripke: on Frege’s view, the notion of Voraussetzung is essentially tied to possible truth-value gaps, and such gaps can only occur when names (very broadly construed) fail to refer. 7, I show why there cannot possibly be F-presupposition triggers that aren’t proper names, and, I briefly turn to a problem raised by what Frege says about the Homerian concept word ‘mōly’

Frege’s 1892 account
Are temporal clauses F‐presupposition triggers?
Vacuous names: the early and the mature view
Frege’s theoretical motive
Catastrophes and colouring
The asymmetry between concept words and names
Final interlude
Conclusion
Full Text
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