Was Wittgenstein Frege's Heir

Abstract

Dummett has claimed that Wittgenstein’s views, as expressed in The Blue and Brown Books and Philosophical Investigations, build on the attack on psychologism initiated by Frege. Frege’s rejection of psychologism led him to the view that the meanings of sentences are thoughts which objectively exist in a third realm. It was Wittgenstein, according to Dummett, who, inheriting Frege’s insights, provided a genuinely anti-psychologistic account of understanding by insisting that we explain understanding a sentence in terms of the use that is made of it. I challenge this interpretation of the relationship between Wittgenstein and Frege. I argue that the analysis does not sufficiently distinguish anti-psychologism and anti-mentalism. In the light of this distinction we can see that Wittgenstein misrepresents Frege’s views, and confuses concepts with ideas. By being more faithful to Frege’s actual views concerning the objectivity of concepts we can give a robustly realist account of mathematical truth which does not involve any objectionable psychologism or mentalism. email : Karen.Green@arts.monash.edu.au