Frege's Interpretation of Language

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Logic generally arises from argumentation, involving the study of reason and the forms it may take when presented as an argument. In determining the logical value of an argument, one must effectively assess the relations between objects and concepts put forth in a thought. However, thoughts themselves are inaccessible to anyone but the self as they exist only in the consciousness. To express such a thought, one must employ the tool of language, formulating thoughts and ideas into words so that they may be shared with a community. Language, though, can never encapsulate the entirety of the idea; information and clarity thereof is often lost in translation. In order to pursue the goal of logic and evaluate a body of reasoning, one must then first analyze and master the language in which the argument is put forth. Gottlob Frege, one of the founders of modern logic, recognized the necessity of correctly parsing language back into idea and devised a methodology, published in On Sense and Meaning, for analyzing words, phrases, and sentences.

Frege breaks his analysis down into the constituent parts of a sentence, eventually building up to the whole. The first such part concerns individual words, to which he assigns three attributes: idea, sense, and meaning. The idea is the most abstract of the three qualities, signifying the mental image associated with the word in question. It is composed of all the memories and experiences with such an object and therefore is specific to the individual; one can never be sure that two people possess an identical idea. While similarities between ideas can be extracted through expression, absolute congruency can never be ascertained. The idea is an element of consciousness and therefore...

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...se. However, this obvious connection does not hold for the meaning of sentences, which is defined to be either true or false, assuming it exists. The sentences “Barack Obama is the president of the USA,” and “Man has stepped foot on the Moon,” both evaluate to true and have the same meaning according to Frege. However, if one were to ask a layman if these sentences “mean” the same thing, the intuitive and automatic response is no. The colloquial concept of meaning with regard to sentences corresponds to Frege’s idea of sense. It seems that Frege’s definitions are the exact opposite of what is normally assumed, which leads to unnecessary confusion. However, this is still only a claim about the aesthetic qualities of his theory, and doesn’t necessarily affect its pragmatic value. Frege’s interpretation of language is certainly revolutionary, but it isn’t without flaw.

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