This article of Frege’s is a late work, published around the time of his retirement. It does not introduce ideas radically different from “On Sense and Reference,” but it considers points touched on there at greater length.

Assignment for Mon. 2/10: pp. 289-298

The first part of the paper begins (pp. 289-293) with a discussion of the relation between the ideas of truth and thought (in Frege’s sense of the term). The remainder of this part addresses three topics more briefly:

Although these are relatively minor points given Frege’s main interest in this paper, each represents an aspect of meaning (in a broad sense) that came to be recognized as important in the period after WWII and which were eventually grouped under the label “pragmatics” (a term with historical connections to Peirce’s pragmatism but rather indirect ones). One of my reasons for assigning this paper was to bring these ideas into the first half of the course.

Assignment for Wed. 2/12: pp. 298-311

The three ideas listed above were emphasized mostly by people influenced by the later work of Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951). We will look at his earlier work after this paper. That work was influenced by Frege but mainly by the sort of ideas Frege pursues in the second part of the paper, beginning at the end of p. 298 (though what we’ll read in Wittgenstein was worked out before this paper itself was published).

This second part is an extended discussion of Frege’s suggestion that thoughts form a “third realm” different from both the “inner” and “outer” worlds. Watch for both arguments for the existence of this third realm and descriptions of its character.