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Frege On Assertion Summary

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Frege and Geach on Assertion In this paper I will analyse Frege’s view on Assertion (as discussed in his papers “Sense and Reference” and “Thought”) followed by an account of Geach’s defence of this idea. Frege holds relevance in the history of analytical philosophy for proposing a sense to bridge the gap between what is said and what is heard and thus educating us about what is ‘expressed’. But among his rather rigid theory about how language works, he also advances an even more obscure theory about how assertion works. On Frege’s account, an assertion is any thought acknowledged as a judgement. There is no other parameter for an assertion to be called so. When a thought is evaluated (so to speak) as having a truth-value, it has henceforth been adjudged as the truth and any utterance of this judgement is an assertion- and just that. In “Thought”, Frege points out all the instances one …show more content…

Speaking about degrees, what about the superlative uses of true? To consider that only reality/world can be the measure of a thought’s truth-value before it is promoted to a judgment; contradicts with what he says about judgment formation in this paper : “The ideas that are awakened . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .person to person.” I say so because this appears to be quite pliable on Frege’s part if his purpose of introducing a sense was to make matters easier (read objective) for meaningful communication. In “On Sinn and Bedeutung” 34: “Every assertoric . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . sceptic.” Also 34: “But so much. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .taken.” And footnote: judgement= admission of a thought’s truth not just its

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