Frege on Truth, Assertoric Force and the Essence of Logic

Frege's Conception of Truth: Two Readings

“…Scholars claim that if we take these points into account, 15. Greimann (2007;2014) himself admits this point. 16.…”

“…The A-theory reading (Greimann 2004;2014) starts with pointing out that Frege's primary question regarding truth is what kind of role the notion of truth plays in judging and asserting. The gist of the A-theory reading is that Frege's answer to this question develops into the assertion theory of truth.…”

Frege's Conception of Logic: Truth, the True, and Assertion

“…… For the same reason as before I put this also in the dependent form “that it is true that sea‐water is salty.” (Frege, 1915, p. 251)Although Frege in MBLI already provides a reason he regards as sufficient to believe that “true” — or any other predicate — does not stand for assertoric force, he rebuts the objection by appealing to the further point that “true” has no substantive sense to contribute to a thought. Greimann (2014, p. 281) does not regard this redundancy point as important; he argues that what matters is just that because we can put “It is true that sea‐water is salty” without asserting it, “true” like any other predicate does not stand for assertoric force. The semantic inertness of “true,” Greimann says, is not the fundamental reason why Frege argues for the assertoric inertness of “true.” I agree with the last point.…”

“…Interpreters navigate this puzzling passage by developing different interpretations of what Frege means by “the essence of logic” here (cf. Greimann (2014), Pedriali (2017), Taschek (2008)). For instance, Greimann argues as follows:

Frege does not explain what exactly he means by “essence” when he says that the word “true” indicates the essence of logic.

…”

“…In §2 I develop a thorough analysis of Frege's manuscript “My Basic Logical Insights (MBLI),” which is taken by commentators (Taschek, 2008; Greimann, 2014; Pedriali, 2017) to be at the centre of this tension. My suggested reading of this short, highly controversial, article shows that what Frege is arguing by those remarks that seem to conflict with (LogT) is that we can indicate truth only through assertion.…”