Gottlob Freges Totalitatsanspruch der Logik by Karl Eberhard SchorrReview by: Christian ThielThe Journal of Symbolic Logic, Vol. 34, No. 1 (Mar., 1969), pp. 141-142Published by: Association for Symbolic LogicStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2271043 .

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REVIEWS 141

because it once was true. If Stahl had the form Vnppis, a correct representation of the Diodorean (I) might be: (s)(Vpps D Vnppis).

The author makes the following corrections: To the 1960 paper: On p. 97, delete the last sentence of the second paragraph, and "controuvee, donc" in the third line of the third para- graph, and at the end of the footnote, replace "en frangais courant" by "simplement par traduction." On p. 99, third paragraph, first line, replace "est alors" by "dans toutes ces interpretations est, en general;" in the second line, replace "tel, que l'utilise la logique sym- bolique, que" by " si ;" and in the fifth and sixth lines, replace " definir ... discours" by " delimi- ter ce dernier concept." On p. 103, fourth paragraph, sixth line, "2n" should be "2n". To the 1961 paper: p. 502, lines 10, 12, and 19, there should be a double close-quotes, and in the last line of the footnote, "X2" should be "M2". On p. 505, last line of third paragraph, there should be a double closing bracket. To the 1963 paper: p. 242, line 13, insert "et (5)" after "(4)"; replace the definition on the fifth line from the bottom of the text on p. 241 by " Vps _ (u) Vs v

-(Vs v Vu - Vpu)," and the definition (A) on the same page by " Vpts* a * (m, k, u). Vppj + ms D

- (Vppi + mS VppkU -* Vpku);" and the definition (B) on p. 242 by " Vpjs. .(m, u) * Vppt +Ms D

( VvtU * - Vpt +mu)." A. N. PRIOR

HENRYK SKOLIMOWSKI. Polish analytical philosophy. A survey and a comparison with British analytical philosophy. International Library of Philosophy and Scientific Method. The Humanities Press, New York 1967, xi + 275 pp.

As the author points out, this is a book about philosophy and not about logic. Consequently it deals with matters largely outside the scope of this JOURNAL; only a few passages are directly relevant, notably a non-technical review of Polish philosophers' analyses of the concept of truth, and a cursory discussion of Lukasiewicz's work in propositional logic. But although not itself concerned with logic, this book has an indirect interest to logicians as it offers an over-all view of the general philosophical background against which the Polish school of logic emerged.

The bulk of the book is devoted to presentations and discussions of the work of Twardowski, Lukasiewicz, Kotarbin'ski, and Ajdukiewicz. Shorter treatments are accorded to Tatarkiewicz, Kotarbin'ska, Ossowska, Chwistek, and a few others. One chapter describes the present-day situation in Poland: the encounter between analytical and Marxist philosophy, and how these two modes of thinking have influenced one another. To a considerable extent the exposition is founded on works published only in Polish, and in some instances on unpublished material and private conversations. References to non-Polish philosophers are scattered throughout the book, and the last chapter is set aside for a comparison between British and Polish analytical philosophy. The technique of explaining Polish analytical philosophy by comparing and con- trasting it with the presumably already familiar British variety has certain advantages. It gains further justification from the author's conviction that analytical philosophy must not be identi- fied with what has taken place in Britain. According to him, the appearance of analytical philosophy should be viewed as "a natural and almost inevitable phenomenon, as a part of the whole Earopean cultural and scientific tradition." This opinion is ably defended in the intro- ductory chapter, in which the author tries to uncover the historical origins of the entire analyti- cal movement. KRISTER SEGERBERG

KARL EBERHARD SCHORR. Gottlob Freges Totalitdtsanspruch der Logik. Stadium general, Bd. 18 (1965), S. 542-548.

Ausgehend von Freges Bemerkung in 491, er wolle seine Begriffsschrift "zuerst" auf die Arithmetik anwenden, stellt Verf. die These auf, bei Frege liege ein "auf Totalitat gehender Entwurf einer Logifizierung der Wissenschaften" (S. 542) vor. Diesen "Totalitatsanspruch" gelte es heute, da wir in bezug auf Frege " unsere Wurdigung ob ehemaliger Unterschatzung zu ubersteigern" (ibid.) in Gefahr seien, als unberechtigt aufzuweisen und zu bekdmpfen. Frege, der sich auf die naturliche Sprache als " Geltungsboden" der Logik verwiesen sehe, die durch ihre "Sinnlichkeit" bedingte Unvollkommenheit der Sprache jedoch erkenne, schlieBe "auf einen intelligiblen Bereich des Wahrseins als 'Drittes"' (S. 545). Der Versuch, den Totali- tatsanspruch der Logik durch die "vollstandige Umsetzung des Bereichs des Wahrseins in eine Kunstsprache" (S. 547) zu verwirklichen, miusse scheitern-diese Umsetzung sei ja selbst gerade Problem. Freges Wahrheitsplatonismus ist nach Ansicht des Verf. fur die Logik irrele- vant, er engt das Wahrheitsproblem auf " bestimmte aus der Subjektivitatsphilosophie folgende

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142 REVIEWS

Zweckgesichtspunkte" (S. 547) ein und verzichtet dabei doch auf eine Lehre vom Subjekt. Demgegenuiber ist auf Kants Lehre vom moralischen Subjekt, seinen Zwecken und seinem Endzweck zuruickzugehen, um der Logik nach dem Scheitern des Fregeschen Begrundungs- versuches einen "zweifelsfreien Geltungsboden" zu verschaffen. Obwohl Verf. dies auch an anderer Stelle des Textes (S. 546) empfiehlt, schlieBt die Arbeit lediglich mit einem allgemeinen Hinweis, in dem behauptet wird, eine solche Zuruckfuhrung sei mit der operativen Begrundung der Logik durch Lorenzen (XXII 289) erfolgt. CHRISTIAN THIEL

JOHN R. SEARLE. Russell's objections to Frege's theory of sense and reference. Analysis (Oxford), vol. 18 (1958), pp. 137-143.

In his famous 1905 article On denoting (1119), Russell asserted that the evidence for his newly presented theory of descriptions "is derived from the difficulties which seem unavoidable if we regard denoting phrases [e.g., 'the King of France'] as standing for genuine constituents of the propositions in whose verbal expressions they occur." Just two years earlier, in The principles of mathematics (1116), Russell himself had so honored denoting phrases, but he now repudiated his earlier views. Although he explicitly argues only against the theories of Meinong and Frege, Russell believed Frege's theory to be "very nearly the same" as his own 1903 theory. Two arguments are given against Frege's theory. The first, which concerns only improper descrip- tions, is that since "the King of France is bald" is not about anything ("the King of France" having meaning but no denotation), "one would suppose that 'the King of France is bald' ought to be nonsense; but it is not nonsense, since it is plainly false." This argument appears to be based on an incorrect identification of nonsense with lack of denotation rather than with lack of meaning.

The second argument, which goes against Frege's treatment even of proper descriptions, purports to show that the relation of the meaning of a denoting phrase to the denotation of the phrase is either "wholly mysterious" or else they are one and the same. The argument begins by reference to a questionable symbolic convention, "When we wish to speak about the meaning of a denoting phrase as opposed to its denotation, the natural mode of doing so is by inverted commas," and concludes, two tortured pages later, "This is an inextricable tangle, and seems to prove that the whole distinction of meaning and denotation has been wrongly con- ceived." Of this argument, Church remarks in VIII 58, "Russell's objections, it would seem, are traceable merely to confusion between use and mention of expressions of a sort which Frege is careful to avoid by use of quotation marks. Russell applies quotation marks to dis- tinguish the [meaning] of an expression from its denotation, but leaves himself without any notation for the expression itself; upon introduction of (say) a second kind of quotation mark to signalize names of expressions, Russell's objections to Frege completely vanish."

Searle disagrees, arguing that Russell has an objection to Frege which underlies the confu- sions of mention and use, and that this underlying objection is based on quite a different con- fusion, namely, that between being a constituent of a proposition and being what a proposition refers to (is about).

Some support for Searle's claim, in addition to that adduced by Searle, is provided by the fact that according to Russell's 1903 theory, when the subject of a sentence is a proper name like "John" or "Humanity," the corresponding proposition will be about one of its own con- stituents, namely that one corresponding to (in Russell's terminology: indicated by) the proper name. This constituent will be the person or concept so named. But when the subject is a denoting phrase like "the King of England," the corresponding proposition is not (usually) about the corresponding constituent itself, but is rather about what is denoted by that constituent. The propositional constituent corresponding to a denoting phrase is a denoting concept and is reasonably close, or so Russell thought, to Frege's Sinn. If Russell took his 'expressions con- taining inverted commas' (we will use Searle's "?"'s to avoid confusion) as proper names (and there is clear evidence for this both in his remarks and in the fact that it is correct to do so), then the propositional constituent corresponding to the denoting phrase "the King of England" and that corresponding to the proper name "? the King of England ?" would be the same de- noting concept. Then forgetting, what Russell acknowledged in 1903, that in 'unusual' cases a proposition may be about one of its constituent denoting concepts rather than about what that

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