Frege's permutation argument revisited (Q813414): Difference between revisions

Frege's \textit{Basic Laws of Arithmetic} contains a controversial argument, known as the permutation argument, relating Frege's value-ranges to his truth values, the True and the False. Wehmeier and Schroeder-Heister consider two reconstructions of this argument, which they dub the metalogical reading and the mathematical reading. The metalogical reading takes the permutation in Frege's argument to depend on reinterpreting the symbols of his language, while the mathematical approach views the permutation as applied to the objects of some domain. The authors attack the metalogical reading based on the assumption that an adequate interpretation of the argument should make it valid, or at least not obviously invalid, when considered in ``a reasonable consistent reconstruction of the original Fregean setting''. The mathematical reading is then defended by considering just such a setting, namely the language \(L_W\) previously articulated and discussed by \textit{K. F. Wehmeier} [Synthese 121, 309--328 (1999; Zbl 0952.03068)] and by \textit{F. Ferreira} nad \textit{K. F. Wehmeier} [J. Philos. Log. 31, 301--311 (2002; Zbl 1012.03059)].