scientific article; zbMATH DE number 1257635

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This book deals with Frege's context principle, i.e. (in one of its various formulations) the principle that words have meaning only in the context of a sentence [\textit{G. Frege}, Grundlagen der Arithmetik, Koebner, Breslau, {\S} 60 (1884)]. The author focuses on its relevance for Frege's ontology and philosophy of language, claiming that these domains form the cornerstones of Frege's theory (p.\ 14). She shares Michael Dummett's methodological approach to Frege's work as presented, e.g., in \textit{M. Dummett}'s ``Frege: Philosophy of language [Duckworth, London (1973)] and other works. This approach is characterized as follows (pp.\ 17-18): Dummett transfers Frege's work into the language and conceptions of modern analytical philosophy of language. He is not really interested in the question what Frege could have meant, but what can be done with his theory. He starts with thoughts of Frege and elaborates them in Frege's spirit, giving them sometimes a form which is more coherent. One could wonder whether this approach is really the best for understanding Frege, as the author claims, or rather the best for understanding some theory historically originating in Frege (p.\ 21). The author starts from Dummett's interpretation, especially taking over his idea to split the context principle into a thesis on sense and a thesis on meaning. In the first two chapters the author discusses these two versions of the context principle. Chapter 3 on ``Contextualism and abstract objects deals with Frege's position concerning mathematical ontology as presented especially in his ``Grundlagen der Arithmetik. In chapter 4 she gives a solution to Frege's ``conceptual paradox according to which the concept horse is no concept. The book closes with a detailed examination of \textit{Crispin Wright}'s book ``Frege's conception of numbers as objects (1983; Zbl 0524.03005) as far as the context principle is concerned.











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