Force, Content and the Unity of the Proposition

Gabriele M. Mras, Michael Schmitz, Gabriele M. Mras, Michael Schmitz

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000517330
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Language in Philosophy

This volume advances discussion between critics and defenders of the force-content distinction and opens up new ways of thinking about force and speech acts in relation to the unity problem.

The force-content dichotomy has shaped the philosophy of language and mind since the time of Frege and Russell. Isn't it obvious that, for example, the clauses of a conditional are not asserted and must therefore be propositions and propositions the forceless contents of forceful acts? But, others have recently asked in response, how can a proposition be a truth value bearer if it is not unified through the forceful act of a subject that takes a position regarding how things are? Can we not instead think of propositions as being inherently forceful, but of force as being cancelled in certain contexts? And what do assertoric, but also directive and interrogative force indicators mean?

Force, Content and the Unity of the Proposition will be of interest to researchers working in philosophy of language, philosophical logic, philosophy of mind and linguistics.

Part I Force and Unity

1 Force and Content

Charles Travis

DOI: 10.4324/9781003105152-2

When someone acknowledges something as true, he thus judges. … Where there is judging one can always separate out the thought acknowledged as true, and the judging does not belong to this.

(Frege 1915: 271)

1.0 Introduction

Where there is an instance of holding true, there is that which is held true; that which is the truth if truth there is, or falsehood if there is not. An identifiable, countable that-which. And being held true is not part of being it. Where content is something one might hold true, force is not part of that whose content it is. Anyway, thus Frege.

In recent times, some have seen fit to reject this idea, some to serve linguistic theory, some to limn self-consciousness. Peter Hanks is of the first kind, Sebastian Rödl’s of the second. Both attempts misfire for related reasons. They unite in failing to see what Frege was about. In search of his appointed target, Frege’s first move was to extract the logical from the psychological: being true (Wahrsein) from holding true (Fürwahrhalten), and to hold these firmly apart. Hanks and Rödl are among the many failing to appreciate the abstraction’s point.

Hanks makes extensive use, Rödl less extensive, of a notorious philosophical waffle word, “proposition”, a standard translation of the still more labile German “Satz”. The principal waffle here is between objects of thought, truth-or-falsehoods, and sentences, or their occurrences in a mouth. The two things are not to be conflated. To appreciate Frege’s abstraction of the logical from the psychological, it is crucial to keep in mind that language is not Frege’s topic. Here are some disclaimers:

I am not in the happy position of a mineralogist who shows his audience a mountain crystal. I cannot place a thought in my reader’s hand with the request for him to consider it exactly from all sides. I must be satisfied to offer the reader the non-perceivable thought clothed in sensory linguistic form.

(Frege 1918: 66fn)

Language may appear to offer a way out; for on the one hand its sentences are perceivable by the senses, and on the other they express thoughts. … [But] such use of language requires caution. We must not overlook the deep cleft which separates the domain of the linguistic and that of the thinkable, and definite limits must be set to the mutual correspondence of both these domains.

(Frege 1923: 279)

Frege’s occasional remarks on language are officially just kibbitzing. Some could appear as grist for Hanks’s mill, fairly enough just so long as Hanks’s business is language. For example,

It is in the form of an assertive sentence that we express our acknowledgement of truth. … assertive force really lies … in the form of the assertive sentence.

(Frege 1918: 63)

Linguistically, assertive force attaches to the predicate.

(Frege 1915: 272)

If you want to assert something, a declarative sentence (senza adorno) is something dedicated to gratifying such wishes.

But, just as language is not Frege’s official business, the (first) business of language (langue) is not being true. Language provides means of thought-expression and aids to making recognizable what thought is thus expressed. Whereas the parties whose first business is being true are things there are to be expressed. In the business of being true, langue could at best but dabble on the side. Nor is reason apparent why it should. Kibbitzer (pottekijker) though he be, Frege might well look kindly on a view that assertive force is part of a sentence’s content or semantics. The form of a declarative sentence is, per se, in the sense just gestured at, for making the presence of assertive force recognizable. So, linking to assertive force might well be reckoned part of its meaning what it does. Plausible to a pottekijker. But orthogonal to Frege’s official topic, which is the (law-like) behavior of Gedanken, just that by which truth can come into question at all.

The interest of Hanks’s attack on the force-content distinction lies largely in what it shows of the gulf between language’s work and the business of being true. As for Rödl, I think the lesson will be that those formed by a Kantian Bildung may be wont to start from questions which, from a Fregean perspective, are inept. Frege thus contrasts with Kant in a vision of how philosophy may fruitfully be pursued. Precisely because it is so rarely pursued Frege’s way, the present illustration is worthwhile.

1.1 Truth-Transmission

Newton’s laws of motion do not mention colors. Such reflects no ontological qualms. It is just that the color of an object is not a party to the law-like behavior of moving bodies. What might the law-like players be in the business of being true?

For Frege, the relevant laws concern truth-transmission. They govern when a transition from a set of truth-or-falsehoods to a given such item would be such that were all in the set true, then so, too, that given item where this would be so merely by virtue of what being true was as such. Like Newton, Frege’s first task was to identify the participants in this particular domain of law-likeness. His first move on the path thereto – not his last – was to abstract the business of being true from any truck with it by thinkers. A plausible step insofar as, plausibly, there are not two different things to be thought merely by their being thought by different thinkers. Nor could whether a given truth-or-falsehood is true depend on who is thinking it. But what serves the needs of theory construction is ultimately judged by its outcome.

The principal protagonist within Frege’s abstraction is what he called “the thought” (“der Gedanke”). Its principal feature was to be that it was a truth-or-falsehood: not only was it liable (or perhaps, condemned) to be either true or false, but where true, it would be the relevant truth or falsehood. If I say, “Some mushrooms are sometimes edible”, perhaps I have spoken truth. In which case, we may speak of my words as ones “true as any”. But my words are not the truth I spoke. That truth is that some mushrooms are sometimes edible.

So for Frege, a thought is whatever raises some given yes-no question, “True?”. A given thought is to be distinguished from any other only by features which make a difference to how the way things are (the world) is to matter to its truth. So just as, in Newtonian mechanics, the momentum of a body cannot be blue, so, too, in the theory Frege aims at, a Gedanke cannot be blue. Nor can it have a spatial or temporal location or trajectory. So much for deixis. Nor can it be so-and-so’s thought. The proof of all this pudding (if any) is in the laws which govern what is thus conceived.

Representing-as (one of many things of which “represent” may speak) is what makes room for there being such a thing as truth. (The favor is reciprocated.) What is distinctive of representing of this sort is the possibility of representing what is not. Sid need not be eloquent for one to represent him as so being, though if not, no success of his entreaties can represent his so being. Here, then, things may be or not as represented, making room for Aristotle’s platitudes.

A thought engages in representing-as. It represents things as some way for things to be. But not in the same aspect of the verb as that in which Pia might represent Sid as dapper. For, unlike Pia or her words, the Gedanke’s whole business is to be true or not. If Pia told Zoë that Sid was dapper, Zoë’s now seeing him may make Pia blush. Dapper indeed! A Gedanke cannot, but need not, blush. It has no views, cannot represent itself as with any, cannot commit, nor be authoritative as to how things are. A light switch turns on a light, in (roughly) the aspect in which to do so is, by design, so to work: to make the light go on when switched. A Gedanke represents in (roughly) like aspect: it is what is expressed when someone so represents things.

Thus this work’s epigraph. Wherever there is truth or falsehood, that which is either true or false, i.e., the relevant truth or falsity, is always detachable from any force (in particular assertive force) which may attach to some particular expression of it. The notion Gedanke presupposes this. It identifies, and is identified by, a particular yes-no question, “True?”. For it to be the Gedanke it is is precisely for the world (the way things are) to matter to its truth as it does. What is intrinsic to the thought is making the world so matter. A Gedanke interacts with assertive force just in that it may be thus-forcefully expressed. Asserting – committing – is a thinker’s prerogative. Only a thinker could be authoritative. A thought identifies one possible countable object of such authority.

By its relation to assertion, a Gedanke contrasts with utterances (words in a mouth). For any utterance its utterer. Where the utterer asserts, the utterance may carry assertive force. It is to be understood as making (or expressing) its utterer’s commitment to something. A Gedanke is an answer to the question, “To what?”. An utterance has an owner; a Gedanke is owner-free. So it cannot relate to assertive force as does an utterance. Nor does a Gedanke bear understandings, as might an utterance. Exactly not. It is one determinate question of truth. It does not split into different ones on different understandings. Nor can it be understood as carrying so and so’s assertive force.

Could it be intrinsic to some Gedanken that they cannot be expressed without assertive force? Such is one way of quantifying a problem away – though il-advisedly. For whether a Gedanke is a given such one thus comes to depend, not just on some proprietary way for truth to turn on how things are, but also on something intrinsic to that Gedanke’s expressions. The Gedanke that Sid breakfasts on Kipferlkoch makes truth turn on whether Sid breakfasts on Kipferlkoch. The Gedanke that nitrogen is lighter than oxygen makes truth turn on whether nitrogen is lighter than oxygen. Such being asserted is not a way for the way things are to matter to whether it is so. How could this matter? How could it be one thing for nitrogen to be lighter than oxygen if someone said so, another thing if no one ever did? (If no one ever did what?)

In 1884, Frege spoke of “judgeable contents” (“beurteilbare Inhalte”) rather than Gedanken. In 1892 (vide Frege 1892: 198), he explained the shift to “Gedanke” (in part) thus: before he had reckoned a truth value as part of what was judgeable. By 1892, he had appreciated his mistake. Suppose a thinkable is identified just by how it represents things – e.g., as such that fish fly. Such identifies how the thinkable makes the world (the way things are) matter to truth. We may then take its truth to consist in things being as represented – such that fish fly. Suppose, however, that we take a truth value to be part of what identifies a thinkable as the one it is. So, if we are speaking of a thought that fish fly, it remains to be said whether we are speaking of a true such one, or a false such – two different possible thinkables. Suppose we ask when such a thinkable would be true. The answer cannot be, e.g., “just in case fish fly”, nor by citing any other way the world must be if things are to be as represented. For then it would remain to distinguish between the True and the False thinkable which so represented, and then to say of each on what its truth turned. With which the idea of truth itself goes missing.

Mutatis mutandis (vide Frege 1893) when content is collapsed with force – unsurprisingly given the close connection Frege notes between truth and assertive force (cf. Frege 1915: 271–272). Being held true (what a Gedanke cannot do) is not to be confused with being true. To hold something true is to commit to something. There is then the question “To what?” And it will not do for an answer if part of being what is thus identified is, intrinsically, being so committed to. (The question would remain to what.) In any case, Frege abstracts as he does here, first of all, in the service of locating law-likeness. What successfully so serves is validated by its results. Here at least Frege’s are beyond dispute.

1.2 Gedanken and Sätze

On the one hand, Peter Hanks is a theorist of language. On the other, he puts a particular spin on Frege’s project. In the first capacity, Hanks has proposals to which Frege and I, though only kibbitzers, might well be sympathetic. On the other, he misrepresents Frege dramatically.

As I read him, Hanks proposes a form for a theory of the semantics of natural language to take. It has two parts. First, the theory would generate a stock of potential sentence-“meanings” (or contents). Second, it would assign each sentence in its target language one or more items from this stock (the number depending on the polysemy of the sentence). The idea would be: for each sentence in the target language, a sentence of a language would be assigned what the theory assigns this one just in case what it meant, or how to be understood in its language was what this one means, or is to be understood in its. Alternatively, one might say: just in case any expression to which such was assignable would be for just what this sentence is. The stock of assignable meanings would have to be rich enough to mark all the distinctions thus to be drawn. Two sentences, each of a language, should get different assignments from the stock just in case they differ in what each, in its, is to be taken to be for doing, e.g., speaking of.

What is most distinctive in Hanks’s approach, so far as I can see, is the nature of the items in that generated stock – things there are for a sentence to mean (to speak a bit loosely). As Hanks conceives these, each would be a perhaps nested n-tuple of items, each (atomic) n-tuple formed out of (a Vertreter for), inter alia, a force-operator or a predicable. Each well-formed item in the stock is to begin with a force indicator. Hanks hypothesizes that precisely three will be needed: assertive, interrogative, imperative. For present purpose such is Nebensache.

Technical details remain to be ironed out. But Frege and I leave these to those who do this for a living. Anyway, the approach captures Frege’s intuition that the linguistic form of an assertion is the Behauptungssatz; something we are both prepared to reckon part of a sentence’s meaning what it does.

In several recent articles, though, Hanks introduces his version of generative semantics by contrasting it with what he takes to be a Fregean approach (to something). In one recent essay, for example, he writes:

It [the Fregean conception] is best viewed as a framework for thinking about propositional content and its relation to thought and language. The basic commitment of this framework is to a realm of objective, mind and language independent entities that are the primary or original bearers of truth conditions. Other things that have truth conditions, such as beliefs, assertions, and sentences, derive their truth conditions from propositions. To form an attitude or perform a speech act you must take hold of a proposition by entertaining it, and then you take an attitude toward it, or you put it forward with a certain illocutionary force. The satisfaction conditions of the resulting attitude or speech act are a function of the truth conditions of the proposition you entertained.

(Hanks 2017: 236)

One familiar with Frege will be struck by Hanks’s rather purple vocabulary: “primary”, “original”, “derive”, “must take hold of”. If such is meant to be Frege, his non-waffly “Gedanke” should be substituted here for the very waffly “proposition”. Gedanken are, of course, objective and independent of mind and language. Each, that...