KAREN GREEN

A PINCH OF SALT FOR FREGE

ABSTRACT. Michael Dummett has argued that a formal semantics for our language is inadequate unless it can be shown to illuminate to our actual practice of speaking and understanding. This paper argues that Freges account of the semantics of predicate expressions according to which the reference of a predicate is a concept (a function from objects to truth values) has exactly the required characteristics. The rst part of the paper develops a model for understanding the distinction between objects and concepts as an ontological distinction. It argues that, ontologically, we can take a Fregean function to be generated by a property detection device that can register for any object the presence or absence of that property. This provides a direct connection between the semantics of sentences and the structure of perceptual judgment. The second part of the paper deals with arguments that have been mounted against the coherence of Freges semantics. It argues that some of these are question begging, while others are correct in so far as Freges claim is untenable if we assume that the syntactic categories singular term and predicate are primary, and the ontological categories are simply projections of these syntactic categories. However, the objections dissipate once we recognize that an independent ontological characterization of the distinction is available.

1. INTRODUCTION

Frege argued that the reference of a rst level predicate expression is a kind of function, a mapping from objects to truth-values, and he called such functions, concepts. He also thought that, characteristically, expressions that are syntactically singular terms refer to objects (if they refer at all). He spoke of both objects and the singular terms that refer to them as selbstandig or saturated, and likewise suggested that both predicate expressions and the functions they refer to are unsaturated. In the case of predicate expressions, being unsaturated appears to be a syntactic property. An expression is unsaturated if it contains one or more gaps which need to be completed by a singular term or quantier in order to form a sentence. Frege has therefore been read as providing a linguistic and syntactic criterion for the dierence between objects and concepts; whatever is referred to by a singular term is an object, whatever is referred to by a predicate is a concept.1 He also gives us an implicit
Synthese (2006) 150: 209228 DOI 10.1007/s11229-004-6260-0 Springer 2006

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ontological criterion; objects and concepts are two dierent kinds of entity, one saturated the other unsaturated. The conjunction of these two views led Frege to paradoxically claim that, The concept horse is not a concept. For many this paradox has been enough to show that his idea that a predicate refers to a concept a kind of function and an unsaturated entity is hopeless. At a minimum the paradox seems to show that Freges view is inexpressible. For, any attempt to say, Concepts are unsaturated, apparently involves quantication over objects, and so misses its target. In this paper I shall argue that, despite these apparent diculties, if we want a semantics for our language which is part of an explanation of what it is to use and understand that language, Freges initially strange idea has much to oer. It is not the doctrine that predicates refer to concepts which should be jettisoned, but the other half of the problematic conjunction of views, the idea that there can be a purely syntactic criterion for when we are dealing with an expression that refers to an object, when we are dealing with a logical predicate. Freges ontological distinction between objects and functions is related to another, often disregarded, puzzling feature of his philosophy; the fact that he thinks of predicates as referring expressions and so applies the sense/reference distinction to them as well as to singular terms.2 Recently Crispin Wright has argued that Frege erred in supposing he could usefully or even coherently extend to predicates and other forms of incomplete expression the distinction between sense and reference which he drew for singular terms (Wright 1998, p. 241). It is my view that this conclusion is regrettable. There are, in fact, good reasons for maintaining a distinction between concepts, thought of as the referents of predicate expressions, and senses. In this paper I hope to make good this claim and illuminate how, on a Fregean model, one should understand the senses of predicate expressions. At the end of his paper, in which he oers a reformed Fregeanism, Wright says that on his account; we remain free to treat the syntactic categories, singular term and predicate, as primary in the order of explanation and the ontological categories, object and concept/property, as derivative (Wright 1998, p. 263). On the account oered in this paper we no longer have this freedom. The ontological categories are primary, and this, I will argue, is more faithful to Frege than Wrights reading.3 In the rst part of the paper, I develop a simple model through which to understand the basic idea that the referents of predicate expressions are functions. In the second

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part, I use this model to defend Freges doctrine against a raft of objections.
2. A MODEL FOR THE UNSATURATEDNESS OF THE REFERENTS OF PREDICATE EXPRESSIONS

In order to grasp the model for understanding the proposal that predicates refer, and refer to functions, rst imagine a simple device that makes judgments and records them. We will call it a property detection device. The device is able to move across a two dimensional plane. The property detected by it could be any power that has detectable eects; the presence of a chemical, or light waves of a certain frequency, temperature, or any other physically detectable property capable of causing a reaction in a detector (i.e., having an identiable eect on it). The detector also comes with some means of identifying locations in the space through which it travels. Most simply the space is divided into a grid, with each place identied by Cartesian co-ordinates; one position plays the role of the origin, and the detector can tell where it is in the space. Such a property detection device generates a function from the positions in the space to its own states. It will go into the positive detection state when it is at a place where the property is detected, and a negative state when it is in a place where the property is not detected. Although its level of judgment is very simple, we can think of it as making judgments concerning the location of property instances. An agent could use such a property detection device in order to answer the question, Is property F detectable at place (a,b)? The detection device generates a function from places to answers; yes and no. It maps places to these values. This gives us a way of understanding Freges early claim that we can use the function/argument analysis familiar from mathematics to decompose judgeable-contents, and see how a modication of this early thought results in the doctrine that concepts are functions from objects onto the values true and false. Such a detection device is like a simple perceptual mechanism, but a mechanism like this is not very interesting unless it has a memory. One form of memory would be isomorphic to the space traveled through and hence similar to a picture or map. A positive detection could cause a mark to be made on a small-scale grid, divided up into spaces, which correspond to the areas of the space through which the detector travels. A single map would not be able to record dierent values for dierent times, but the device could have lots of

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co-ordinated maps, each corresponding to the recordings made during a period of time. Such a method of recording could also be used for registering the readings of many dierent property detection devices. A memory of this kind would be very useful, for if the recordings in the memory could themselves be surveyed, all sorts of information not available to a simple property detecting device would become accessible. For instance, co-relations between the detection of a property at one place and time and the detection of another property at a later time or at a neighboring place might be discovered. However, the memory map that registers only positive readings, such as I have described, has its limitations. It does not record the difference between places that have not been visited and those that have been visited, but for which a negative response has been recorded. Perhaps this dierence could be recorded in the map-like memory that we are imagining. Indeed, our own perceptual memory dierentiates between places we have not visited and places we remember visiting. At the same time, another form of memory suggests itself which could solve this problem and which would allow easy transfer of information from one detection device to another. Each place could be provided with a name, the symbol specifying its Cartesian coordinates will do, and then we can list the results for a particular property detection device by putting the positive results in one box, and the negative ones in another. Alternatively we could list the results like this; ((1,1) F) yes, ((1,2) F) yes ((1,3) F) no, etc. If a reading is noted in the list, the place has been visited, if not, not. A time designation could be added, perhaps as another coordinate. And, should we have a number of dierent property detection devices, we could indicate the dierent properties detected with dierent letters or longer signs. It should be clear that our own perceptual judgment is much more complex, yet not fundamentally too dierent in structure, from this simplistically described system. Among the objects we interact with are more than mere regions of space, but regions of space are among the objects which we can judge to be blue, red, smelly, hot, etc. Our perceptual apparatus does generate a function from objects to judgments. And our simple declarative sentences do, among other things, record the results of these judgements. We answer questions such as, The stove, hot? with yes or no, but we usually record such judgments by simply saying, The stove is hot, or It is true that the stove is hot. So, another way to list the readings recorded by our device would be to replace yes and no with is true and is

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false giving us, ((1,1) F) is true, ((1,3) F) is false, etc. Then we can think of our function as mapping places, not to the judgements yes and no, but to the two values true and false. Language, at its most basic, records and conveys the results of perceptual judgements. Of course it does much more than this, but it does at least this. So in this sense our simple model captures a basic feature of language. Yet, it still leaves open the question of whether, in our simplied language, we should interpret the F as referring to the function generated by the F detection device. Since I have spoken of a property detection device that generates a function, why not interpret the F as referring to the property instance, the trope, which sets o the positive reaction? This has indeed been one popular and plausible account of what predicates refer to. But if we go this way, what does the F indicate in the item ((1,3) F) is false? There is no instance of the property F at (1,3), so F will stand for nothing. What we understand this mark as telling us, in this string, is that this property is not detected at this place. If we think of the F as referring to the function generated by a particular kind of property detection device we will not face the problem faced by the trope theory, since the function is the same in the case of either a positive or negative detection. Frege thought that every part of a semantically well-formed expression should have a semantic value. Given this desideratum, the function suggests itself as the referent, for it remains constant in the record of both negative and positive judgement. One might question the semantic principle Frege adheres to, but if it is accepted, we will need to interpret our F as referring to or indicating something even in cases of non-attribution, and what better is oering than the function? Another popular understanding of the semantic contents of predicate expressions has been to think of the F as indicating, not a physical property instance, but the presence of the positive aect that this property makes in the detection device. This is one reading of the Lockean idea that predicates refer to ideas in the mind. But once again, in the negative cases F, will refer to nothing, since there will be no positive eect on the detection device. Also, since dierent mechanisms that produce the same pattern of positive responses may do so by registering dierent aects we would not be able to tell simply from the responses of two detection devices that their F has the same reference. One old theory would have F pick out a universal, a peculiar kind of object that all the positive readings are said to participate in.

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Since, no such entity is to be found in our model, this theory really does not require serious consideration. At most it captures the intuition that F should be thought of as having the same semantic value in the various sentences in which it occurs, an intuition not captured by the theory according to which each F picks out a particular property instance. A more common view in the 20th century has been that F indicates merely the set of places that register a positive reading. This set will change as the devices exploration of its space changes. However, F ought to have the same meaning over time (this was what was right in the theory of universals). I conclude that a highly plausible interpretation of what is indicated by the F in our simple language, designed to register the perceptual judgments of our simple device, is to see it as indicating the function generated by the property detection device. This way of understanding what predicates refer to seems simple and easy to understand. Yet some philosophers are so convinced that objects are the only respectable entities, that they nd all talk of functions obscure. These philosophers want to replace functions with sets of ordered pairs. Viewed as sets of ordered pairs, the functions (2n + n) and (5n ) 2n) are indistinguishable. It is because the values are generated in dierent ways that it can be informative (at least for an arithmetical novice) that 2n+n = 5n ) 2n. This dierence is captured in the functional notation in a way that it is not in the trivial {h1,3i, h2,6i, h3,9i } = {h1,3i, h2,6i, h3,9i }. So the functional character of the notation, which indicates the method used for generating the values of the function, contributes an important part of what is conveyed. The function is just a mapping, but the way the mapping is generated is also conveyed by the functional expression and this fact will provide us with a basis for understanding what Frege intended when he spoke of the sense of a functional expression.4 Mappings, which express methods of generating values from given values are something mathematicians rely on and talk about all the time. Frege, being a mathematician thought that we should recognize them as part of our ontology. Once they are recognized in the mathematical case their use to characterize the way the recognition of a property can generate a judgment is a small step. This way of thinking of the referents of predicate expressions has some highly benecial spin-os. If we construct a mermaid detector that searches the seas for mermaids and sends us back thousands of readings of the form x is not a mermaid (or, to stick with our former simple language ((n, mermaid) is false) where n is a place

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holder for a singular term), there will be no mystery as to what a mermaid refers to. It will be one way of referring to that function that takes every object to the false. And once the idea that predicates refer to functions is adopted, it can be extended to more abstract cases that are highly puzzling to those who think that reference it always to some concrete particular. Three is prime can be seen to share the functional structure of The stove is hot even though the recognition of an instance of primeness goes by way of denition and proof, not by way of causal interaction with a spatially located instance of heat. The model also provides the possibility of explaining how we can understand an analogue of identity for properties, and grasp the distinction between the sense and reference for predicate expressions. For each particular device, constructed in a particular way to respond to its environment, the function it generates will be given to us in a particular way, as the function generated by the F detection device. Here F could be salt, acid, or lemon juice. The same function could however, be given to us in a dierent way, as when property detection devices of dierent kinds generate the same function. So, in a particular space, the detector which detects acid could generate the same function as the detector that detects lemon juice, given that all and only acidic places are places where there is lemon juice. Suppose that we have two dierently constructed detection devices, A and L, which generate the same mapping. Because the way in which the mapping is generated is indicated, something interesting will be discovered when it turns out that these two dierently constructed devices come up with the same judgement with regard to each of the places in our space. Thus the concept of the unsaturatedness of functions lends itself to be developed into Freges notion of sense. This model provides us with an ontological characterization of the idea that concepts are unsaturated. What F stands for is not trope (a property instance) nor is it a set (that collection of places which have actually delivered a positive reading to the detection device). Rather it is the open ended function from objects onto the judgments yes and no which will deliver verdicts for positions not yet visited, and which could have delivered a verdict for positions missed. However, in our language (our device for registering the verdicts of the property detection device) we will have to be careful to distinguish the marks that are associated with places from those that are associated with functions. A nice way of doing this would be to associate the objects with names, and then to provide an expression which is

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itself a function from names to something else, to stand for the function generated by a property detection device. Frege thought of is F as just such a function. Syntactically is F is an incomplete expression that needs to be lled with a name in order to get a sentence. So, is a philodendron completed by an expression that picks out an object such as the ower on my desk results in a sentence that expresses the judgement; The ower on my desk is a philodendron. We will see below that things are not quite as neat as this, the unsaturatedness of natural language predicates cannot be so simply mapped onto the unsaturatedness of the functions we have been considering. This does not detract from the importance of Freges basic claim that functions exist, and that this needs to be recognised if we are not to misrepresent the logical form of sentences. In a letter to Russell, Frege describes the relationship between functions and function names in very much the way outlined; To use a function sign in isolation is to contradict the nature of a function, which consists in its unsaturatedness. For this is how a function diers from an object. This is also why function names must dier essentially from proper names, the dierence being that they carry with them at least one empty place an argument place (Frege 1980, p. 161). Here it is clear that Frege is going from the ontological nature of a function (which is to be unsaturated) to the need for a language in which function names mirror this unsaturatedness by having empty argument places. In this passage Frege is clearly specifying a desideratum for the syntax of an ideal language, based on some prior understanding of the unsaturatedness of functions. He is not deriving the unsaturatedness of functions from the incompleteness of predicates. Indeed, there are general reasons for expecting that Frege would be disinclined to move from the syntax of natural language to ontology. One of his major insights is that the syntax of natural language can be misleading with regard to logical form.5 Since Frege took logic to encompass the laws of truth, and so in some sense the laws of being, we can take this as indicating a general resistance to deriving ontology from syntax. Rather his theory that the subject/predicate syntax of ordinary language is misleading, and should be replaced in a logical language by a syntax that recognises signs for arguments and signs that indicate functions which carry with them at least one empty place, encompasses a refusal to take every apparent singular term at face value. The rose is a ower and The President is a philanderer have the same surface syntactic form. But Frege wants

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to distinguish their logical form. The rst is a case of the subsumption of one concept under another. It involves reference to two concepts, and says that anything which is a rose is a ower. The second refers to an object and says of it that it falls under the concept philanderer. That is, this object is mapped to the true by the function associated with a means of determining whether or not a thing is a philanderer (Frege 1979, p. 18). In an ideal language syntax would be a guide to logical form, but there is little reason to expect Frege to think that syntax is generally a reliable guide. Before looking at the diculties that have been raised for Freges theory, it is worth mentioning two earlier letters to Russell in which Frege outlines a response to the inadequacy of natural language for expressing the unsaturatedness of functions later developed in detail by Dummett. In a letter dated 29th June 1902, he notes that, A is a function is always imprecise, the concept of a function must be a second level concept, whereas in language it always appears as a rst level concept In a conceptual notation, we can introduce a precise expression for what we mean when we call something a function (Frege 1980, p. 136). He also suggests that instead of the imprecise n is a function we can, even in natural language, say; ( ).3 +4 is a function name. Three months later, on 28th September, he may seem to doubt even this, for there he says that we already turn what is incomplete into something complete when we say the meaning of is a square number He goes on; Yet the words is a square number are not meaningless. The analysis of the proposition (Satz) corresponds to an analysis of the thought and this in turn to something in the realm of meanings, and I should like to call this a primitive logical fact (Frege 1980, p. 142). The next month he claries what he means by a proposition by saying that it is a group of audible or visible signs expressing a thought (Frege 1980, p. 149).

3. DIFFICULTIES FOR FREGES DOCTRINE

Frege admits that there are features of natural language which make his doctrine dicult to express. Other commentators have concluded that these are not incidental diculties. Predicates, they say, simply do not refer. Predicates describe, express or ascribe, but they are not referring expressions. A sentence is not a list of names. In a sentence the predicate is used to ascribe a property to an object, not to name a property, function or anything else. I will call this the list objection

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to the Fregean view that predicates refer to a kind of function. If one thinks that the relation of referring can only obtain between an expression and an object, Frege would agree with this objection. But Frege also thinks that there is enough similarity between the relationship that obtains between a name and the object it names, and the relationship that obtains between a predicate and the function it indicates to justify using the term bedeuten in both cases. It could be helpful to translate Freges bedeuten as to indicate so as to avoid the mistaken impression that to say that predicates refer to concepts implies treating concepts as objects and so treating the sentence as a list of names of objects. Those who, instead of talking about reference as the relationship that obtains between a predicate and a function, and who use instead the term naming are inclined to beg the question against Frege from the start. Since a name is the sort of expression that refers to an object, if it refers at all, predicates are not names. Quine, for instance says:
Instead of seeing F steadfastly as standing in place of an unspecied predicate, our confused logician sees it half the time as naming an unspecied predicate. Thus F gains noun status, enabling him to read Fx as x has F without oending his grammatical ear....Predicates have attributes as their intensions or meanings (or would have if there were attributes) and they have sets as their extensions but they are names of neither. Variables eligible for quantication therefore do not belong in predicate positions. They belong in name positions (Quine 1970, pp. 6667).

This passage simply refuses to acknowledge the possibility that, although predicates are not names of objects, nor for that matter, names of predicates, they nevertheless refer to concepts, which are functions. Functions, Frege thought, have the right kind of unsaturatedness for expressions referring to them to result in sentences that indicate truth-values when those predicates are completed, either with an expression that indicates an object, or with a quantier. I also diagnose behind Quines comment a tendency to confuse senses and concepts that is the legacy of Carnaps introduction of the notion of intension. According to Frege, neither a name, nor a predicate, nor a sentence, refers to its sense. Names, predicates, and sentences express their senses, which are ways of being given their referents, but they do not refer to them. Names refer to (indicate) objects, predicates refer to (indicate) concepts, which are functions, and sentences refer to (indicate) truth-values. Once one uses the ambiguous term intension to do duty for Freges concepts and

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senses, the truth that a predicate expresses, and does not refer to, its sense (except in opaque contexts) is transformed into the unjustied claim that it does not indicate a function from objects to truth values. And yet, as our simplied model shows, this is a perfectly coherent way of understanding what is indicated by the F in our simplied language, and so, by extension, what is indicated by simple predicates in natural language. Another response to the list objection suggests itself. According to the interpretation of Frege oered here, rst level predicates are functions from names to sentences, rst level concepts are functions from objects to truth-values. Sometimes one can, grammatically, simply list a name and a predicate, indicating an object and a function, as one does in some questions; Mary, dead? or James, a thief ? So some sentences are lists. But in an assertoric sentence one will move from the question, Mary, dead? to the judgment Mary is dead. Predication in natural language, is closely allied to assertion.6 On this way of thinking of the matter, the thought would involve something like a list, an expression referring to an object and another referring to the function generated by a particular property detector. The copula is would express the element of positive judgement captured in our simple model rst by putting the list in the Yes box, later by appending is true. An assertion would register a commitment to a positive value being reached by any such property detector, a denial, a negative value. So sentences would in fact incorporate a special kind of list.7 A problem for this way of thinking is that, although predication is closely allied to assertion, it is not a reliable guide to it. Consider that, Imagine that, It is not true that, negate the assertoric function of the copula. In compound sentences as well, such as; If James is a thief he is worse than the president, is no longer indicates assertion. In these cases is, which Frege represents as part of the predicate when he characterizes the predicate as unsaturated, is required for any syntactically well-formed sentence. Moreover, even a complete sentence is not always the expression of a judgement. Freges troubles, I will argue, derive from the fact that because of the dual function of is, syntactic unsaturatedness does not match up well with ontological unsaturatedness. In the rest of this paper, I hope to show that this is not a reason to give up on the idea that predicate expressions should be interpreted as referring to the functions generated by property detection devices. It is merely a reason for being

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more careful about the relationship between the syntax and semantics of natural language than Frege was, in this instance. A less question begging objection to Freges claim that the reference of a singular term is an object and the reference of a predicate is a function, concentrates on the paradoxical consequences of saying this. If every singular term refers to an object, then it appears that any attempt to say that something is a function will fall at. For since the expression the function which takes every number to its double is a singular term, it must refer to an object, and the sentence The function which takes every number to its double is a function will be false. But clearly the function which takes every number to its double is a function, so Freges semantics results in paradox. Frege is similarly forced to y in the face of common sense and claim that the concept horse is not a concept. In his letters to Russell, we saw that Frege suggested two strategies for dealing with this paradox. One was to reject expressions such as is a concept and is a function as ill-formed natural language expressions which would have to be paraphrased away in a logically adequate language. The other was to go meta-linguistic and to transform these troublesome predicates into expressions such as is a function name. We could interpret these suggestions as two halves of one suggestion, which would be that while a well-formed object language would not have predicates such as is a function and is a concept what we want to say in natural language can be expressed by moving to the meta-language. Instead of The function which takes every number to its double is a function we would have to say 2x indicates a function or What is indicated by 2x is a function. Instead of, The concept horse is a concept we would have to say, is a horse indicates a concept or What is indicated by is a horse is a concept.8 It has been recently argued that this meta-linguistic strategy cannot work. Joan Weiner, Crispin Wright and others have argued that since referring is a property of expressions which refer to objects, it cannot also be a property of expressions that refer to concepts (Weiner 1996, p. 272; Wright 1998, pp. 252256). The thought is something like this, if refers___ indicates a two place relation that holds between a sign and an object, it cannot also indicate a two place relation that holds between a sign and something that is not an object, say a function, concept or relation. To see this more clearly we could analyse the sentence John refers to John not as indicating a two place relation, but as containing a one place predicate John refers to which takes names of objects to yield sentences. John

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refers to is a horse is ungrammatical. So is is a horse refers to is a horse. Thus it appears that if being referred to is a rst level property of objects it cannot also be a second level property of concepts or functions. On one reading, this is just a more sophisticated version of the question-begging response that we discussed above. If we can make sense of the idea that some parts of speech indicate functions, while other parts of speech indicate objects (as I have argued by means of a simple model that we can) then refers to or indicates will have to be somewhat ambiguous; referring to two slightly dierent but analogous relations, one which holds between signs and objects the other which holds between signs and functions. At another level, this argument demands that we clarify the nature of this analogy. One could deal with this problem in a dierent way. Being referred to by John is not an intrinsic property of John. Referring is something that words do. Words are objects. Looked at from this perspective, the sentence John refers and the sentence Is a horse refers are equally well formed. Each (I contend) maps an object (a string of symbols) onto the true. When we look at reference as a property of signs we seem to be dealing with a single property. A sign has this property just in case there is an entity of the appropriate kind to which it refers. But when we look at reference as a relation between a sign and some other entity we see that refers must be subtly ambiguous and pick out a multi-level relation that can hold between both an object and a sign and a function and a sign. It might be objected that Frege could recognize no such multi-level relation. But since he implicitly appeals to just such relations when he attributes reference to both singular terms and predicates it appears he must do so. The surface syntax of natural language will make speaking of this kind of relation awkward. Syntax requires a singular term and a predicate. So The function expression 2x indicates a function looks as though it predicates a property of an object. On one way of reading it, it does do so, the function expression 2x names certain written marks (either a type or a token) and these marks do have the property of indicating a function. But, on another reading, the sentence is analogous to The name John indicates a person. Since the sentence says that 2x indicates a function we can take it that a function is being spoken about. Here, Frege will have to say that we cannot take surface grammar too seriously. The rose is a ower also looks as though it predicates a property of an object, as does Jones is a cheat. Yet Frege, notwithstanding his commitment to the view that

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singular terms refer to objects, reads The rose is a ower as really having the logical form, Anything which is a rose is a ower. As we saw, he says that to do otherwise is to confuse the logical relation of subsumption, that holds between concepts, with the relation of instantiation that holds between an object and a concept. So there is really nothing to stop him from saying in this other case that surface grammar is misleading and that in a properly regimented language the apparent rst level predicate in The function expression 2x indicates a function would be paraphrased away. So the meta-linguistic strategy that Frege indicates for dealing with his problem takes us back to the rst strategy. Michael Dummett has developed this strategy in some detail. He argues that in a regimented language the ill-formed The concept horse is a concept will be replaced by Everything either is or is not a horse. Going meta-linguistic, is a horse indicates a concept will be replaced by Everything is what is a horse indicates or it is not. (Dummett 1973, pp. 212217). But in the paper mentioned above Crispin Wright has argued that this will not work. One feature of Dummetts paraphrase that Wright dislikes is that it accepts Freges view that the only genuine concepts are functions which determinately map every object to either the true or the false. This is not however, a very serious objection since, once the paraphrase strategy is adopted it could easily be adapted by replacing Freges functions with partial or three valued functions (Blamey 1986).9 Another feature of Dummetts paraphrase is that he assumes with Frege that it is the expression is a horse that indicates the function. I have adopted the suggestion that it is a horse that eectively indicates the function and that is and is not record whether or not the named object is mapped to the true or the false by the property detector that generates the function. In what follows, therefore, I will appropriately adapt Wrights objections. Wrights more serious objection derives from what he takes to be the fundamental problem with any attempt to extend the notion of reference from singular terms to predicates. What he calls the Reference Principle says that, Co-referential expressions should be inter-substitutable salva veritate, at least in extensional contexts, and inter-substitutable salva congruitate in all (Wright 1998, p. 240). Applying this principle, if a horse refers to a concept, then any other expression which refers to that concept should be able to be substituted salva veritate for a horse in Phar Lap is a horse. I have claimed that a horse indicates the function from objects to

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truth-values generated by a horse detection device. The expression, the function from objects to truth-values generated by a horse detection device surely refers to this function. So, the sentence Phar Lap is the function from objects to truth-values generated by a horse detection device should be true, but it is not. Phar Lap is a horse, not a function. From the perspective we have been adopting in this paper a reply to this problem with Dummetts strategy emerges. Is can be read, on the account I have given, as elliptical for is mapped to the true by, if we remove the ellipsis we get the true, Phar Lap is mapped to the true by the function from objects to truth-values generated by a horse detection device. The reference principle will break down if one expression is replaced by another which co-refers, but which involves the addition of, or removal of, some ellipsis. Quine discussed the example Giorgione was so called because of his size. Although Giorgione refers to Barbarelli it is not true that Barbarelli was so called because of his size. In order to preserve truth in this case, we have to make explicit what was suppressed by the ellipsis in the rst sentence. The result is Barbarelli was called Giorgione because of his size (Quine 1963, pp. 140141). The case above is similar. a horse refers elliptically to the function from objects to truth values generated by a horse detection device. Having removed the ellipsis from this reference we need to remove the ellipsis from is as well. This strategy depends on retreating somewhat from Frege and on giving up the idea that the incompleteness of is a horse should be taken to show that this whole expression refers to a function. Phar Lap the function from objects to truth values generated by a horse detection device cannot be rehabilitated. An advantage of having begun with our simple model is that it had already forced us to recognise that, at least in simple asserted sentences, the is registers that for the object named a positive judgement is (or can be) made. So in natural language the unsaturatedness of the function is not mapped simply by the unsaturatedness of is F. This is in accord with Freges own logical language. In the Begrisschrift, the two elements combined in is F are separated. Function signs have an empty place to represent their unsaturatedness and there is a judgement stroke to indicate assertion (Frege 1879/1970, p. 11). It may well be objected that the account I have given is circular. If a horse indicates the function generated by a horse detection device, would not we have to give an account of what is referred to by

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the expression a horse detection device which will simply lead around in a circle? It is certainly true that in the sentence P is a horse detection device the expression a horse detection device will itself have to be thought of as indicating a function and one presumably that is generated by a horse detection device detection device. It is at this point, perhaps, that we may ask with Frege to be conceded a pinch of salt. Attempting to explain language within language we will have to pre-suppose an implicit grasp of the activity we are attempting to explain. The idea of the simple model with which I began is that we simply do have perceptual capacities that generate positive responses to some inputs. Language records these responses. The function picked out by a horse is the one generated by a detector sensitive to the presence of horses. But the F should not be taken to indicate the property instances, for the reasons given above. Thus, the notion of a function is derivative of the prior grasp of what it is to be sensitive to the presence of a property. We can think of this as a way of capturing Freges claim that he begins with judgements. It was because we wanted F to refer to the same entity in all its occurrences, and to refer even when the property is not detected that we took the function, rather than the property instance to be what is indicated by F. This way of thinking also accords with Freges assertion that he calls the concepts under which an object falls its properties (Frege 1979, p. 111). It helps too to explain his insistence that concepts are objective. If at least some of the functions are derived from sensitivity to properties that exist independently of us, we have an explanation of why Frege thinks of them as objective, and of how science can be conceived of as studying relations between concepts. Wright will argue that we are not yet out of the woods. He oers what looks like a powerful variant of the paradox in the form of the following argument: 1. The reference of a horse is a singular term. 2. Its reference, if any, is to an object. 3. The reference of The reference of a horse is the reference of a horse. 4. The reference of a horse is an object. I have slightly modied the argument in line with the claim made above that it is a horse which indicates the function, while is indicates that the object is mapped onto the true by the function. This makes no essential dierence to the argument, which, I claim, only seems to make a point against Frege if one confuses use and mention.

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To see this notice that in premise 1 there is a double use of quotation marks so two expressions are mentioned. In The reference of a horse, The reference of is followed by another phrase which is also in quotation marks. The reference of an expression in quotation marks is generally taken to be the string enclosed by the quote marks. Since, as required, the string of letters referred to by a horse is an object, and the expression the reference of a horse is a singular term referring to this object, premise 1 can be read as stating a truth. Here, we have mentioned a sign, not used it. However, this is obscured by the fact that the expression the reference of is a disquotational device. If one were to talk about the length of Phar Lap, one would clearly be speaking of the length of the sign Phar Lap, not the length of the horse called Phar Lap. However, if one speaks of the reference of Phar Lap, since the reference of this sign is the horse Phar Lap, one can use this phrase to speak of the horse. Given this feature, premise 1 becomes equivocal. On one reading of the sentence, we ignore the disquotational character of the reference of. Then, the reference of a horse has six letters makes good sense, and on this reading, the reference of a horse is a singular term that refers to the string with six letters. If, however, we read the reference of disquotationally, we will be talking about the syntactic category of the sign mentioned. Then premise 1 is false, for we will have to say that the reference of a horse is a predicate or functional expression. The reference of a horse is a singular term referring to a string which is not a singular term. Taking a further step of disquotation, the reference of a horse is whatever a horse refers to, and clearly this is not a singular term. We have surmised it is a function. If we consistently interpret the phrase the reference of a horse as a singular term referring to a sign, then the problem with the argument occurs at premise 3. The reference of a horse is a singular term referring to a string of letters, but the reference of the string of letters need not be (and in general will not be) the same as the reference of a term referring to that string. Premise 1 is true if the string is referred to, premise 3 is true if we read the reference of disquotationally. If we read the reference of disquotationally throughout, 1 is false, and 4 is not established. It is only by equivocating between referring to the sign in the rst premise, and reading the reference of disquotationally in 3 and 4 that the argument gets its purchase. So the power of this variant of the paradox reduces to the power of the use mention confusion, a powerful source of philosophical muddle.

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To conclude, what on my account happens to the ill formed, 2x is a function and 2x refers to a function? And what reading should we place on The concept horse is not a concept? To deal with the rst, we shall say that this is just a misleading way of saying, ($f) (x) (fx 2x). The second is slightly more tricky, but since refers to is a disquotational device we could take it to say no more than ($f) (x) (fx 2x). On the other hand, if the logical language was extended to include names of function expressions and a relation that can hold between expressions and functions we can express this as ($f) (x) ((fx 2x) & R (2x, fx)).10 The concept horse can be dealt with similarly, with one proviso. The natural language expression the concept horse tends to be used to refer to the ideas that we have of what it is to be a horse, or to the sense of the word horse. In these senses of concept there is nothing problematic about, The concept horse is a concept. Freges problem arises when we want to refer to a function using the concept horse. So, we should consider the expression the function referred to by a horse. Will we still be forced to say that The function referred to by a horse is not a function? Following Dummetts development of Freges suggestion, and the previous observations, The function referred to by a horse is a function can be expressed by, ($f) (x) (fx Horse x) & R (horse x, fx), or equally, given the disquotational character of refers ($f) (x) (fx Horse x), which, if one feels that quantifying over functions is question begging, is equivalent to (x) (Horse x v Horse x). So, the function referred to by a horse is a function and we will have to modify the doctrine that every apparent singular term refers to an object. Some apparent singular terms will be paraphrased away in a logically adequate language. We should not think that we can derive the ontological categories object and concept from the syntactic categories singular term and predicate. And while it is true that Frege sometimes wrote as though he thought that he could do so, particularly when arguing that numbers are objects, he was mistaken by his own lights when he argued in this way, and would have done better to have shown more suspicion of surface forms.
NOTES
1 2 3

Dummett, M. (1973) pp. 10-11 and Kenny, A. (1995) p. 17. See for instance Marshall, W. (1955) and Dummett, M. (1973) p. 204-205. G. P. Baker and P. M. S. Hacker have recently argued that even in the Begrischrift Frege did not think of the distinction between objects and functions as

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pertaining to linguistic items. They take this to be bad news for Frege, since they clam that Wittgenstein shows in the Tractatus that logic cannot be construed as a branch of function theory Baker, G. P. and P. M. S. Hacker (2003) p. 280. 4 It might be objected that what is said here makes Freges functions seem too intensional, however, it is exactly in accord with what Frege says when he rejects the extension of the concept as the reference of the concept word and asserts that it is rather the unsaturated function which is the reference Frege, G. (1979) p. 119. 5 See Beaney, M. (1996) pp. 4146, 191. 6 An observation that Frege also made, Frege, G. (1984) p. 355. 7 This is close to the suggested way of understanding Freges proposal developed by David Wiggins (1984) pp. 132133. 8 Beaney suggests that Frege should have simply eliminated the troublesome singular terms, Beaney, M. (1996) p. 191. This is easy in a case like The concept man is not empty which Beaney discusses, but it is not nearly so easy to see how to eliminate reference to functions in the function which takes every number to its double is a function while capturing the truth that it expresses. It may be for this reason that Frege did not explicitly take the eliminative option. Nevertheless, in the discussion that follows the attempt to give the logical form of the problematic sentence comes close to the eliminative strategy indicated by Beaney. 9 Nor does Wright treat it as a particularly serious objection. He oers those who do not wish to make the law of excluded middle essential for concept identity the reformulation, what is a horse stands for is something which nothing is or something could be. Wright, C. (1998) pp. 2478. 10 I interpret the quote marks in the second conjunct as Quinean quasi-quotes.

REFERENCES

Baker, G. P. and P. M. S. Hacker: 2003, Functions in Begrischrift, Synthese 135, 273297. Beaney, M.: 1996. Frege: Making Sense, Duckworth, London. Blamey, S.: 1986, Partial Logic, in D. Gabbay and F. Guenther. (eds.), Handbook of Philosophical Logic. Reidel, Dordrecht, Vol. III. pp. 170. Dummett, M.: 1973, Frege: Philosophy of Language, Duckworth, London, pp. 212 217. Frege, G.: 1879/1970, Begrisschrift, a formula language, modeled upon that of arithmetic, for pure thought, J. van Heijenoort. (eds.), Frege and Godel. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, p. 11. Frege, G.: 1979, Posthumous Writings, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 18111. Frege, G.: 1980, Gottlob Frege: Philosophical and Mathematical Correspondence, Basil Blackwell, Oxford. Frege, G.: 1984, Collected Papers on Mathematics, Logic, and Philosophy, Basil Blackwell, Oxford. Kenny, A.: 1995, Frege, Penguin, Harmondsworth. Marshall, W.: 1955, Freges Theory of Functions and Concepts, Philosophical Review 62, 374390. Quine, W. V.: 1963, From a Logical Point of View, Harper Row, New York, pp. 140 141.

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Quine, W. V. O.: 1970, Philosophy of Logic, Prentice Hall, Englewood Clis. Weiner, J.: 1996, Has Frege a Philosophy of Language?, Early Analytic Philosophy: Essays in Honour of Leonard Linsky, in W. Tait (ed.), Open Court, Chicago, pp. 249272. Wiggins, D.: 1984, The Sense and Reference of Predicates: a Running Repair to Freges Doctrine and a Plea for the Copula, In C. Wright (ed.), Frege Tradtion and Inuence. Basil Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 126143. Wright, C.: 1998, Why Frege did not deserve his Granum Salis. A note on the Paradox of The Concept Horse and the Ascription of Bedeutungen to Predicates, Grazer Philosophische Studien 55: 239263. Faculty of Arts Monash University Australia E-mail: karen.green@arts.monash.edu.au