On the background of explaining their different notions of analyticity, their different views on definitions, and some aspects of Frege’s notion of sense, three important Kantian strands that interweave into Frege’s view are exposed. First, Frege’s remarkable view that arithmetic, though analytic, contains truths that “extend our knowledge”, and by Kant’s use of the term, should be regarded synthetic. Secondly, that our arithmetical (and logical) knowledge depends on a sort of a capacity to recognize and identify objects, which are given (...) us in particular ways, constituting their senses (Sinne). Third, that there is a sense in which Frege’s view of definitions and explications gives new substance to Kant’s leading idea of analyticity, namely, the containment of a truth or a concept in another. In all these, Frege’s view does not endorse the Kantian strands as they are, but gives them special and sometimes quite sophisticated twists. (shrink)

Frege’s views on identity continue to provoke scholars, and rightly so. In particular his view in Begriffsschrift of 1879, and its relation to his view in ‘Über Sinn und Bedeutung’ of 1892 deserve careful attention. The issues involved have a wider significance than Frege’s specific views on identity in different periods, though these are important enough. They concern also the move from what I call below ‘thin’ semantics, which is exhausted in signs being assigned content, to a ‘thick’ semantics, in (...) which ‘modes of determining their content’, or Sinne are also concerned. (shrink)

Frege’s views on identity continue to provoke scholars, and rightly so. In particular his view in Begriffsschrift of 1879, and its relation to his view in ‘Über Sinn und Bedeutung’ of 1892 deserve careful attention. The issues involved have a wider significance than Frege’s specific views on identity in different periods, though these are important enough. They concern also the move from what I call below ‘thin’ semantics, which is exhausted in signs being assigned content, to a ‘thick’ semantics, in (...) which ‘modes of determining their content’, or Sinne are also concerned. (shrink)

Logical analysis is in Frege primarily not an analysis of a concept but of its sense. Five Fregean philosophical principles are presented as constituting a framework for a theory of logical or conceptual analysis, which I call analytical explication. These principles, scattered and sometime latent in his writings are operative in Frege's critique of other views and in his constructive development of his own view. The proposed conception of analytical explication is partially rooted in Frege's notion of analytical definition. It (...) may also be the basis of what is required of a reduction of one domain to another, if it is to have the philosophical significance many reductions allegedly have. (shrink)

That there are analytic truths may challenge a principle of the homogeneity of truth. Unlike standard conceptions, in which analyticity is couched in terms of "truth in virtue of meanings", Frege's notions of analytic and a priori concern justification, respecting a principle of the homogeneity of truth. Where there is no justification these notions do not apply, Frege insists. Basic truths and axioms may be analytic (or a priori), though unprovable, which means there is a form of justification which is (...) not (deductive) proof. This is also required for regarding singular factual propositions as a posteriori. A Fregean direction for explicating this wider notion of justification is suggested in terms of his notion of sense (Sinn)—modes in which what the axioms are about are given—and its general epistemological significance is sketched. (shrink)