Abstract

Frege's philosophy of language includes detailed views on judgments. His formal logic - the Begriffsschrift - documents some of these views in the introduction and treatment of the judgment stroke. In current logic such an expression is either entirely ignored or, appearing as turnstile, plays an fundamentally different role. In this paper I put forward four claims: (i) Considering Frege's Begriffsschrift, it is methodologically palpable why the judgment stroke was omitted in nearly all logical systems developed after Frege. (ii) The Frege-style inclusion of the judgment stroke in a formal language represents a partial implementation of results from speech act theory. (iii) A more comprehensive implementation, not limited to the judgment stroke, helps to satisfy justified expectations about formal languages and logical calculi. (iv) Such an implementation has not yet been achieved in the current logical mainstream.