Abstract

The paper examines Davidson′s discussion of Frege on the problem of predication. Simple declarative sentences are unities that are true or false; how do predicates contribute to this kind of semantic unity? According to Davidson, the problem cannot be solved by assigning referents to predicates, since this leads to an infinite regress. Frege famously contributes the idea that predicates are “incomplete” or “unsaturated” functional expressions, mapping objects to truth-values. However, he takes predicates to refer to concepts and thus is exposed to Davidson′s argument. I will show that Davidson is only right with regards to “Frege′s semantics”. Yet Frege′s logical doctrine of the decomposition of a sentence – I shall argue – allows for a resolution of this problem