Truth, assertion, and the horizontal: Frege on 'the essence of logic'

Abstract

In the opening to his late essay, 'Der Gedanke', Frege asserts without qualification that the word 'true' 'points the way for logic'. But in a short piece from his Nachlass entitled 'My Basic Logical Insights', Frege writes that the word 'true' makes 'an unsuccessful attempt to point to the essence of logic', asserting instead that 'what really pertains to logic lies not in the word "true" but in the assertoric force with which the sentence is uttered'. Properly understanding what Frege takes to be at issue here is crucial for understanding his conception of logic and, in particular, what he takes to be its normative status vis-à-vis judgement, assertion, and inference. In this paper, I focus my attention on clarifying the latter claim and Frege's motivations for making it, exposing what I take to be a fundamental tension in Frege's conception of logic. Finally, I discuss whether Frege's deployment of the horizontal in his mature Begriffsschrift helps to resolve this tension. © Taschek 2008.