Frege and the Description Theory: An Attempt at Rehabilitation

Abstract

I question the received view that Frege advocates the description theory of proper names. First, I argue that the textual evidence for this view from Frege’s writings is not conclusive. Secondly, I propose that the Fregean Sinne (of proper names) may be understood nondescriptionally in terms of symbolhood. Finally, I suggest that in the notorious passages where Frege is apparently supporting the description theory he is just indicating the potential problems with communication with proper names.

1. Introduction

The very rarely questioned received view has it that Frege advocates the description theory of proper names, that is, that the contents, or Sinne in Frege’s terminology,1 of ordinary proper names coincide with the contents of some appropriate definite descriptions. The evidence for this received view appears to consist mainly in the notorious second footnote of “Über Sinn und Bedeutung” (1892), where Frege seems to identify the Sinne of proper names with those of definite descriptions.

My purpose in this paper is to question this received view. In Section 2, I bring up some counter-evidence from Frege’s writings. In Section 3, I suggest an interpretation of Frege’s notion of Sinn, according to which Sinn is to be understood nondescriptionally in terms of symbolhood. Armed with this interpretation, I explain in Section 4 what I think Frege is up to in the mentioned footnote as well as in the relevant passage in “Der Gedanke” (1918).

2. Evidence and Counter-Evidence

Frege writes in the second footnote of “Über Sinn und Bedeutung” as follows (KS 144n / CP 158n): 

In the case of an actual proper name such as ‘Aristotle’ opinions as to the sense may differ. It might, for instance, be taken to be the following: the pupil of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. Anybody who does this will attach another sense to the sentence ‘Aristotle was born in Stagira’ than will a man who takes as the sense of the name: the teacher of Alexander the Great who was born in Stagira.

On the face of it, this footnote is not much of evidence if the Frege corpus is taken as a whole. Or, in any case, it is extraordinarily uncharitable to impose a view regarded as important on a major philosopher (practically) on the basis of a single footnote. Yes, there is also the Gustav Lauben passage in “Der Gedanke” (1918), where Frege might be taken to endorse the description theory – however, there is nothing in that passage (to be discussed in Section 4 below) that could be taken as an explicit endorsement.

Evidence for the claim that Frege was not a description theorist is readily available in Frege’s writings. In “Logic in Mathematics” (NS 243 / PW 225, 1914) Frege writes:

‘Copernicus’ and ‘the author of the heliocentric view of the planetary system’ designate the same man, but have different Sinne; for the sentence ‘Copernicus is Copernicus’ and ‘Copernicus is the author of the heliocentric view of the planetary system’ do not express the same Gedanke.

If one wanted to propose a definite description as an “abbreviation” of the name ‘Copernicus’, wouldn’t ‘the author of the heliocentric view’ be the first that comes to mind?2

One popular argument – let’s call it the triviality argument – against the description theory has been that if the name ‘a’ “abbreviated” the definite description ‘the F’ then “a is the F” (as well as “a is an F”) should be just as trivial and necessary as “the F is the F” (see, for instance, Kripke 1980, 12-13), which is preposterous. The last quote from Frege shows that

	(P1) Frege considered the triviality argument.

Given the simplicity of that argument, it is plausible that

	(P2) Whoever endorses the description theory, hasn’t considered the triviality argument.

The refutation of the received view concerning Frege’s descriptionism follows logically from P1 and P2:

	(C) Frege doesn’t endorse the description theory.

Further, even in “Über Sinn und Bedeutung” itself (KS 153-54 / CP 168-69) we find the following:3 Frege considers both “The discoverer of the elliptic form of the planetary orbits died in misery” and “Kepler died in misery”. Frege says that it would be a mistake to take the Sinn of the former to contain the Gedanke that there was somebody who discovered the elliptic form of the planetary orbits. Frege then gives to “Kepler died in misery” a respective treatment by saying that it would be a mistake to take its Sinn to contain the Gedanke that the name ‘Kepler’ designates something. There is no indication here that a proper name is to be treated as an “abbreviation” of a definite description and, in any case, there should be no need for a description theorist to make such a separate point about a proper name. This gives indirect counter-evidence to Frege’s being a descriptionist.

Finally, Frege states, frequently and emphatically, that sentences such as “Caesar exists” don’t have a Sinn. (This is due to the incongruence of levels: existence is, for Frege, a second-level Begriff, which cannot be applied to an object (Gegenstand).) But why should a committed description theorist be so adamant about this? If the name ‘c’ really amounts to the description ‘the F’, one need not be a Russell to realize that sentences such as “c exists” – i.e., semantically equivalently, “The F exists” – can be represented by means of the existential quantifier, as “∃x(Fx & ∀y(Fy → y=x)”.

In sum, I think it is fair to say that there isn’t in Frege’s writings conclusive evidence for the received view that he advocated the description theory.

3. Sinne

In Naming and Necessity, Kripke (1980, 7-10), considering

	(1) Aristotle was fond of dogs,

dismisses the view “that the simple fact that two people [e.g., the Philosopher and Onassis] can have the same name refutes the rigidity thesis” (p. 7). This is fine, of course, but what is significant is that Kripke says things like: “I perforce assumed a particular reading for (1)” (p. 8); (1) is given a “fixed understanding” (p. 9); and (1) “must be taken to express a single proposition” (p. 9, italics removed).
To my mind it is precisely here where the Sinn is needed: this very “fixing of understanding” or “particular reading” of a pattern is to confer a Sinn to it. To “understand” that the pattern ‘Aristotle’ in (1) is this symbol and not any other symbol is to attach to it a “way of being given” (Art des Gegebenseins) of a certain object and not any other object – ‘Aristotle’ in (1) has this interpretation (Sinn) and not any other interpretation (Sinn).4 That is, to take (1) – a pattern such as the one displayed in (1) – to express a certain proposition (say, about the Philosopher) and not any other proposition (like the one about Onassis) is, among other things, to adopt a “fixed understanding” or “particular reading” of ‘Aristotle’ in (1); I suggest that this amounts to attaching to this ‘Aristotle’ a way of being given a certain object, or, as we may also say, to use it with a certain content that is not exhausted by its mere reference. In successful communication, participants must share something, it must somehow be clear to them just what are the symbols used, and this, I suggest, amounts to their attaching the same Sinn to the patterns they use. A pattern is sinnvoll to us only as a symbol: this applies to proper names as well, and therefore Sinne are indispensable in semantics: even proper names (as symbols) do have content (= Sinn) besides reference (= Bedeutung). The mere reference cannot fulfill this role (cf. the popular direct reference view that “the content/meaning of a proper name is exhausted by its referent” (or that “proper names lack content/meaning”)).

To illustrate, if a shower of meteorites happened to form a huge pattern ‘Aristotle’, visible from the Earth, on the surface of the Moon, this pattern wouldn’t, obviously, carry any interpretation with it. (I don’t mean that we couldn’t know which Aristotle is meant but that no Aristotle is meant at all.) Imagine that some people would think that the shower cannot be accidental and that, therefore, it must be that God is trying in this manner to relate to us the importance of Aristotle the Philosopher. These people would thereby interpret this token of ‘Aristotle’ in a certain manner, “assume a particular reading” for it, use it as a symbol, attach a Sinn to it, take it as a pattern with a content. (And, therefore, the Bedeutung of this pattern, so taken, would be “determined” for these people.)

This interpretation of Sinn is consistent with the description theory: One view is that this ability to use proper names as symbols, or the sharing of their Sinne between speakers, is due to the contents of definite descriptions. However, the description theory is by no means forced on the account of the Sinne of proper names outlined above: it suffices to hold that these sharings (or Sinne) are due to whatever it is that enables us to communicate with symbols. To repeat, Frege’s point is that something – the Sinne – must be shared in communication or in any use of symbols. For this, names need not be taken as descriptive.5

4. Frege’s Apparent Endorsement of the Description Theory

In “Der Gedanke” Frege writes as follows (KS 349-50 / CP 358-59):

Suppose [...] that Herbert Garner knows that Dr. Gustav Lauben was born on 13 September, 1875 in N.N. and this is not true of anyone else; suppose, however, that he does not know where Dr. Lauben now lives nor indeed anything else about him. On the other hand, suppose Leo Peter does not know that Dr. Lauben was born on 13 September 1875, in N.N. Then as far as the proper name ‘Dr. Gustav Lauben’ is concerned, Herbert Garner and Leo Peter do not speak the same language, although they do in fact refer to the same man with this name; for they do not know that they are doing so [my emphases]. Therefore Herbert Garner does not associate the same thought with the sentence ‘Dr. Gustav Lauben was wounded’ as Leo Peter wants to express with it. [...]
Accordingly, with a proper name, it is a matter of the way that the object so designated is presented. This may happen in different ways, and to every such way there corresponds a special sense of a sentence containing the proper name. The different thoughts thus obtained from the same sentences correspond in truth-value, of course; that is to say, if one is true then all are true, and if one is false than all are false. Nevertheless the difference must be recognized. 

Frege doesn’t advocate the description theory in this passage. Rather, he is making it clear how background knowledge may affect communication with proper names, even to the point that the speakers in a communication situation are in effect using distinct symbols, that is, attach distinct Sinne to what is in fact communally one and the same name.6 In using a symbol that on the communal level is in fact a single symbol, speakers may be uncertain whether there are in fact two symbols at hand. Two speakers may even think that they are really using distinct symbols – this happens when they think that they are referring to distinct objects (or don’t know that they are referring to the same object), as in Frege’s just-quoted Gustav Lauben passage. According to Frege, in this case “as far as the proper name ‘Dr Gustav Lauben’ is concerned, Herbert Garner and Leo Peter do not speak the same language” and do not “associate the same thought with the sentence ‘Dr. Gustav Lauben was wounded’”, which proves that in Frege’s view they indeed attach distinct Sinne to ‘Dr Gustav Lauben’ (surely, it is taken for granted in this example that they share Sinne with ‘was’ and ‘wounded’). Of course, even a single speaker may take what is in fact (communally) a single symbol as two distinct ones (in different contexts), i.e., attach two different Sinne to an expression (an example of which is Kripke’s (1979) Paderewski case).

My suggestion is that also in The Footnote in “Über Sinn und Bedeutung” Frege is indicating potential problems of communication in ordinary discourse – though, unfortunately, in a very quick-and-dirty manner. If speaker A knows about Aristotle only that he was the most prominent student of Plato and speaker B knows about the very same Aristotle only that he was the most famous teacher of Alexander (and both A and B use the name ‘Aristotle’), then A and B do not, indeed, share a symbol (Sinn) in using ‘Aristotle’ – and one need not be a description theorist in advocating this view.

5. Conclusions

(i) There is in Frege’s writings no conclusive evidence for the received view that he advocated the description theory.

(ii) To attach a Sinn to a “proper name pattern” is just to take this pattern as a particular symbol – the description theory is dispensable.

(iii) The Gustav Lauben passage in “Der Gedanke” and, arguably, also the notorious footnote in “Über Sinn und Bedeutung” are about, not the description theory but problems with communication with proper names.7

References

Bealer, George 2002: “Modal Epistemology and the Rationalist Renaissance”. In: Tamar S. Gendler & John Hawthorne (eds.), Conceivability and Possibility. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 71-125.

Dummett, Michael 1973: Frege: Philosophy of Language. London: Duckworth.

Evans, Gareth 1982: The Varieties of Reference. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Frege, Gottlob 1884: Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik: Eine logisch mathematische Untersuchung über den Begriff der Zahl / The Foundations of Arithmetic: A Logico-Mathematical Enquiry into the Concept of Number. Trans. John L. Austin. Oxford: Blackwell. Second, revised ed. 1953 (first ed. 1950). = GL

Frege, Gottlob 1967: Kleine Schriften. Ed. Ignacio Angelelli. Hildesheim: G. Olms. = KS

Frege, Gottlob 1969: Nachgelassene Schriften. Ed. Hans Hermes, Friedrich Kambartel & Friedrich Kaulbach. Hamburg: Felix Meiner. Second, revised ed. 1983. = NS

Frege, Gottlob 1979: Posthumous Writings. Ed. Hans Hermes, Friedrich Kambartel & Friedrich Kaulbach, trans. Peter Long & Roger White. Oxford: Blackwell. = PW

Frege, Gottlob 1984: Collected Papers on Mathematics, Logic, and Philosophy. Ed. Brian McGuinness, trans. Hans Kaal et al. Oxford: Blackwell. = CP

Kaplan, David 1989: “Demonstratives: An Essay on the Semantics, Logic, Metaphysics, and Epistemology of Demonstratives and Other Indexicals”. In: Joseph Almog, John Perry & Howard Wettstein (eds.), Themes from Kaplan. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 481-563.

Kripke, Saul 1979: “A Puzzle about Belief”. In: Avishai Margalit (ed.), Meaning and Use. Dordrecht: Reidel, 239-83.

Kripke, Saul 1980: Naming and Necessity. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.