Semantics without epistemology

pp. 32-50

in: Richard Cobb-Stevens, Husserl and analytic philosophy, Berlin, Springer, 1990

Abstract

Contemporary analytic philosophers generally subscribe to Freges critique of psychologism, but reject his interpretation of the ontological status of senses. They focus upon what they take to be the weakest point in his theory, its vague account of the relationship between timeless thoughts and the time-bound utterances that express them. Their strategy is always to detach senses from things and wed them to words. Michael Dummett contends, for example, that the only faculty we possess for grasping senses is the capacity for learning how to use words. This interpretation of Frege's "power of thinking" entails a reappraisal of the notion of objectivity. Dummett observes that there is no reason why logic should be committed to a Platonic realism, or indeed to any other type of realism. It is surely enough to claim more modestly that to grasp the sense of a sentence is to know how to participate in some language-game whose rules are contingently dertermined by a linguistic community. The resultant theory might be at odds with the requirements of realism, but it would remain perfectly logical.¹