8.2 /10 1 Votes
Country United Kingdom Originally published 1973 Original language English | 4.1/5 Goodreads ISBN 978-0674319318 Subject Gottlob Frege | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Media type Print (Hardcover and Paperback) Pages 752 (1993 Harvard University Press edition) Page count 752 (1993 Harvard University Press edition) Similar Works by Michael Dummett, Philosophy of language books | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Frege: Philosophy of Language (1973; second edition 1981) is a book about Gottlob Frege by the British philosopher Michael Dummett.
Contents
Summary
Dummett explains and champions Frege's philosophy. Discussing Frege's view that the sense of a term is the route to its reference, and therefore cannot be specified in such a way that the reference becomes irrelevant to its use, Dummett interprets the idea of a route to reference in epistemological terms, as a procedure for discovering the reference of a term. Dummett also provides a rival way of arguing for conclusions about names similar to Saul Kripke's view of them as "rigid designators".
Scholarly reception
Frege: Philosophy of Language has been highly influential. Together with Frege: Philosophy of Mathematics (1991), it is Dummett's chief contribution to Frege scholarship. However, Dummett's epistemological interpretation of the idea of a route to reference has been seen as unnecessary by Daniel Dennett. Philosopher Roger Scruton, in his Sexual Desire (1986), follows Dennett's view.