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In Frege's theory of judgement, the concept of truth is closely connected with the concept of assertoric force — a connection which justifies us in speaking of a (truth) theory of acknowledgement (Anerkennung). Frege is well aware of the paradoxical nature of his attempts to explicate his views (i.e. to express them in language). The paradox arises because we are concerned here with saying what cannot be (logically) said. Frege thus anticipates Wittgenstein's view that the categorial discourse in philosophy does not consist of sentences with a truth value, but rather of "elucidations'. Two things are central to Frege's theory of acknowledgement: first, the distinction between the act of judging (pragmatically expressed through the judgement stroke) and the content of judgement; and second, the value-theoretic understanding of the notion of truth values. It will be shown that in developing his own logic, Frege was inspired by traditional logic, and by the Southwest School of Neo-Kantianism in particular.

DOI: 10.1057/9781137286338_3

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