Journal of the History of Philosophy

Kremer, Michael Joseph.
Judgment and Truth in Frege
Journal of the History of Philosophy - Volume 38, Number 4, October 2000, pp. 549-581

The Johns Hopkins University Press

Michael Joseph Kremer - Judgment and Truth in Frege - Journal of the History of Philosophy 38:4 Journal of the History of Philosophy 38.4 (2000) 549-581 Judgment and Truth in Frege Michael Kremer University of Notre-Dame In 1985-6, Thomas Ricketts published a trilogy of papers developing a powerful interpretation of Frege's conception of judgment, truth and logic. Recently, Ricketts has returned to these issues. While the basic outlines of his interpretation remain the same, he has made one important modification in his reading, holding that for Frege judgment is essentially an act of knowledge-acquisition. This effectively rules out the possibility of an incorrect judgment. This step will strike many readers of Frege as extreme. In this paper, I argue that Ricketts has gone too far here. I explore the textual reasons that Ricketts gives for his new view and argue that they are inadequate. I also consider the internal pressures in his interpretation which lead him to this change, and show that they can be met without such extreme measures. The force of the argument is then to defend Ricketts' earlier view against his own later modification of it. This paper is more than a critical discussion of a small curlicue in one author's interpretation of Frege, however. Frege's views on truth and judgment are a central source of contemporary deflationism about truth, and his arguments can help to illuminate the motivations for, and commitments involved in,...