'The Nature of the Question Demands a Separation’: Frege on Distinguishing between Content and Force

TY - JOUR

T1 - 'The Nature of the Question Demands a Separation’

T2 - Frege on Distinguishing between Content and Force

AU - Textor, Mark

PY - 2020/4/3

Y1 - 2020/4/3

N2 - Recently, the content/force distinction has had a bad press. It has been argued that the distinction is not properly motivated and that it makes the problem of the unity of the proposition intractable. I will argue that Frege’s version of the content/force distinction is immune to these objections. In order to do so I will reconstruct his argument that ‘the nature of a question’ requires a distinction between force and content. I will answer the concern about the unity of the proposition by outlining how the distinction can be combined with a Fregean account of the unity of thought.

AB - Recently, the content/force distinction has had a bad press. It has been argued that the distinction is not properly motivated and that it makes the problem of the unity of the proposition intractable. I will argue that Frege’s version of the content/force distinction is immune to these objections. In order to do so I will reconstruct his argument that ‘the nature of a question’ requires a distinction between force and content. I will answer the concern about the unity of the proposition by outlining how the distinction can be combined with a Fregean account of the unity of thought.

KW - Frege

KW - content/force distinction

KW - propositional anaphora

KW - propositional questions

U2 - 10.1080/00048402.2020.1742748

DO - 10.1080/00048402.2020.1742748

M3 - Article

SN - 0004-8402

VL - 0

SP - 1

EP - 15

JO - AUSTRALASIAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY

JF - AUSTRALASIAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY

IS - 0

ER -