[MaFLa] invitation to a philosophy talk - Reconsidering Frege's Judgement Stroke - 2nd February, 4.30 PM

[Krisztina Biber]

The CEU Philosophy Department cordially invites you to a talk 
(as part of its Departmental Colloquium series)
by
Edward Kanterian  (Trinity & Jesus Colleges, Oxford University) 
on
Reconsidering Frege's Judgement Stroke

Tuesday, 2 February, 2010, 4.30 PM, Zrinyi 14, Room 412

ABSTRACT

Frege’s judgement stroke gives rise to three questions: What is its 

meaning or function? How does it fit with Frege’s anti-psychologism? 

Are we unjustly ignoring it in logic? This paper presents a novel  
attempt to answer these questions. It discusses the main  
interpretations currently available in the literature, i.e. the  
operator (Black, Greiman), the index (Geach, Smith), the epistemic  
(Green) and the performative (Künne) account, and finds them all  
wanting. The main problem is traced back to the ambiguity in Frege’s 

own characterisation of the judgement stroke as both embodying and  
representing the assertion, and to the fact that while an assertion  
is something we do with a sign, the sign does not do the assertion. A 

tentative, non-psychologistic solution to the problem is given,  
offering an interpretation of the judgement stroke as a kind of  
metalinguistic device registering (putative) truths relevant for the  
establishment of proofs.



Kriszta Biber
Department Coordinator
Philosophy Department
Tel: 36-1-327-3806
Fax: 36-1-327-3072
E-mail: biberk at ceu.hu 
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