Argument Reconstruction
Argument reconstruction assignment. In one to two paragraphs (no more than a page total), please address one of the following two prompts. The focus of this assignment is to explain an argument in your own words.
1. What is the main argument that Frege advances in this passage? In particular what is his conclusion, and the main reasons he gives for it, in your own words? Please be sure to say, in your own words, what Frege means by thought and idea. Dont worry about quoting the passage. Just try to say, in plain language, what the main claim concerns and the reasons given for it.
“If the thought I express in the Pythagorean theorem can be recognized by others just as much as by me then it does not belong to the content of my consciousness [i.e., is not an idea], I am not its bearer; yet I can, nevertheless, recognize it to be true. However, if it is not the same thought at all which is taken to be the content of the Pythagorean theorem by me and by another person, one should not really say “the Pythagorean theorem” but ” my Pythagorean theorem “, ” his Pythagorean theorem ” and these would be different; for the sense belongs necessarily to the sentence. Then my thought can be the content of my consciousness and his thought the content of his. Could the sense of my Pythagorean theorem be true while that of his was false? I said that the word “red” was applicable only in the sphere of my consciousness if it did not state a property of things but was supposed to characterize one of my sense-impressions. Therefore the words “true” and “false”, as I understand them, could also be applicable only in the sphere of my consciousness, if they. were not supposed to be concerned with something of which I was not the bearer, but were somehow appointed to characterize the content of my consciousness. Then truth would be restricted to the content of my consciousness and it would remain doubtful whether anything at all comparable occurred in the consciousness of others. If every thought requires a bearer, to the contents of whose consciousness it belongs, then it would be a thought of this bearer only and there would be no science common to many, on which many could work. But I, perhaps, have my science, namely, a whole of thought whose bearer I am and another person has his. Each of us occupies himself with the contents of his own consciousness. No contradiction between the two sciences would then be possible and it would really be idle to dispute about truth, as idle, indeed almost ludicrous, as it would be for two people to dispute whether a hundred-mark note were genuine, where each meant the one he himself had in his pocket and understood the word ” genuine ” in his own particular sense. If someone takes thoughts to be ideas, what he then recognizes to be true is, on his own view, the content of his consciousness and does not properly concern other people at all. If he were to hear from me the opinion that a thought is not an idea he could not dispute it, for, indeed, it would not now concern him. So the result seems to be: thoughts are neither things of the outer world nor ideas.” (The Thought, 301-2)
2. Take the sentence “everything green is extended” [suppose: extended=takes up space]. In Two Dogmas, Quine suggests the sentence is analytic. But what makes any sentence analytic? He considers several candidate answers, and rejects each, as objectionably circular (or else arbitrary). Start with one of his candidate accounts of analyticity. Briefly state it. Then briefly explain why appealing to it fails to satisfactorily explain why the sentence is analytic. Do this for three more candidate accounts of analyticity. Be sure to explain the alleged difference between an analytic statement and a synthetic one, as well as explaining any other technical vocabulary you use (e.g., “circular”, “intension,” “extension”)
