Congratulations to alumni Junyeol Kim, who has been awarded the 2021 APA Routledge Taylor & Francis Prize for the article “The Horizontal in Frege’s Begriffsschrift” (Synthese, 2020). This prize is awarded for the two best philosophical articles written by adjunct professors.
***Abstract from article***
This paper addresses an issue with the sign ‘’ in Frege’s mature version of Begriffsschrift, i.e., the version in ‘Function and Concept’ and Grundgesetze. The sign is a performative for asserting in that writing down ‘
’ is equivalent to asserting that p. Frege further says that writing ‘
’ is also equivalent to identifying the reference of ‘p’ with the truth-value True. It looks as if he holds that asserting that p consists in identifying the True with the reference of ‘p’. Frege’s commitment to it, however, seems to encounter a number of tensions. This paper aims to show that these tensions can be avoided by endorsing a non-assertive conception of identification under which making an identification is not making an identity assertion. The suggested reading leads to an entirely different understanding of the compositionality of the sign ‘
’ as well as Frege’s conception of assertion and judgment.