GOTTLOB FREGE’S SEMANTICS IN MODERN ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY

Frege’s well-known “semantic triangle” (sign – sense – reference) assumed ontological implications of Platonism, since the sense of the sign was understood here as an ideal, objective entity, by analogy with Plato’s eidos. One of the most fundamental opponents of Platonism in the tradition of analytic philosophy was the late Ludwig Wittgenstein, who proposed the concept of “meaning as use” in which the idea of sense (meaning) as some kind of stable, immutable, ideal essence was completely denied. However, in recent decades, analytic philosophy has shown a revival of attention to metaphysical problems. Moreover, the representatives of neo-Fregeanism blame Frege himself for the failure of the Platonist ontological program in the analytic philosophy of the twentieth century arguing that he expressed correct intuitions, but did not give weighty arguments in defense of his position. This allowed his opponents to take a dominant position in the modern philosophy of language. The article discusses the arguments of Jerrold Katz’s concept of linguistic Platonism against the views of the late Wittgenstein on the nature of the meaning of a linguistic expression. The author shows that the demonstration of these new arguments can make Frege’s semantics more viable in relation to criticism from the late Wittgenstein. The author invites modern Russian analytic philosophers to join the discussion on this topic, evaluate the weight of the arguments of each side, and draw their own conclusions based on the considerations presented in this article.

Frege, Wittgenstein, Katz, sense, meaning, reference, language, semantics, syntax, grammar, word, sentence, naturalism, skepticism, metaphysics