Frege on thinking and thoughts (original) (raw)

Though Frege occasionally discusses actual thinking in his writings, frequently in order to contrast it with timeless thoughts or Gedanken, most scholars would agree that his scattered remarks on that issue do not deserve closer attention. The new book by Pieranna Garavaso and Nicla Vassallo (henceforth: G&V) challenges that assumption. According to G&V, Frege did not only devote ''much attention to human mental processes'' (1); he also thought these processes to be highly relevant to epistemological issues. The book contains four main chapters, all of which are based on previous work by G&V. Thus, to a large extent, the chapters can be read independently of each other. Chapter 2 discusses the ''many faces of Frege's anti-psychologism'' and argues for the surprising claim that Frege, a paradigmatic anti-psychologist, is actually committed to some kind of psychologism. This claim is based on Haack's distinction between three possible stances that may be held regarding the relation between logic and human thinking: according to strong psychologism, logic is descriptive of mental processes; weak psychologism claims that logic is prescriptive of mental processes; and anti-psychologism claims that logic ''has nothing to do'' with mental processes (24). In this sense, according to G&V, Frege's position ought to be described as a weak or prescriptive psychologism: ''For Frege, the laws of logic prescribe how actual thinking may be correct; so there is a connection between the laws of logic and actual thinking: the former prescribes the rules for the latter'' (25). I doubt that this is a correct rendering of Frege's position. Admittedly, Frege repeatedly stresses the normative function of logic, sometimes comparing it to ethics in this respect, but he nevertheless claims that the laws of logic proper-for instance, the laws expressed by Begriffsschrift axioms such as p ? (q ? p)-are