On 3/20/2011 2:03 PM, Christopher Menzel wrote:
> But you need to bear in mind that Frege's central philosophical
> project was not the analysis of natural language generally but
> its application to the project of constructing a sound logical
> foundation for all of mathematics, where vagueness is not acceptable. (01)
On that point we both agree. He made important contributions to the
19th c work on foundations of math, along with Hilbert and many others. (02)
> His apparently derogatory remarks about natural language have to be
> interpreted in that light. The analysis of natural language generally
> was not his project... (03)
But he repeatedly talked about NLs, even in his "Foundations of
Arithmetic". See sections 24 - 26, where he talks about colors,
color words, and changing appearances under different lighting. (04)
> Frege's central philosophical project was not the analysis of natural
> language generally but its application to the project of constructing
> a sound logical foundation for all of mathematics, where vagueness
> is not acceptable. His apparently derogatory remarks about natural
> language have to be interpreted in that light. The analysis of
> natural language generally was not his project. (05)
OK. I would be willing to excuse Frege's occasional forays outside
of mathematics as illustrative examples about distinctions that he
primarily intended to apply in mathematics. (06)
One could blame Russell and Husserl for leading Frege into further
discussions outside his realm of expertise. Then Russell misled
Wittgenstein into generalizing Frege's ideas to all of NLs in the
Tractatus. But LW eventually apologized for those "grave errors". (07)
By the 1920s, Frege was almost completely forgotten except as
an important pioneer in the development of logic and a contributor
along with many others to the foundations of math. However, Quine
learned more about Frege when he visited Vienna and talked with Carnap. (08)
> Far from slavish subservience, Quine scarcely mentions Frege
> in his work. (09)
After Q. returned to Harvard, he was teaching yearly seminars on Frege,
and he supervised dissertations on Frege by PhD students. If it hadn't
been for Quine and Dummett, Frege's views outside of math and logic
would have been mercifully forgotten. (010)
> Nevertheless, Montague Grammar yielding a great insights into
> the semantics of natural language that had never before been
> appreciated. (011)
What insights? Ockham's Summa Logicae presented a model-theoretic
foundation for Latin in 1329 (less formal than Tarski's, but broader
in covering modal and temporal expressions). Peirce had lectured
on Ockham at Harvard in 1867 and even translated some of the Summa
to English. Peirce's model theory of 1906 was a formalization of
Ockham in existential graphs, and he also dabbled in extensions
of the graphs to several different modalities. (012)
In 1947, Carnap defined intensions as functions from propositions
to truth values. Hintikka and Kripke developed semantics for
modal logic in the early 1960s. (And Michael Dunn had a better
semantics for modality in 1973.) (013)
Before Montague's papers, several different people had implemented
translations from subsets of English to FOL, including Bill Woods
and Terry Winograd. (014)
I agree that Montague's construction of Carnap's functions with
lambda expressions was cute. But Landin and others had already
introduced lambda expressions for defining the semantics of
programming languages. (015)
Montague was a very intelligent guy, but his application of
Fregean principles to NLs was more of a distraction than an aid
to linguistics. Geach even denounced it as "Hollywood semantics". (016)
Montague's most famous student was Hans Kamp, whose Discourse
Representation Theory didn't use any of Montague's constructions.
In fact, his DRS notation is isomorphic to Peirce's existential
graphs. I pointed that out to Kamp, and he acknowledged the
point in a later publication. (017)
> How does this lessen Quine's many positive (not to say, uncontroversial)
> contributions -- the indeterminacy of reference and translation, (018)
Linguists and professional translators have known that for centuries.
George Steiner didn't make the point formally, but he presented an
abundance of examples that illustrate the many nuances. Continental
philosophers talked about such issues, but Carnap's manifesto was
a declaration of war with that branch of philosophy. (019)
I lectured at Binghamton U. in the PACCS program (Philosophy and
Computers and Cognitive Science), but it was located in a separate
building from the Continental types. They only remained in the
same department in order to have a critical mass for accreditation.
The irony is that PACCS was pronounced PAX. (020)
> the underdetermination of belief/theory by evidence, (021)
Peirce, Whitehead, Wittgenstein, Popper, and other philosophers
of science preached that for many decades before Quine. (022)
> the regimentation of language as a methodology for ontological
> investigation, the consequences of his uncompromising commitment
> to naturalism, etc? (023)
None of those views were unique to Quine. He might have said
them better than others, but his narrowness diverted attention
from other issues that could have been much more fruitful. (024)
As I said, I was a graduate student in applied math at Harvard.
I had some friends who were grad students in philosophy. I
mentioned some of my thoughts about AI, and they suggested that
I discuss them with Putnam. Quine wasn't easy to talk to. (025)
What really annoys me is that nobody at Harvard mentioned Peirce. (026)
John (027)
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