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Frege’s Subjects: First-Person Thoughts and Their Thinkers

Everything is unimportant to us if we cannot communicate it to others.

—Kant (1789/1998: 55)

1. INTRODUCTION We each associate specific thoughts with uses of the first-person pronoun or inflexion. For instance, I might think the thought that I would like a cup of tea. And I might aim to express that thought by use of the sentence ‘I would like a cup of tea’. My hope would be that my audience would be able to understand my words and thereby gain access to what I think. So there is the thought that I associate with my use of ‘I would like a cup of tea’. And there is the thought that you associate with my use of that sentence. I’ll refer to thoughts that are associated in these ways with uses of the first-person pronoun or inflexion as first-person thoughts. A central question about such thoughts is: Can they be shared so that, for example, your thinking can engage with my first-person thoughts? I shall present part of an argument that all first-person thoughts can be shared.

Of course, that doesn’t get us very far. The significance of the claim that first-person thoughts are shareable is dependent on what it takes to think a first-person thought and for what purposes it might matter whether such thinking can be shared. In this paper, I shall focus on three questions: (Q1) Are all first-person thoughts accessible impersonally, so that there are no first-person thoughts with which only one person can engage and that others are unable, in principle, to access? (Q2) What are the requirements on the type of access to a thought that can suffice for understanding my use or for being aware of that which I think? Must you think the very thought that I express in order to gain access to that thought? If not, under what conditions will your thinking amount to your accessing the thought that I aim to express? (Q3) What is it for a thought that I think to be the same as a thought that you think? Must our thoughts correspond at the level of sense—that is, must we correspond in the specific ways that we think of referents when we think those thoughts? If not, what are the appropriate standards for identity of the thoughts that are engaged on two or more occasions of thinking? There are other important questions in this area, including questions about the relevant properties of first-person language and its

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uses and related questions about the epistemology of first- and third-personal access to thought. But (Q1)–(Q3) are the questions that will occupy me here.

My aim here is to make progress in addressing the three questions through reflection on a partly historical question: How should Frege have answered them? The question is partly historical, since a good answer must be tethered by Frege’s most central commitments. But, for at least three reasons, it is only partly historical. The first reason is that, in the places where Frege explicitly addresses questions about first-person thought, his answers to our three questions are at best partial and equivocal. Indeed, as we’ll see, Frege’s views about first-person thought appear less settled than his views on other topics. Second, Frege appears to acknowledge that first-person thought differs in important respects from some other types of thought. So it’s not a straightforward task to apply to the first-person case the results of Frege’s more detailed and decisive discussions of other cases. Third and finally, our aim is to reach a sort of equilibrium position on first-person thought on the basis of Frege’s work. Although that doesn’t require provision of fully adequate answers to our three questions, it may yet involve radical departures from Frege’s system. In particular, it may involve revisions to Frege’s system that he would have been unable or unwilling to contemplate.1

Here, in sketch form, are the answers to the three questions that I’ll defend. (A1) Thought is impersonally accessible: there is no thought, and in particular no first-person thought, that is—as a matter of principle—accessible to only one thinker. A requirement on two thinkers being in a position genuinely to agree or disagree with a with respect to a thought is that they share access to the very same thought. From (A1), attaining that position is always possible, at least in principle. (A2) The most fundamental mode of access to thought is grasp—a way of thinking thoughts, rather than thinking about them. Although there are other ways of accessing a thought—for instance, by way of certain forms of thinking about the thought, rather than thinking the thought itself—thought is impersonally accessible in the most fundamental way. For genuine agreement or disagreement with respect to a thought requires shared grasp of that thought. Thus, there is no thought, and in particular no first-person thought, that is—as a matter of principle or by virtue of the nature of the thought—thinkable by only one person. (A3) Thoughts are individuated in the same way as senses, so that two instances of thinking are instances of thinking the same thought just in case they involve the same way of thinking of the same reference. Thus, I shall argue that Frege should have said this: there is no specific way of thinking of a particular reference, and in particular no such way of thinking of oneself associated with the first-person pronoun or inflexion, that is—as a matter of principle or by virtue of the nature of that thought—available to only one person.

As I said above, I shall here present only part of the argument for (A1)–(A3). A complete argument in their favour would consist in a positive component—in which it is argued that there are powerful Fregean reasons for requiring those answers—and a defensive component—in which it is argued that there are no                                                                                                                1 Compare Dummett, 1981: 83, 128.

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powerful Fregean reasons for resisting those answers. My main aim in this paper is to develop the positive component of the larger argument. I pursue the crucial defensive component in a sister paper. My presentation of the positive argument proceeds as follows. In section 2, I present five principles that I take to constitute fundamental components of Frege’s account of thoughts and their explanatory roles. And I describe an apparent tension that arises between something that Frege writes about the first-person and the five principles. In section 3, I use the five Fregean principles as a background against which to present three broad lines of response to the apparent tension, each involving a specific revision to one of the five principles. A secondary aim of this discussion is to gain clarity about the specific form that the three main responses to the conflict can take, in light of the presentation of the Fregean principles in section 2. In section 4, I argue that neither of the two most plausible responses to the apparent tension that are considered in section 3 is acceptable. For neither of the two accounts is able to capture a central explanandum of Frege’s account of thoughts: the possibility, with respect to any accessible thought, of genuine agreement and disagreement amongst thinkers. 2. BASIC FREGEAN PRINCIPLES Thoughts are the basic objects of attitudinal psychology: they are the things one is related to when one adopts various stances with respect to how things are in one’s environment. For one putative example, where one believes that smoking is dangerous, one adopts the belief relation to the thought that smoking is dangerous. Attitudinal psychology is the domain of reason: a domain controlled by requirements on thinking—on the adoption of attitudes to thoughts—if it is to attain to truth. So the basic objects of attitudinal psychology, thoughts, are required to be bearers, or determinants, of truth-values and to stand in various relations of compatibility or incompatibility that depend on how things have to be in order for them to bear or determine one or another truth-value.2 Central notions of attitudinal psychology, including correctness and incorrectness of attitudes, or agreement and disagreement amongst attitudes, apply derivatively on the basis of more fundamental properties of the thoughts on which the attitudes are directed. For instance, adopting the belief that smoking is dangerous is correct just in case the thought that smoking is dangerous is true. And you and I agree that smoking is dangerous just in case you and I both stand in the belief relation to the thought that smoking is dangerous.

Since attitudinal psychology is, in the above sense, the domain of reason, its fundamental objects, thoughts, appear to be required to uniquely determine truth-values, or at least conditions on truth-values that are uniquely satisfied in any possible situation. 3 For otherwise, transitions amongst attitudes that perfectly satisfy demands applicable to the objects of those attitudes might come out of step with demands on truth, so demands on correctness of attitude. For

                                                                                                               2 E.g. CP: 354–5. 3 E.g. CP: 159, 171, 359.

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instance, suppose that a given thought is true in one context of thinking, and false in another. Then one might retain an attitude of belief to that thought as one moved from the first context to the second. In that way one might move from correctness to incorrectness of belief despite one’s thinking remaining the same from the perspective of one’s relation to thought. And one might agree with someone, in bearing the same attitude to the same thought, despite that thought being true in one’s context and false in the other’s. In that way two thinkers might agree even though only one of them was correct in thinking what they did. To avoid the internal and external demands of reason coming apart in that way, it is required that thoughts determine truth-conditions.4

Thoughts are required to uniquely determine truth-values (at least given the way things are). In order to meet that requirement, one might simply identify thoughts with truth-values or truth-conditions. However, Frege holds that it is possible rationally to adopt and withhold the same attitude to thoughts that determine the same truth-value or truth-condition.5 For instance, one might adopt the attitude of belief to the thought that Hesperus twinkles, a thought that is true just in case Hesperus twinkles. Since Hesperus is the very same heavenly body as Phosphorus, what one thereby believes is true just in case Phosphorus twinkles. Nevertheless, Frege holds that one might yet fail to adopt the attitude of belief to the thought that Phosphorus twinkles. If the thought that Hesperus twinkles were the very same thought as the thought that Phosphorus twinkles then instancing that pattern of attitudes would appear to be impossible. It would appear to involve one’s both standing in the belief relation, and also failing to stand in the belief relation, to a particular thought, something that is ruled out by the indiscernibility of identicals.6

Perhaps in some cases something like the required pattern can be instanced. For it may be that, in some cases, one’s attitudinal relations to thoughts are derivative from more basic relations between one’s sub-components and those thoughts. In that case, one might count as adopting the belief relation to a thought by virtue of one of one’s sub-components adopting the belief relation to a thought. And one might count as withholding belief in the same thought by virtue of another of one’s sub-components not adopting the belief relation to that thought. That wouldn’t be a way of one’s both adopting and failing to adopt belief in the same thought. But it would be a close analogue. However, such cases are ruled out by the condition that it is possible rationally to instance the required pattern. In cases where one’s attitudinal relations to thoughts are mediated by insulated sub-components the required division compromises one’s

                                                                                                               4 For a powerful development of this line of argument, see Evans 1979/1985. 5 E.g. CP: 144–5, 158, 176–7, 241, PMC: 80, 126–127, 152–3. Here and throughout I use ‘truth-condition’ so that if two truth-condition bearers or determinants are true in all the same possible situations, then they have the same truth-conditions. (For present purposes, I needn’t also commit to a necessary condition on sameness of truth-condition.) Thus, they are individuated in a way that is more coarse-grained than are the specifications of truth-condition to which Frege appeals in Gg: §32. 6 I’m indebted here to the discussion in Salmon 1986: 57, 77, 80.

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rationality. For as things stand, someone in such a case is not in a position to bring everything that they think into rational contact so as either to assess what they think for compatibility or incompatibility or to bring together what they think in chains of reasoning. And it would only be possible to attain such a position if it were possible to adopt the required pattern of attitudes in propria persona.

Frege also exploits differences amongst thoughts that determine the same truth-conditions in order to explain how thinkers can take rationally conflicting attitudes towards thoughts that determine the same truth-conditions. For example, attitudes of endorsement conflict with attitudes of rejection so that one cannot rationally stand in a relation of endorsement and a relation of rejection to the same thing. Yet it appears possible rationally to endorse the thought that Hesperus twinkles while rejecting the thought that Phosphorus twinkles. In this case, treating the required pattern of attitudes as relations to a single thing is not immediately ruled out by the indiscernibility of identicals, since that principle leaves open the possibility that a thinker might bear two attitudinal relations to one thing. Rather, what rules out the possibility is the nature of the required relations: the attitude of endorsement and the attitude of rejection exclude one another, so that it is impossible for a thinker to adopt both attitudes to the same thing. 7 Again, it might be that a proxy for the required pattern can be implemented by appeal to psychological division, so that one of a thinker’s sub-components endorses, while another sub-component rejects, a single thing. But, again, such division would amount to a compromise of the thinker’s rationality. A rational thinker can adopt the required pattern of rationally conflicting attitudes only if they are directed at different things, hence only if thoughts are not determined by their truth-conditions.

Now Frege holds that these features of basic attitudinal psychology can be discerned in our treatment of the attitudinal psychology of knowledge and belief. However, nothing central in Frege’s account depends essentially on his being correct about that. Perhaps knowledge and belief only approximate to the demands on basic attitudinal psychology—for example, because belief is a relation either to something that doesn’t determine truth-conditions or to something that is determined by truth-conditions.8 In that case, some of the specific claims that Frege makes, both about belief and knowledge and about our talk about belief and knowledge, would be incorrect. But as long as there is a more basic form of attitudinal psychology that meets the twin demands imposed by Frege’s account—one that involves attitudinal relations to thoughts that determine, but are not determined by, truth-conditions—the most basic

                                                                                                               7 Frege puts the point as follows, in considering the options available to one engaged with the question whether p or not-p: ‘This opposition or conflict is such that we automatically reject one limb as false when we accept the other as true, and conversely. The rejection of the one and the acceptance of the other are one and the same.’ (PW: 8) See also PW: 149. 8 For one such account, see Salmon 1986.

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components of his account can stand. And it is hard to see how that could be denied.9

Frege often characterizes the constituents of thoughts that are responsible for the possibility that they might differ despite determining the same truth-conditions by appeal to his notion of sense.10 Frege views senses as specific ways of thinking about truth-values and their referential determinants. 11 Thus, wherever it is possible for a rational subject to bear a relation to one thought, T1, while failing to bear the same relation to a thought, T2, T1 is a different thought from T2. Specifically, T1 differs with respect to its constituent senses from T2. That is, wherever such a pattern of attitudes is possible, the thinker must be thinking in different ways, either about the same or different truth-values or referential determinants of truth-values. As with thoughts—and for the same reasons—it is a requirement that, in general, senses determine the constituent references carried by the thoughts that they constitute, and thus the truth-conditions of those thoughts. Since senses are individuated in the same way as thoughts, there is some temptation to identity thoughts with the organizations of senses that constitute them. However, it may also be possible to exploit the flexibility made available by a distinction between thoughts and their constituent senses in order to distribute labour in a slightly different way. For instance, one might hold that in certain special cases only thoughts determine truth-conditions, while their constituent senses are only partial determinants of those truth-conditions. And one might hold that a particular thought might be constituted out of different senses, for instance if one held that thoughts are determined by truth-conditions, but also include one or another range of constituent senses that determine those truth-conditions. For present purposes we can set aside the latter possibilities. (We’ll return to them below.) We are now in a position to state two basic Fregean principles:

(I) Sense determines possible distributions of attitude. Necessarily, for all subjects S, times t, attitudes Φ, thoughts T1…Tn, and senses C1…Cn, D1...Dn, if it is

                                                                                                               9 For a time, Russell attempted to deny that there is such a form of attitudinal psychology: for him, the possibility of adopting conflicting attitudes towards thoughts evinces divergences in the constituent referents of those thoughts. Since he seeks to allow for roughly the same range of possible conflicts as Frege, the result is a view on which the immediate subject-matter of our attitudes is individuated as finely as senses are on Frege’s view—so one form of a sense-data based view of the subject-matter of thought. See e.g. Russell 1912 and the useful discussions of Russell in McDowell 1984/1998: 233 and Taschek 1992: 777. Frege often presents arguments that reference and reference-conditions fail to determine thought or sense as defences of the possibility of sameness of reference in cases of conflicting or otherwise incompatible patterns of attitude towards thoughts. See e.g. CP: 144–5. Important general defences of broadly Fregean attitudinal psychologies may be found in Burge 2005: 27–59, 2009, Dummett 1978, and Salmon 1986. 10 E.g. CP: 157–77, PMC: 152–3. Strictly, Frege classifies as senses only those thought-components that are expressed, or expressible, through the use of language. On Frege’s view, however, that is not a restriction. See e.g. PW: 269. 11 E.g. CP: 157–9, Gg: §§31–33.

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possible that: S at time t bears attitude Φ to thought T1 with constituent senses <C1…Cn> and it is not the case that S at t bears Φ to T2 with constituent senses <D1…Dn>, then <C1…Cn> ≠ <D1…Dn>.12

(II) Thought determines sense. Necessarily, for all thoughts T1…Tn and constituent senses C1…Cn, D1…Dn, if the constituent senses associated with thought T1 are <C1…Cn> and the constituent senses associated with thought T2 are <D1…Dn>, then if T1 = T2 then <C1…Cn> = <D1…Dn>.

Frege holds that our most basic form of access to, or engagement with, thoughts involves thinking the thoughts in a way that is both first-order and also non-committal with respect to their truth or falsity. He thinks that one must engage in that way with thoughts in order to be in a position to adopt committal attitudes to them. He labels the basic form of first-order non-committal engagement with a thought grasp.13 For certain purposes, it matters whether there is a non-committal form of engagement with thoughts and whether that form of engagement underwrites all other forms. For present purposes, however, we can remain neutral on both issues. For our purposes, the more important requirement on grasp is that it is a mode of first-order engagement with thoughts. On Frege’s view, our attitudes are most fundamentally attitudes immediately to thoughts rather than, say, to representations of thoughts. Believing that smoking is dangerous differs from believing that it is believed that smoking is dangerous, or that Frege believes that smoking is dangerous, or even that one believes that smoking is dangerous. Believing that it is believed that smoking is dangerous is at least one order above believing that smoking is dangerous. Even so, it might be that believing that smoking is dangerous is at least one order above bearing a more fundamental attitude to the thought that smoking is dangerous. Frege holds that at the most fundamental level one bears attitudes immediately to thoughts, rather than to thoughts about thoughts, so that at the most fundamental level one’s attitudinal relations are at first order. I shall depart from Frege in treating grasp as a generic mode of first-order engagement with thoughts, rather than as a distinct necessary condition on any such engagement. I’ll therefore use grasp as a generic label for any form of first-order attitudinal relations to a thought. On that basis we can state a third Fregean principle (using ‘access’ for the time being as a placeholder that will acquire content from the remaining principles):

(III) Access to thoughts requires grasp. Necessarily, for any subject S and thought T, if S has access to T, then S grasps T.

                                                                                                               12 See e.g. PMC: 80, 127, 153, 157–8. I use angle brackets here and throughout to signal reference to constituent senses as structured in a particular way. As is well known, principles (I) and (II) appear inapplicable to basic logic principles, since it is plausible that such principles can be constituted from different thoughts or senses and yet failure to acknowledge the truth of such principles would appear to be indicative of a failure of rationality. 13 E.g. CP: 164, fn.10, 198, 355–6, 363, 368–9, 371, 374–5, 382, PW: 7, 137–9, 145, 211, 267, Gg: xxiv, PMC: 20, 67.

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It is a basic presupposition of Frege’s account that thoughts are objects of grasp. The most fundamental reason for this presupposition arises from the considerations driving his denial that thoughts are determined by truth-conditions. We can begin by distinguishing first-order thoughts—e.g. thoughts about environmental conditions not involving thoughts—and second-order thoughts—thoughts about thoughts. Now suppose that our relations to second-order thoughts mediate our relations to first-order thoughts. In that case, we are required to hold that our relations to the second-order thoughts are immediate. For to hold that those relations are themselves mediated by relations to third-order thoughts threatens a regress. So at least at that level, our attitudinal relations are immediate and so are first-order, despite their being targeted on second-order thoughts. Ignoring the threat of regress though, the considerations that led to slicing thoughts more finely than truth-conditions require that at some order thoughts are sliced more finely than truth-conditions. But they require only that. So if our most basic engagement with first-order thoughts goes via immediate engagement with second-order thoughts, then one might respond to those considerations by holding that only second- (and higher-) order thoughts are fine-grained. That would enable one to hold that first-order thoughts are determined by their truth-conditions. For in that case something like the required pattern of attitudes could then be explained as one’s being related to one second-order thought about a first-order thought, without being related to every second-order thought about that first-order thought. Of course, we might view such a situation as one in which what had appeared to be second-order thoughts are really first-order, since they are directed in the first instance on truth-conditions, rather than on something of the same nature as themselves. But we would be powerless in the face of a more minimal, sceptical consequence. Absent the assumption that our most fundamental engagement with thoughts is at first order, we would be unable to derive any consequences concerning the individuation of first-order thoughts from reflection on possible patterns of attitude towards those first-order thoughts. We would thus lack reason to endorse principles (I) and (II) with respect to all thoughts. I take it then that it is a basic presupposition of Frege’s account that our most fundamental mode of engagement with thoughts is first-order.

The connection between sense and thought enforced by principle (II) enables us to state a fourth Fregean principle:

(IV) Grasp of thought determines grasp of sense. Necessarily, for any subjects S1, S2, any thoughts T1, T2, and any constituent senses C1…Cn, D1…Dn, such that S1 grasps T1 by grasping <C1…Cn> and S2 grasps T2 by grasping <D1…Dn>, if T1 = T2, then <C1…Cn> = <D1…Dn>.

Although Frege typically characterizes grasp as relating thinkers to thoughts, we noted above the possibility of adding flexibility to his system by exploiting a distinction between thoughts and their constituent senses. If we make use of that possibility, then we might distinguish grasp of thoughts from grasp of senses. In that way, we might allow that grasp of senses can constitute grasp of thoughts, because while both senses and thoughts determine truth-conditions, only

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thoughts and not senses are determined by truth-conditions. (Compare the suggestion above concerning the upshot of a second-order account of grasp of first-order thoughts with a conception of first-order thoughts on which they are determined by truth-conditions.) Alternatively, we might allow that grasp of senses can constitute one form of access to thoughts, but cannot constitute grasp of those thoughts, since such mediated access would amount only to a form of second-order engagement with thoughts. However, Frege’s basic account requires that grasp of a particular thought requires grasp of the particular range of senses determined by the thought (in accord with principle (II) above) so that principle (IV) is enforced.

Frege held that thoughts are impersonal, so that one does not have to be any particular thinker in order to grasp them. By their nature, thoughts are available to be grasped by more than one thinker.14 He had three main reasons for this. First, Frege held that the objectivity of truth required the objectivity of the fundamental bearers of truth, thoughts. And he held that objectivity required impersonal accessibility.15 (More carefully, he held that objectivity of thought required that nothing in the nature of any thought exclude the possibility of its impersonal accessibility.) The first reason is related to the second.

Second, Frege held that a fundamental role for thoughts is to mark points of possible agreement or disagreement amongst thinkers. Suppose that two thinkers bear attitudes that conflict only in the minimal sense that they cannot both be correct. For instance, suppose that one holds that Hesperus twinkles while the other denies that Phosphorus twinkles. Although the thoughts engaged by the two thinkers have the same truth-conditions, the thoughts differ at the level of sense. Because of that difference it is plausible that the thinkers are not in genuine disagreement: genuine disagreement is ruled out by an analogue of equivocation. In order to implement genuine disagreement it is plausible that the thinkers must adopt conflicting attitudes to the very same thoughts—that is, by principle (II), thoughts constituted in the same way at the level of sense. If thoughts are to play the required role in implementing cases of agreement and disagreement, then it is plausible that they must be not only impersonally accessible but also possible objects of grasp by more than one thinker.16 That doesn’t rule out the possibility of thoughts that can only be grasped by one thinker. But it would mark a fundamental distinction in explanatory function between those thoughts that can be grasped by more than one thinker and those that can’t. Moreover, one who invoked such thoughts would be required to show that the invocation was indispensable by appeal to some explanatory function other than marking points of possible agreement or disagreement. That is, they would be required to show, first, that some essential explanatory function is served by such elements and, second, that that function must be discharged by elements of the very same kind as those that discharge the more central function. I’ll return to this issue and provide a more detailed discussion of the role of                                                                                                                14 E.g. PW: 7, 133, CP: 160, 162 fn.7, 198, 368, 371, 376, 382, Gg: xix, PMC: 67, 79. 15 E.g. PW: 138, CP: 368, Gg: xxiv. 16 E.g. PW: 133–4, CP: 198–9, 368–9, Gg: xix, PMC: 80.

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grasp of thoughts in implementing agreement and disagreement below when we turn to consider views that assert the existence of elements at the level of sense that cannot be shared. The second reason provides the basis for the third.

The third of Frege’s reasons for requiring that thoughts be impersonal is this. It is a central feature of Frege’s system that psychological attitudes are relational: they relate thinkers with thoughts. The question therefore arises why we should adopt such a relational conception of attitudes rather than a view on which attitudes are monadic properties of thinkers—instances of which properties Frege classifies as ideas. The possibility of shared grasp can sponsor an argument in favour of the relational conception by way of a plausible inference to best explanation. For suppose that it is possible for two thinkers to disagree with respect to a particular thought. The simplest account of that possibility is that they stand in different and conflicting relations to the very same thought. By contrast, the monadic conception can make some sense of cases in which thinkers agree, since in those cases it will treat them as sharing a monadic property.17 But it is bound to struggle with cases of disagreement, since such cases involve both difference in properties—since the subjects of those properties disagree—together with sameness in properties—since the subjects do not just differ, but disagree. In order to cope with such cases, the monadic approach would be forced to make appeal to agreement with respect to shared properties of its basic range of monadic properties, so that thinkers who disagree instance different monadic properties while those properties themselves share a higher-order property. Since the structure of first and higher-order properties on such an account would ultimately have to correlate with the structure of the relational account, the relational account is favoured on grounds of simplicity.18 However, in any case where the possibility of disagreement was ruled out due to

                                                                                                               17 In fact, the issues here are delicate. Instancings of monadic properties cannot be shared. In order for two thinkers to share a monadic property—to have the very same property—it appears that they must both instance that property. But conceived in that way, their instancing the same property involves their each standing in instances of the instancing relation to that property. Hence, even agreement might require a minimal analogue of relational structure. 18 There are deeper reasons for favouring the relational account of disagreement and, indeed, agreement. For suppose that sameness of higher-order properties is required to implement either agreement or disagreement. And suppose that it is allowed that the required form of sameness of property would be undermined if the higher-level properties themselves differed in their higher-level properties. On those assumptions, it would be a necessary condition on agreement or disagreement that there were no such higher-level differences. And it is not clear how that could be ruled out in a natural and systematic way. By contrast, the analogue is ruled out on the relational view simply through the fact that a single object—a thought—is the locus of agreement or disagreement so that the indiscernibility of identicals rules out the possibility of disruptive higher-level differences.

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the impossibility of shared grasp, that consideration would lapse. Appeal to thoughts in the account of such cases would to that extent be rendered otiose.19

We thus reach a conclusion that Frege puts as follows in his 1919 paper ‘Negation’:

The being of a thought may … be taken to lie in the possibility of different thinkers’ grasping the thought as one and the same thought. In that case the fact that a thought had no being would consist in several thinkers’ each associating with the sentence a sense of his own; this sense would in that case be the content of his particular consciousness, so that there would be no common sense that could be grasped by several people. (CP: 376)20

Thus, we can state a fifth and final Fregean principle:

                                                                                                               19 E.g. PW: 3–4, CP: 362–3, 368–9, 376. It might be thought that the consideration is undermined by some of Frege’s discussion in ‘Negation’ (CP: 373–89). For in that paper, Frege seems to reject the possibility that thinkers might bear contrary attitudes to a particular thought. Rather, Frege argues, we should treat what seem to be cases in which one thinker accepts (asserts) a thought and another rejects (denies) the same thought as really cases in which one thinker accepts (asserts) a thought and the other accepts (asserts) the negation of that thought. However, that doesn’t really undermine the consideration. Rather, it forces decomposition of some thoughts into a constituent corresponding to negation and a constituent corresponding to what is negated. With respect to the constituent that is negated, an analogous consideration shows that the simplest account of disagreement with respect to that thought is one on which both thinkers are related to the same constituent. With respect to the simple case of acceptance of a thought and acceptance of its negation, we would therefore lack grounds for holding that the constituent corresponding to negation is a constituent of an object of an attitudinal relation, rather than an aspect of the relation itself. But that seems to be the right result: the derivation of Frege’s general view about the negation-constituent depends on his taking into account more complex cases in which a negation-constituent falls within the scope of other operators. 20 See also CP: 368. Such passages might appear to undermine Tyler Burge’s claim that ‘Frege never clearly states that every sense must be graspable by others.’ (Burge, 2005: 38, including fn.32) However, as with the passages that Burge explicitly considers, the evidence provided by the passage from ‘Negation’ is slightly equivocal. One of Frege’s main purposes in ‘Negation’ is to defend the view that false thoughts have the same status as true ones, especially against theorists who would allow for the objectivity of true thoughts, but who would restrict falsehood to the subjective realm. Bruno Bauch, one of Frege’s main opponents in that dispute, had argued that false thoughts could not meet the impersonality condition, which he claimed to be a necessary condition on the objectivity of thoughts. So, it is not out of the question that Frege is assuming the strong requirement only for purposes of argument. See Schlotter 2006 for discussion of the dialectical context of ‘Negation’. However, for the reasons given in the text, I believe that the impersonality or shareability of senses was one of Frege’s central commitments.

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(V) Impersonal accessibility of thought. Necessarily, for all thinkers S1, for all thoughts T, if S1 has access to T, then it is possible that there is a thinker S2 such that S1 ≠ S2 and S2 has access to T.21

Principles (I)–(V) appear to be central components of Frege’s mature account of thoughts. Moreover, none of these principles is unmotivated. None of the principles is decisively supported by the considerations we have discussed to this point. But each is made very plausible by those considerations. And the explanatory power, coherence, and elegance of the resulting system combine to provide further support for the account that embeds those principles. In the general case—not involving thoughts expressible by use of indexicals or demonstratives, including the first-person—there is little reason to doubt that (I)–(V)—or close cousins of those principles—hold sway. However, even Frege has appeared to many readers to doubt the dominion of those principles over first-person thoughts.

Although Frege is committed in the general case to the impersonality of thought, he appears also to hold that first-person thought is a special case. The following infamous passage appears—without fanfare or argument—in ‘The Thought’, an earlier part of the triptych that includes ‘Negation’:

[A] Now everyone is presented to himself in a special and primitive way, in which he is presented to no one else. So, when Dr. Lauben has the thought that he was wounded, he will probably be basing it on the primitive way in which he is presented to himself. And only Dr. Lauben himself can grasp thoughts specified in this way. (CP: 359)

Many readers have taken [A] to evince Frege’s endorsement of (analogues of) [A1] and [A2]:

[A1] Partiality of presentational bases. At least some thoughts about oneself are based on a special and primitive way in which everyone is presented to themselves and in which they are not presented to anyone else. That is, at least some first-person thoughts are based upon a partial presentation. [A2] Partiality of thoughts specified by partial presentational bases. Where an individual, S1, has a thought about themselves that is based upon, or specified by, a partial presentation of themselves, that thought cannot be grasped by an individual, S2, where S1 ≠ S2.22

                                                                                                               21 If the target of discussion were thoughts expressed by the use of indexicals and demonstratives in general, rather than the first-person in particular, then we might begin discussion by following Perry in making appeal to a stronger principle, according to which thoughts are, by nature, omni-accessible: accessible to any thinker, at any time, from any location. I think that the discussion to come (especially around [F]–[G] below) provides evidence against attributing such a principle to Frege, at least by 1918. But in a discussion of indexicals and demonstratives more generally, it would be useful to reflect upon that principle and its interactions with appropriate analogues of our other principles, rather than (V). 22 E.g., Dummett 1981, Evans 1981/1985, George 1997, Heck 2002, Kripke 2008, Künne 1997, May 2006a, Noonan 1984, and Perry 1977/2000 endorse analogues of [A1] as a reading of [A]. As we’ll see, the issues surrounding [A2] are slightly more delicate, but ultimately I think that the same thinkers endorse [A2] as a reading of [A].

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Construed in that way, [A] expresses the view that first-person thought is partial rather than impersonal. So construed, [A] embodies the claim that first-person thought can be grasped by at most one thinker—namely, the referent of its first-person component, what I’ll refer to as the subject-referent of the thought—and so is not shareable.

On the basis of principles (I)–(V) the consequences of the standard reading of [A] can be articulated in the following way. At least some first-person thoughts are constituted from first-person senses. Those senses are in the following way partial: they can be grasped only by the subject-referent of the first-person thought, the thinker who might try to express their thought by use of the first-person. (The result to this point corresponds with [A1].) Now principle (IV)—Grasp of thought determines grasp of sense—entails that first-person thought itself can be grasped only via grasp of its constituent senses. So given that those constituent senses are partial, it follows that first-person thoughts can only be grasped by the subject-referent. (The latter result corresponds with [A2].) But now from principle (III) we have that access to thought must go via grasp of those thoughts. So the partiality of first-person senses has as a consequence the partiality of first-person thoughts and the partiality of first-person thoughts has as a consequence that those thoughts are accessible to at most one thinker. And that result is inconsistent with principle (V), the claim that thoughts are by nature accessible impersonally.

So Frege holds that thought is in general impersonal, so not partial. And yet he appears to hold that some first-person thoughts are partial, so not impersonal. Unless the claim that some first-person thoughts are partial is supported by central components of Frege’s thinking about thoughts as they apply to that special case, the claim should be rejected. In that case, Frege’s apparent endorsement of the conjunction of [A1] and [A2] should be explained away, either as a slip on Frege’s part or as an error on the part of his readers. It is therefore crucial to determine whether the partiality claim is supported by other components of Frege’s overall account of thoughts.23 However, in order to properly motivate reconsideration of the interpretation and standing of [A], we must pursue further the question whether the conflict between [A1]–[A2] and principles (I)–(V) might better be avoided through revision of one or more of the principles. The various extant responses to the inconsistency at this point have been shaped by the assumption that the standard reading of [A] is a fixed point. In the following two sections, I’ll present the three main forms of extant response and argue that none of them is acceptable.

3. AMENDING THE FREGEAN PRINCIPLES Let’s suppose that [A] is to be construed in accord with [A1] and [A2]. So construed [A] has as a consequence that there are first-person thoughts with partial senses. It follows from [A], when so construed, that at least one of the following principles must be rejected.

                                                                                                               23 This task is pursued in the sister paper mentioned in the introduction.

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(III) Access to thoughts requires grasp. Necessarily, for any subject S and thought T, if S has access to T, then S grasps T.

(IV) Grasp of thought determines grasp of sense. Necessarily, for any subjects S1, S2, any thoughts T1, T2, and any constituent senses C1…Cn, D1…Dn, such that S1 grasps T1 by grasping <C1…Cn> and S2 grasps T2 by grasping <D1…Dn>, if T1 = T2, then <C1…Cn> = <D1…Dn>.

(V) Impersonal accessibility of thought. Necessarily, for all thoughts, T, it is possible for there to be two subjects, S1 and S2, such that S1 ≠ S2, S1 has access to T, and S2 has access to T.

Frege himself fails to signal the weak link in his system, or even to acknowledge that there is one. It has been left to his interpreters to decide upon the optimal assignment of blame. I shall consider occupants of each position beginning with the position that (V) should be rejected.

According to John Perry, Nothing could be more out of the spirit of Frege’s account of sense and thought than an incommunicable, private thought. (Perry, 1977/2000: 1)

In the face of Perry’s admonition, Gareth Evans proposes that Frege’s response to the apparent inconsistency would involve rejection of (V). Evans writes:

Since it is an immediate consequence of what Frege said about ‘I’-thoughts that they are not ‘generally accessible’, Perry appears to be arguing that a Fregean approach to ‘I’-thoughts must be inadequate by citing a supposed requirement upon Fregean thoughts—that they be generally accessible—which Frege appears to have shown himself free of precisely in what he says about ‘I’-thoughts. (Evans, 1981/1985: 312, his emphasis.) Now Evans hasn’t to this point distinguished amongst principles (III)–(V). It

is therefore possible that he means to claim only that Frege would have rejected the conjunction of those principles—or at least that Frege would have done so if he had traced out the immediate consequences of what he had said in [A]. It is anyway clear that the availability of the other two options—rejection of (III) and rejection of (IV)—undermine Evans quick route from [A] to rejection of (V). Moreover, as we have seen, Frege retains his prior commitment to (V) in the general case through ‘The Thought’ and into ‘Negation’. Most strikingly—and despite the fact that a general defence of (V) forms a major part of ‘The Thought’—Frege doesn’t show any awareness of a tension between [A] and (V), or any tendency to temper his statements of (V) with explicit provisos concerning first-person thoughts.24 Finally, it is difficult to see how the rejection

                                                                                                               24 Frege continues from [A] in the following way:

But now he [Lauben] may want to communicate with others. He cannot communicate a thought that he alone can grasp. Therefore, if he now says ‘I was wounded’, he must use ‘I’ in a sense which can be grasped by others, perhaps in the sense of ‘he who is speaking to you at this moment’; by doing so he makes the conditions accompanying his utterance serve towards the expression of a thought. (CP: 360)

This might be read as Frege’s response to the existence of partial first-person thoughts. However, it can equally be read as a sketch account of how first-person thoughts can be communicated—that is, for how others can be put in a position to identify them as the thoughts being expressed. That is, it can be read as expressing Frege’s recognition

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of (V) might be made independently plausible with respect to first-person thoughts. One might, for example, be willing to allow that there are thoughts that are inaccessible simpliciter due to the inaccessibility of their constituent referents. But what is in question here is whether thoughts that are accessible simpliciter are accessible to more than one thinker. And there is no obvious bar—and Frege suggests no bar—to more than one thinker gaining access to the referents of others’ first-person thoughts, i.e. to the thinker who would express those thoughts by using the first-person. Although the issues surrounding the possibility of inaccessible thoughts are delicate, the availability of alternative and less radical responses to the conflict suggests that rejection of (V) should be considered only as a last resort.

One such response surfaces in Frege’s unpublished ‘Logic’ of 1897, especially in [E]:

[B] A thought is something impersonal. … [C] A sentence like ‘I am cold’ may seem to be a counter-example to our thesis that a thought is independent of the person thinking it, in so far as it can be true for one person and false for another, and thus not true in itself. The reason for this is that the sentence expresses a different thought in the mouth of one person from what it expresses in the mouth of another. In this case the mere words do not contain the entire sense: we have in addition to take into account who utters it. … [D] It is not necessary that the person who feels cold should himself give utterance to the thought that he feels cold. [E] Another person can do this by using a name to designate the one who feels cold. (PW: 134–5)

[B] gives expression to something close to principle (V), the impersonal accessibility of thought. Frege’s response to the demand imposed by that principle emerges in [D] and [E]. [E] might then be taken to express the following claim:

[E1] Strong impersonal expressibility by name. Any thought that would be expressed by an individual, S1, in using a sentence containing ‘I’, can be expressed by any individual, S2, where it may be that S1 ≠ S2, through the use of a sentence containing any name of S1 in place of ‘I’ (and perhaps involving other adjustments to context).

For example, the thought that Frege expressed by use of the sentence form ‘I am cold’ could have then (around the time of Frege’s utterance) been expressed by another’s use of the form ‘Frege is cold’ or ‘Gottlob is cold’. (If later expression of that thought were possible, then it would be via e.g. ‘Frege was cold’.)

Principle (I) has it that sense determines possible distributions of attitude. It is plausible that one might grasp thoughts through engagement with each of two sentences involving different but co-referential proper names and yet take conflicting attitudes towards those thoughts, by believing one of the thoughts and failing to believe the other. From (I) it follows that the thoughts grasped                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        of a point Evans put as follows: ‘Reference, as a communicative phenomenon, involves getting an audience to think of the right object (the intended object). Obviously, thinking of an object does not consist in getting oneself to think of the right object (the intended object).’ (Evans, 1982: 208) The continuation certainly doesn’t give expression to recognition of a fundamental conflict between [A] and the various claims about the impersonality of thought made in the surrounding context.

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through engagement with uses of those two sentences differ in their constituent senses. As is well known, acceptance of that result was a core component of Frege’s thinking about the expression of thought through language. And the result, as stated here, is independently plausible. (Controversy typically centres on two more delicate issues. The first issue concerns the extent to which the more minimal result can be used as a basis for deriving the stronger result that co-referential proper names—qua expression types—can express different senses, where the ‘expression’ relation is determined to obtain by features of the standing meaning of expression types. That might be denied if there were grounds for thinking that the meaning of a name determines only its reference, while the association of senses with uses of expressions is determined by broadly pragmatic mechanisms.25 The second concerns the extent to which each proper name expresses a single proprietary sense. That might be denied on the ground that an argument based solely on principle (I) can show, at most, that each individual can associate different senses with two co-referential proper names and cannot be used to show that different individuals should associate the same senses with a single proper name.26)

When [E1] is viewed through the lens provided by the minimal result that names can be used to give expression to different senses, it has as a consequence that different sentences can be used to give expression to the same thought despite their expressing different component senses. For example, suppose that ‘Frege’ and ‘Gottlob’ differ in sense despite their both referring to Frege. On that supposition, principle (II)—according to which thought determines sense—delivers the result that ‘Frege is cold’ and ‘Gottlob is cold’ can be used to express different thoughts. However, [E1] entails that either sentence form could have been used to give expression to the thought that Frege expressed with the form ‘I am cold’. Hold fixed the assumption that the co-referential names ‘Frege’ and ‘Gottlob’ can be used to express different senses, so that the two sentence forms express different senses. Assume in addition that the two sentence forms give expression only to two different senses and thus that there is no third sense to which both give expression. Finally, suppose that the sentence forms each give expression to at most one thought. It follows that there is a thought—expressible by Frege through use of ‘I am cold’—that is not individuated entirely at the level of sense. On the further assumption that the only common factor amongst the set of possible names of an individual is the reference of those names, it would appear to follow that such thoughts are individuated, in part, at the level of reference. It follows from [E1], together with the various side assumptions we’ve just exploited, that principles (II) and (IV) are to be rejected: thought does not determine sense, since the same thought might be associated with a variety of constituent senses; and for closely related reasons, grasp of thought does not determine grasp of sense, since one might grasp a thought by grasping any of a variety of constituent senses.

                                                                                                               25 The locus classicus for this approach is Salmon 1986. 26 See Dummett 1978, Heck 1995, 2002.

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Does [E1] represent Frege’s considered response to the tension amongst our principles? There are three main reasons for thinking that it does not.

First, the same side assumptions that we exploited in deriving rejection of (II) and (IV) with respect to first-person thought sustain a more general consequence. For if ‘Frege is cold’ and ‘Gottlob is cold’ express the same thought as Frege’s ‘I am cold’, then they express the same thought as each other. In general, then, it follows from [E1] and the side assumptions that sentences that differ only in containing different but co-referential names will all express the same thought. So, the claim that the thoughts expressed by use of the first-person are individuated in part at the level of reference is apt to globalize to the claim that thoughts expressed by use of any proper name are individuated in part at the level of reference.27 And the global costs of that consequence to Frege’s overall account clearly outweigh the more local benefits. The consequence might be somewhat tempered by weakening the side assumptions as they apply to proper names. For instance, one might allow that sentences involving proper names can be used to give expression to multiple thoughts only some of which are also expressible by use of the first-person and so individuated in part at the level of reference. But in that case we would require justification for not extending that allowance to the first-person and so allowing that at least some thoughts expressed by the first-person—some first-person thoughts—are individuated at the level of sense. And if we allow the extension, then we would have failed to provide an adequate treatment of the conflict between [A] and principles (III)–(V).28

Second, and by far the most serious objection to the inclusion of [E1] in Frege’s mature scheme, is that it is in direct conflict with Frege’s explicit discussion of the issue in ‘The Thought’:

[F] Dr. Gustav Lauben says, ‘I was wounded’, Leo Peter hears this and remarks some days later, ‘Dr. Gustav Lauben was wounded’. Does this sentence express the same thought as the one Dr. Lauben uttered himself? Suppose that Rudolph Lingens was present when Dr. Lauben spoke and now hears what is related by Leo Peter. [G] If the same thought was uttered by Dr. Lauben and Leo Peter, then Rudolph Lingens, who is fully master of the language and remembers what Dr. Lauben said in his presence, must now know at once from Leo Peter’s report that he is speaking of the same thing. … [H] But it is … possible that Rudolph Lingens does not know Dr. Lauben personally and does not know that it was Dr. Lauben who recently said ‘I was wounded.’ In this case Rudolph Lingens cannot know that the same affair is in question. I say, therefore, in this case: the thought which Leo Peter expresses is not the same as that which Dr. Lauben uttered. (CP: 358–359)

This passage is of critical importance for at least two reasons. First, it provides the clearest possible evidence that, at this late stage, Frege reflected carefully on the application of his usual criteria for the individuation of senses to thoughts                                                                                                                27 Thus Dummett claims that acceptance of the view in question requires acceptance ‘that a name contributes to a thought only in virtue of its reference.’ (1981b: 119) 28 Edward Harcourt presents a version of the ‘multiple sense’ view in his 2001. His account therefore fails to deal with the conflict, as he in effect acknowledges. His account also fails to deal with the second and third objections to the present account.

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expressed by use of the first-person. The precise form of the criterion that Frege employs here differs slightly from that ensconced in principle (I), but its spirit is closely aligned with that principle:

[G1] Necessarily, for all utterances U1, U2, thoughts T1, T2, constituent referents R1, R2, and times t, where utterance U1 expresses thought T1 and thereby makes constituent reference to R1 and utterance U2 express thought T2 and thereby makes constituent reference to R2, if T1 = T2 then anyone who understood U1 and U2 and at t retained awareness of the thoughts thereby expressed would be in a position at t to know that R1 = R2.29 Second, it contains an important conclusion of that reflection, with respect to

a case involving a use of the first-person and of a co-referential proper name. Frege’s argument can be reconstructed as follows:

[F1] Lauben’s utterance of ‘I was wounded’ expresses thought T1 and thereby makes constituent reference to R1 (Lauben). [F2] Peter’s utterance of ‘Dr. Gustav Lauben was wounded’ expresses thought T2 and thereby makes constituent reference to R2 (Lauben). [F3] Lingens understood Lauben’s utterance and at t retains awareness of the thought, T1, thereby expressed. [F4] Lingens understood Peter’s utterance and at t retains awareness of the thought, T2, thereby expressed. [H1] It is possible that Lingens is not in a position at t to know that R1 = R2. [H2] The thought Lauben expressed, T1, ≠ the thought that Peter expressed, T2 [from [G1]–[H1]]. One reading of the conclusion that Frege draws from the argument sketch in

[F]–[H] is the following: [H3] Strong failure of impersonal expressibility by name. No thought that would be expressed by any individual, S1, in using a sentence containing ‘I’, can be expressed by any individual, S2, where S1 ≠ S2, in using a sentence containing a name of S1 in place of ‘I’.30

[H3] is, of course, in direct conflict with [E1]. A natural explanation for the shift would be that, at some point between 1897 and 1918, Frege became aware of the radical consequence of [E1] noted above—that it makes space for a form of expressed thought that is individuated in part at the level of reference—and recoiled to a view more in keeping with other stable elements of his position.

The heroic line at this point would involve an attempted defence of [E1], in the face of the clear counter-evidence, on the grounds that [E] constitutes an explicit endorsement of [E1]. However, a less demanding reading of [E] is available, and provides the third reason for not ascribing to Frege a stable commitment to [E1]. For [E] only requires that the same thought can be expressed by use of a co-referring name, and perhaps only in propitious circumstances. It makes no explicit guarantee that such a thought is expressible through the use of any co-referring name in any circumstance. Moreover, Frege’s

                                                                                                               29 For Frege’s account of the connection between the principles, see e.g. PMC: 80. 30 See May 2006a: 499.

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liberal usage allows that, for him, indexical expressions count as names. 31 According to the less demanding line, [E] would be interpreted in accord with [E2], rather than [E1]:

[E2] Intermediate impersonal expressibility by name. There are cases in which the thought that would be expressed by an individual, S1, in using a sentence containing ‘I’, could be expressed by an individual, S2, where S1 ≠ S2, in using a sentence containing any indexical name of S1 in place of ‘I’ (and perhaps involving other adjustments to context).

Corresponding to this, [H4] would replace [H3] as the proper interpretation of [H]:

[H4] Intermediate failure of impersonal expressibility by name. No thought that would be expressed by any individual, S1, in using a sentence containing ‘I’, can be expressed by any individual, S2, where S1 ≠ S2, in using a sentence containing a non-indexical name of S1 in place of ‘I’. So interpreted, [E] is not undermined by inconsistency with [H]. And on the

assumption that co-referential uses of indexical forms can give expression to different sense-like elements, [E2] provides some evidence that Frege’s considered view might yet involve rejection of principle (IV). For on the assumption that grasp of sense corresponds with its expression, so that grasp of a thought as expressed by use of a sentence form requires grasp of all the senses expressed by that form, together with the assumption that co-referential indexicals can differ in the senses they are used to express, [E2] entails that the same thought can be grasped through grasp of non-convergent senses. The key difference between this proposal and the proposal built around [E1] is that on the present proposal co-reference is not sufficient for sameness of thought. Sameness of thought requires, in addition, co-reference as determined through the use of indexicals.

Pursuing that line, one swiftly reaches an interpretation proposed originally by Michael Dummett, and resuscitated in part, and in a more developed form, in recent work by Robert May.32 According to May’s interpretation, thoughts expressed through use of indexicals are grasped—engaged at first order—through grasp of modes of presence for their present references, where it is the present reference, rather than the way it is present, that determines the nature of thought that is grasped:

… the notion of present reference, that is, reference present in this way or that, plays a role parallel to the role played by sense, more precisely, mode of presentation, in the account of identity statements that contain proper names. But there is a difference, in that the way the reference is present is not part of the thought expressed by sentences containing demonstratives or indexicals, whereas the way it is presented is part of the

                                                                                                               31 Bermudez (2005: 184) notes this interpretative possibility with respect to Frege’s use of ‘name’ in [E]. 32 See Dummett, 1973/1992: 384ff and May 2006a. As noted by May, his position is very close to the one defended in propria persona by John Perry as—on Perry’s view—an optimal replacement for Frege’s position. See Perry 1977/2000.

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thought expressed when there are proper names instead. (May, 2006: 508, my italicization)

Modes of presence are similar in many respects to modes of presentation—i.e. senses. In particular, they are individuated by an analogue of principle (I). However, unlike modes of presentation, they do not figure in—and so are not determined by—thoughts. While indexicals express modes of presentation, the modes of presentation they carry do not determine reference. Determination of reference for indexicals is the job of modes of presence.

May doesn’t provide a great deal of direct evidence that the distinction between modes of presentation and modes of presence is to be discerned in Frege’s later writing.33 However, some evidence is provided at an earlier point in Frege’s work. As Michael Kremer points out, one of Frege’s earliest discussions of ways of being given objects—in Grundlagen—appears to equivocate between a generic and a specific reading for ways.34 The apparent equivocation occurs during a discussion of identity statements in which a direction is given in more than one generic way, first as a direction and then in some other way. Here, there is no requirement that ways determine reference; rather, they impose generic constraints on reference. Suppose that we were unable to comprehend such identities, so that objects could only be given in one generic way. In that case, according to Frege,

All identities would then amount simply to this, that whatever is given to us in the same way is to be reckoned the same. This, however, is a principle so obvious and so sterile as not to be worth stating. (Frege, 1884/1953: §67)

At this point, Frege has shifted to considering specific ways of being given objects, ways that are required to determine reference. Kremer takes this equivocation as evidence that Frege’s ‘conception of what it is for an object to be ‘given’ was not yet completely fixed’ (Kremer, 2010: 246, fn.37). However, an alternative view,

                                                                                                               33 The main piece of evidence that May presents in favour of his interpretation appears to be the following. Frege claims that indexicals and demonstratives ‘only acquire their full sense through the circumstances in which they are used.’ (PW: 135). Now make three assumptions (i) that the same sense can be full or not, (ii) that what makes a sense full is its acquisition of reference, and (iii) that, independently of their use, indexicals and demonstratives carry senses apt to become full. It then follows from what Frege says that indexicals and demonstratives have senses that fail to determine reference. These would be modes of presentation for indexicals and demonstratives. The elements operative in their becoming full—acquiring reference—would then be modes of presence. See May 2006a: 493. May (2006a: 494) offers some evidence for an analogue of assumption (i), from Frege’s discussion of the inessentiality of reference to some thoughts expressible by use of proper names, at PW: 191. However, Frege fails there to characterize thoughts that lack reference as not containing full senses. Finally, May rests much weight on his claim that Frege holds that—at least in cases not involving indexicals or demonstratives—senses are invariantly expressed, a claim defended in May 2006b. Even if that claim were accepted in the general case, it would take argument to show that the considerations driving Frege in the general case are applicable in the special case of indexicals and demonstratives. As far as I can ascertain, May provides no further defence of the requisite assumptions. 34 See Kremer 2010: 244–6, especially fn.37.

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more in accord with May’s reading, would be that Frege here exhibits a willingness to make appeal both to generic and particular ways of being given objects and that, absent evidence to the contrary, it is plausible that he retained that willingness throughout his career, albeit in conjunction with a greater sensitivity to the distinction between the generic and the specific. On the alternative view, Frege was thus in a position when he came to consider indexicals to make use of both generic and specific ways of being given objects in accounting for grasp of thoughts expressed through the use of indexicals, including the first-person. Thus, he might have distinguished amongst the ways of being presented associated with indexicals between generic ways—corresponding with May’s modes of presentation—and specific ways—corresponding with May’s modes of presence.

May sometimes suggests that modes of presentation correspond one-one with types of indexical, so that for example the mode of presentation expressed by ‘I’ differs from that expressed by ‘you’. By imposing that requirement, May is able to identify modes of presentation with (analogues of) specific characters or rules of use—rules that constrain reference—for the different types of indexicals.35 On that view, however, it would be impossible for two thinkers to both grasp a particular first-person thought, since they would be unable to grasp the same mode of presentation of that thought on pain of their both being required to give expression to that thought by use of a single type of indexical—required, that is, to both give expression to the thought by use of ‘I’. However, the capacity of a proposal like May’s to deal with the conflict amongst our Fregean principles requires that more than one person can grasp a given first-person thought. That requires at a minimum that any thought that can be expressed by a thinker’s use of ‘I’ can also be expressed by another thinker by use of an indexical that can refer to the first thinker—for instance, by use of ‘you’, ‘him’, ‘her’, or ‘they’. And—on the assumption that modes of presentation are constituents of thoughts—that requires that the pertinent range of indexicals can be used to give expression to the same mode of presentation, despite their differing in the modes of presence through which an indexically expressed thought is grasped.36

May continues: In this regard, the notion of present reference bears a family resemblance to Frege’s notion in Begriffsshrift (and carried on to a large extent in Grundlagen) of conceptual content, on which the determination of an object (its Bestimmungsweise) is to be

                                                                                                               35 E.g. May 2006a: 491–2, 502, 515. 36 May’s discussion at 503–4 suggests that, in order to retain the alignment of first-person senses with a specific rule of use for ‘I’, together with the determination of sense by thought, he may be willing to accept the result that only knowledge of first-person reference is shareable and that some first-person thoughts are not shareable. An alternative would be to reject the assumption that modes of presentations are constituents (or are determined by) thoughts. However, one would then need an alternative ground for the restriction written into [H4] that indexical thoughts can only be re-expressed through use of indexicals.

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distinguished from the object itself, where only the latter is part of content. (May, 2006a: 508)

Thus it is possible for a particular thought to be grasped in any of a variety of ways, each corresponding to one of the variety of ways in which the thought’s constituent references can be present to a thinker. Different thinkers can grasp a first-person thought through their grasp of the mode of presentation expressed by some variety of indexicals together with the idiosyncratic modes of presence through which they target the reference of the thought. On this view [A1] is taken to apply only to modes of presence and not modes of presentation. By contrast, [A2] is taken to apply only to modes of presentation and not modes of presence, since only the former and not the latter are constituents of thoughts.

The view as presented to this point is unsatisfactory. This can be seen by a simple extension of the case that Frege used to undermine [E1]. Suppose that Lauben’s initial utterance of ‘I was wounded’ took place in a dimly lit room. It is possible in that case that, although Lingens grasped the thought that Lauben then expressed and retained grasp of the thought at some later time, he might at that later time fail to recognize Lauben as the referent of that thought. In that case, it would be possible for him to grasp the thought expressed at the later time by Peter’s utterance of ‘He was wounded’, made in reference to Lauben, without thereby being in a position to know that the referent of the thought expressed by Lauben is the same as the referent of the thought expressed by Peter. We thus have the basis for an analogue of Frege’s argument against [E1] that applies against the version of [E2] currently under consideration:

[F1'] Lauben’s utterance of ‘I was wounded’ expresses thought T1 and thereby makes constituent reference to R1 (Lauben). [F2'] Peter’s utterance of ‘He was wounded’ expresses thought T2 and thereby makes constituent reference to R2 (Lauben). [F3'] Lingens understood Lauben’s utterance and at t retains awareness of the thought, T1, thereby expressed. [F4'] Lingens understood Peter’s utterance and at t retains awareness of the thought, T2, thereby expressed. [H1'] It is possible that Lingens is not in a position at t to know that R1 = R2. [H2'] The thought Lauben expressed, T1, ≠ the thought that Peter expressed, T2 [from [G1]–[H1']].

The view presented to this point requires supplementation. And the supplement must foreclose on the possibility that a thinker might grasp a thought twice and yet fail to be in a position to know that the constituent referents of the twice-grasped thought are the same.

On the assumption that modes of presence are able to play the functional role played by senses in Frege’s more general account (as per principles (I) and (II)), one way of foreclosing on that possibility would be to build modes of presence into the thoughts expressed by indexicals. In that way, it would be ensured that it is impossible for a thinker to grasp a particular thought in more than one way, through engagement with different modes of presence. It would thereby be made impossible for a thinker to take conflicting attitudes towards the same thought (as per principle (I)) or to fail to be in a position to recognize that

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different engagements with the thought determine the same reference. However, on the assumption that there are modes of presence associated with thinkers’ first-person thoughts about themselves that cannot be shared—as per [A1], on the present account—that way of proceeding is closed off.

On the present account, what shared grasp of a thought requires is not shared grasp of a particular range of modes of presence, but rather preservation of a particular range of modes of presentation together with knowledge of a particular range of constituent references, including knowledge of co-reference. More carefully, May can be read as proposing that shared knowledge of reference can do duty for shared grasp of a thought. May accepts that, in cases where a thought is expressed through non-indexical means, that will require preservation of grasp of a particular range of reference determining elements—modes of presentation that determine reference or modes of presence. However, he holds that preservation of grasp of such elements is not required where a thought is expressed through the use of indexicals. Rather, in the case of thoughts expressed through the use of indexicals, May holds that mutual knowledge of reference and co-reference can be secured through, for example, joint attention to an object, without requiring in addition that the object be present (or presented) to communicators in precisely the same way. Thus, on this interpretation, subjects are able in some cases to meet the necessary condition in [G1] through their abilities to keep track of context-bound indexical references and so to recognize, in certain circumstances, sameness of reference across uses of indexicals.37 On that basis, the view that some thoughts are not individuated solely at the level of the modes of presence or presentation through which they are grasped—that they are partly individuated at the level of reference—can be defended in the face of [G1].38 Although May holds that such thoughts are not shareable, since they contain modes of presentation that cannot be shared, we’ve indicated a way in which that feature of his account might be finessed, through a suitably generic conception of the pertinent range of modes of presentation. (May’s own proposal is best viewed as a version of the third response, developed below.) The second response thus allows that all first person thoughts can be shared. I’ll return to the assessment of the second proposal after considering a third response to the conflict amongst our principles. The present response and the third response have important commonalities and it will be economical to assess them together.

                                                                                                               37 See e.g. May, 2006a: 504 and cp. Evans 1981/1985: 306–11, on cognitive dynamics. 38 As noted, it may be that May does not endorse the present proposal in full. Some of his discussion of the need to respond to the unshareability of first-person modes of presence suggests that he wants an account of first-person thoughts on which they are shareable. However, his discussion of the un-shareability of thoughts containing analogues of rules of use for the first person suggests that he is willing to allow that some thoughts are un-shareable and to mitigate that result through appeal to shared knowledge of the reference of thoughts. Even if May doesn’t endorse the proposal, it can stand on its own merits.

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The third response to the conflict assigns blame to principle (III), according to which the mode of access to thoughts that must be shareable according to principle (I) takes the form of grasp. Thus, according to a different and later response to the conflict offered by Dummett:

Where Frege took a false step was in arguing that communication must involve the hearer’s thinking the very same thought as that voiced by the speaker, whereas all that is necessary is that he should attach the same significance to the words as the speaker does. (Dummett, 1981b: 127) The communication of a thought from a speaker to an auditor requires that

the speaker and the auditor both access the thought, and thereby attach the same significance—the same thought—to the speaker’s utterance. What it doesn’t require, according to Dummett, is that they both think the thought. That is, in present terms, it doesn’t require that they both grasp the thought.39

Dummett does not attribute to Frege a rejection of principle (III). Rather, he views (III) as a commitment of Frege’s that—unlike principles (IV) and (V) and the view expressed in [A]—is neither central nor independently well motivated.40 Because of its lack of centrality or independent grounding, Dummett believes that principle (III) can safely be excised from Frege’s system in order to restore consistency. By contrast, Gareth Evans takes the obviousness of the conflict between the principles—together, presumably, with the greater centrality in Frege’s thinking of (IV) and (V)—to indicate that the combination of (III) with (V) might better be construed as ‘a slight overstatement’ of Frege’s position, rather than as an ‘indispensable tenet’ (Evans: 1981: 312–3). Evans doesn’t treat (III) and (V) as distinct principles in his interpretation of Frege and so doesn’t explicitly commit to the interpretative possibility considered here. However, he does go on—in propria persona—to single out (III) as the villain. One natural prediction, therefore, would be that, had Evans been offered the choice, he would have attributed to Frege a reflective willingness to restore consistency by rejecting principle (III).41

Two general accounts might be offered for how access to a thought is possible in the absence of grasp of that thought. And those accounts may be variously combined. Since there is no way of accessing thought that doesn’t depend on grasp of a thought, either account makes access to a thought that does not proceed via grasp of that thought indirect. The first account has it that access to a target thought requires grasp of a thought with at least the same                                                                                                                39 See also Evans 1982, Kripke 2005, Künne 1997, McDowell 1984/1998, Noonan 1984, Peacocke 1981. It may be that Dummett’s apparent friendliness towards both the second account and the third account is to be explained on the basis of the claim, developed further below, that there is less to the dispute between the two interpretations than might at first appear. For a defence of a version of the latter suggestion, with specific reference to Perry, see Evans 1981/1985. 40 See also McDowell, 1984/1998: 223. 41 See Evans 1982: 40, 315–6. See also McDowell 1984/1998. The question whether this would have been Evans’ considered view is complicated somewhat by his 1981/1985 argument that his preferred account and Perry’s may be notational variants of one another, a conclusion questioned by McDowell 1984/1998: 221, fn.21.

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component references as the target. The second account has it that access can proceed via grasp of a thought about the target thought, that is via grasp of a thought with the target thought as its reference. Typically, the two accounts have been combined, so that a subject is taken to achieve access to a target thought just in case they grasp a thought with the same component references as the target and they know, or are in a position to know, that the thought they grasp has the same component references as the target. And for reasons given in discussing May’s proposal, the second component of the combined account is required. For the first component of the combined account fails to rule out the possibility that one might gain access to a thought twice-over, by accessing thoughts with the same constituent references, without thereby being in a position to know that the references of the two thoughts are the same, so flouting [G1]. Cases wherein a subject does grasp the target thought itself, rather than a proxy, may then be taken to constitute a limiting case. In the limiting case, shared grasp of the constituent senses of the thought suffices to put subjects in a position to know that they grasp elements with the same component references, as required by [G1]. 4. GRASP, SENSE, AND DISAGREEMENT As noted above the second and third accounts articulated above are very similar. They agree, first, in denying that all the senses or sense-like elements—that is, all the modes of presentation or modes of presence—that thinkers associate with first-person thoughts can be shared. And they agree, second, in accepting that more than one thinker can engage a thought that determines the same reference and constituent referents as a first-person thought. They differ in the first instance in their respective classificatory preferences. The second account holds, and the third account denies, that what is shared between the subject-referent of a first-person thought and others should be counted as grasp of a particular thought. And the two positions disagree about that because the third account holds, while the second account denies, that only what determines all associated senses and sense-like elements can count as a thought. That is, the two accounts disagree over the truth of principle (II), when that principle is extended to include modes of presence amongst the senses. And they disagree over that only because, although they both include senses amongst the constituents of thoughts, the third account includes modes of presence amongst the senses, while the second account includes only modes of presentation amongst the senses. Of course, the differences are not merely differences in classificatory preferences, since the differences in classificatory preference figure into determining the global explanatory roles of thoughts and senses. Nonetheless, the core features of the two accounts are closely aligned. One serious difficulty facing both responses is presented by the need to show that it is superior to the other, given the proximity of the two responses. I won’t pursue that issue here. Rather, I’ll exploit their affinities—in particular, the fact that both deny the possibility of shared grasp of modes of presence—in objecting to both at once.

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The basic objection to both accounts is that they are supported only to the extent that it is not true that shared first-order engagement with sense-like elements—grasp of both modes of presentation and modes of presence—has a fundamental and well-motivated role in the architecture of Frege’s account. More precisely, the two accounts are supported just to the extent that second-order engagement with thoughts can serve the functions that Frege elsewhere assigns to first-order engagement with senses. And we’ve already seen some reason for thinking that the required condition is not satisfied. For Frege makes appeal to first-order engagement with senses in order to capture central properties of cases of agreement and disagreement and it is far from clear that those properties can be captured by appeal to second-order engagement with senses or sense-like elements.

To begin, consider how an appeal to senses figures in accounting for ordinary first-order cases of genuine agreement and disagreement. 42 Here, it is not sufficient for genuine disagreement between thinkers S1 and S2 that S1 stands in an attitudinal relation to thought T1, S2 stands in a conflicting attitudinal relation to thought T2 and the referents of T1 and T2 are the same—for instance, because both determine reference to the True. For example, suppose that Bill believes that snow is white, while Jill denies that grass is green. That is not sufficient for Bill and Jill to disagree. And it is not sufficient for genuine disagreement that thinkers stand in conflicting attitudinal relations to thoughts whose referents are necessarily the same. For example, suppose that Bill believes that 2 + 2 = 4, while Jill denies that Peano arithmetic is incomplete. That is not sufficient for Bill and Jill to disagree. Furthermore, it is not sufficient for genuine disagreement that thinkers stand in conflicting attitudinal relations to thoughts whose constituent referents are the same. For example, suppose that Bill believes that Hesperus twinkles, while Jill denies that Phosphorus twinkles. That is not sufficient for Bill and Jill to disagree. Plausibly, it is a necessary condition on thinkers’ agreeing or disagreeing that they engage the same senses (or sense-like elements, including modes of presence).43 Moreover, it is plausibly a necessary condition that they engage senses or sense-like elements that determine that the previous conditions on sameness of reference are met. For suppose that Bill and Jill engage a mode of presentation that fails to determine constituent reference, e.g. the generic mode of presentation associated with the sentence ‘That planet twinkles’. In that

                                                                                                               42 It is not crucial that the required notions of genuine agreement and disagreement track any ordinary notion of agreement and disagreement. What is crucial is, rather, that the required notions track real joints in the structure of inter-personal rational engagement that can play an important role in understanding and appraising cases of such engagement. Assuming that that crucial presupposition holds, we can treat claims about genuine agreement and disagreement as stipulations. 43 This condition might be weakened slightly in cases where disagreement turns on basic logical principles. For instance, disagreement that doesn’t turn on shared engagement with a single range of senses or sense-like elements might be implemented in cases where one thinker endorses a thought T1 while another thinker rejects a thought T2 that follows from T1 by a single application of a basic logical principle.

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case, Bill might endorse that mode of presentation while Jill rejects it, and yet both might be correct. So again, their shared engagement with that mode would not suffice to implement a genuine disagreement. Plausibly, then, it is a necessary condition on thinkers genuinely agreeing or disagreeing is that they share engagement with—by adopting conflicting attitudes towards—modes of presentation or presence that suffice to determine constituent referents.44

The claim that genuine agreement and disagreement are dependent on shared engagement at the level of sense (or sense-like elements) is further supported by the plausibility of the thought that what goes for agreement and disagreement goes mutatis mutandis for rationality and irrationality, where the former requires an analogue of agreement with oneself and the latter involves an analogue of disagreement with oneself. Plausibly, indeed, inter-personal agreement and disagreement are subject to requirements analogous to those that govern intra-personal rationality and irrationality. Wherever is it possible for an individual thinker at a time to rationally take conflicting attitudes to thoughts T1 and T2, it is plausible that two thinkers’ taking those attitudes would not amount to their disagreeing. It could not amount to their genuinely disagreeing with respect to the target thought, since it is consistent with either thinker adopting the others’ attitude towards the target whilst retaining their initial attitude towards the target without thereby compromising their rationality. And in cases where one’s coming to adopt an interlocutor’s attitude to a thought would require no consequent adjustment to one’s other pre-adoption attitudes, there is no reason to view the pre-adoption position as implementing disagreement in anything but an attenuated sense. Alternatively, wherever it is not possible for an individual at a time rationally to take conflicting attitudes, it is plausible for the same reasons that, were the conflicting attitudes to be distributed between two thinkers, it would suffice for their disagreeing with one another. So it is plausible that demands on inter-personal agreement and disagreement track demands on intra-personal rationality and irrationality. And the latter demands on intra-personal

                                                                                                               44 I believe that each of the conditions considered here—sameness of truth-value, necessary sameness of truth-value, and sameness of constituent reference—is a necessary condition on genuine agreement or disagreement. Some views seek to implement (analogues of) agreement and disagreement by appeal to shared grasp of sense-like elements that do not ensure that those necessary conditions are met. For instance, they allow that the pertinent range of sense-like elements only determine reference with respect to parameters that may not be shared across putatively agreeing or disagreeing parties—e.g. parameters of standards of taste, epistemic standards, or moral standards. Such views are subject to significant problems in reconstructing appropriate analogues of ordinary cases of genuine agreement and disagreement. For detailed discussions see e.g. MacFarlane 2007, Dreier 2008. In my view, the problems trace precisely to the fact that such views divorce the locus of agreement and disagreement—their sense-like elements—from what determines that the required conditions are met. If that’s right, then it provides confirmation of Frege’s view that the sense-like elements through which thoughts are grasped must determine those thoughts and so must determine truth-value and constituent referents.

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agreement and disagreement track the individuation conditions for senses and sense-like elements enshrined in principle (I).

It is plausible, then, that genuine agreement and disagreement can only be captured by appeal to shared engagement with the same senses or sense-like elements—that is, shared engagement with elements that are subject to principle (I). And it follows—and is anyway independently plausible—that thinkers who meet the conditions imposed on shared access to a thought by the two accounts currently under discussion might yet fail to be in a position to agree or disagree at first order with respect to that thought. Thus, where a thinker accepts a first-person thought that refers to them—say, the thought that they are hungry—it might be impossible for another thinker to agree or disagree with them about that. Although the second thinker rejects a thought with the same reference, that necessarily has the same reference, and that has the same constituent references as the first thinker’s thought, we’ve seen that that will not suffice for their disagreeing with the first thinker. What is required for first-order disagreement is that the second thinker rejects a thought with the same senses and sense-like elements as the thought that the first thinker accepts. And that is impossible, according to the accounts presently being considered.

Two questions arise at this point. The first question is: How problematic is that result in the context of Frege’s system? The second question is: To what extent can its problematic consequences be mitigated through appeal to second-order attitudes?

The answer to the first question is that the result is potentially disastrous. It is an immediate black mark against an account that it fails to provide for genuine cases of first-order agreement and disagreement with respect to all first-person thoughts, for there is no independent plausibility to that result. We ordinarily don’t find any difficulty in allowing for the possibility of agreement or disagreement with respect to any of the thoughts we associate with uses of the first-person, or any special difficulty in getting those thoughts across to others in a way that can facilitate agreement or disagreement. (We may find certain sorts of disagreement odd, due to the special authority accorded to some attitudes adopted by the subject-referent of some first-person thoughts. But that type of asymmetry between the subject-referent of first-person thoughts and others is not plausibly seen as deriving from the impossibility of disagreement, in part because it does nothing to undermine—and indeed appears positively to require—the possibility of agreement.)

The possibility of agreement or disagreement with respect to a thought is a necessary condition on rational engagement with that thought, or with a thinker with respect to that thought. So thoughts that cannot serve as loci of inter-personal agreement or disagreement are outside the bounds of inter-personal rational engagement. At most, it seems that third-personal access to such thoughts might help support the provision of a diagnosis for why the subject-referent of the thoughts adopts the pattern of attitudes that they do. Access to such thoughts that does not sustain the possibility of genuine agreement or disagreement cannot further rational dispute with the thinker, even where that

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dispute surfaces at points over which rational dispute is possible. For instance, suppose that a thinker reasons from an un-shareable first-person thought that is true just in case that thinker is cold to the thought that someone is cold. In that case, one might agree or disagree with the consequent thought and so might engage rationally with the thinker over the standing of that thought. But it would not be possible to pursue one’s agreement or disagreement with the thinker at that point back to its source in their un-shareable first-person thought. Although one may in such cases be in a position to assess their un-shareable first-person thought for truth or falsehood, and perhaps even for reasonableness or unreasonableness—its being held rationally or irrationally—it would be impossible rationally to engage with what one assessed in that way. And it would be impossible to move from appraising such a thought as true to adopting an attitude of endorsement with the thought as content, to move from accepting that the target thought is true to accepting the target thought. It is not clear what functions would be served by third-personal access to such un-shareable thoughts, other than the diagnostic function mentioned above.45

Furthermore, and as we saw above, the central ground for the basic architecture of Frege’s account—his treatment of attitudes as relations to thoughts—depends upon the role of that architecture in capturing the possibility of genuine agreement and disagreement. In cases where that ground is absent—cases where genuine agreement and disagreement is impossible—special pleading would be required to defend a treatment of those cases in accord with the same relational architecture. A convincing plea in favour of a treatment by appeal to relations to thoughts would be required to show the following. First, it would need to show that, despite the crucial difference between the target cases and those cases where agreement and disagreement is possible, there are enough appropriate similarities to underwrite application of a relational architecture in both cases. For example, an attempt might be made to argue that the target cases have other explanatory features in common with the basic cases, or that some other motivation is available for applying the same relational architecture to the target cases. Second, it would need to be shown that the relata required by an adequate account of the target cases are of the same type as those required in the basic cases—i.e. that in both cases attitudes are relations to thoughts—despite the fact that those relata don’t play the same explanatory roles in both the basic and the target cases. I lack space here to foreclose on the possibility that the required motivation might be forthcoming.46 But it should be clear that there is no

                                                                                                               45 E.g. PW: 133–4. It is a more delicate question whether grasp of the same senses and sense-like elements suffices to put thinkers in a position to rationally engage with one another with respect to that thought. Plausibly, the answer is that is does not: it is also required that thinkers know, or be in a position to know, that they grasp the same senses, or that the senses they respectively grasp determine the same referents. For discussion see Byrne and Thau 1996, Heck 1995, 1996, 2002. 46 The most obvious line to pursue would involve appeal to the idea of intra-personal agreement and disagreement, something that might be implemented by the subject-referent of an un-shareable first person thought. But, first, absent the reasons for

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immediate ground for optimism.47 Frege holds that cases wherein agreement and disagreement are impossible can be adequately characterized through exploitation of a non-relational psychology. On Frege’s view, an adequate account of such cases can be provided by appeal only to monadic properties of thinkers, instances of which he refers to as ideas. It is only cases involving the possibility of genuine agreement and disagreement that force departures from the non-relational architecture.48

To what extent can the two accounts’ dire consequences at first order be mitigated by appeal to second-order attitudes? There are two ways in which mitigation might be pursued. First, an attempt might be made to replace the possibility of genuine first-order agreement and disagreement that goes missing on the two accounts with the possibility of genuine second-order agreement and disagreement. Second, an attempt might be made to restore the possibility of genuine first-order disagreement—or some proxy for it—through appeal to second-order attitudes.

The first approach concedes the impossibility of first-order agreement and disagreement with respect to the target cases of first-person thoughts and attempts to mitigate the consequences of that concession by appeal to genuine second-order agreement and disagreement. On this view, it is impossible for one thinker to endorse a first-person thought—say, one they might try to express by use of ‘I am tired’—while another thinker rejects that thought—one they might try to express by use of ‘you are tired’. However, it is possible for a second-order analogue to arise and to be a case of genuine disagreement (or agreement). In such second-order cases, the first thinker might endorse a thought to the effect that the thought they would express by use of ‘I am tired’ is true, while the second thinker might reject a thought to the effect that the thought that they would express by use of ‘you are tired’ is true. And the first approach claims that some such cases can amount to cases of genuine disagreement.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       appeal to a relational psychology that are provided by cases of inter-personal agreement or disagreement, it is not obvious why we should treat the intra-personal retention, or re-emergence, of an attitude as—in the required sense—a case of genuine agreement with one’s earlier self, or why we should treat replacement of an attitude with a conflicting attitude as a case of genuine disagreement with one’s earlier self. And, second, such cases will anyway be possible only if the operative reasons for denying that some first-person thoughts can be shared leave open that appropriately different time-slices of an individual thinker can grasp those thoughts. 47 Note, for example, that appeal to causal or explanatory similarities will carry little weight unless it is shown that the specific relational architecture involved in the basic cases is required to capture them, that such similarities can’t be capture in some other way. See e.g. PW: 143. 48 See e.g. CP: 360–3. One way of reading ‘The Thought’ is as an extended argument that relational psychology is required—and required only—in the treatment of those cases in which genuine agreement and disagreement are possible. The default assumption, from that perspective, is that any case that can be treated by appeal only to monadic properties of thinkers should be. Cp. May 2006a: 498, fn.23, 501–2.

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The main problem with the approach is with the final claim that such cases can amount to cases of genuine disagreement. In order for that claim to be true, the second-order cases must meet the condition we discerned at first order: the second-order engagements with thought must coincide with respect to the senses that they engage. That requires that the modes of presentation or presence of the second-order thoughts—through which the first-order thoughts to which they refer are presented—must converge. However, convergence of sense (or sense-like elements) at second order is ruled out by the impossibility of convergence of sense (or sense-like elements) at first order. For the way in which a thought is present or presented to a thinker of that thought differs from the way in which it can be present or presented to someone who does not think that thought.

More carefully, there are two cases to consider: first, the case in which thinking the second-order thought requires one also to grasp the first-order thought; second the case in which endorsement of the second-order thought can impose no such requirement due to the opaque way in which the second-order thought presents the first-order thought. The first case would correspond with what is often characterized as a canonical second-order mode of presentation (or presence) of a first-order thought.49 The second case would correspond with a non-canonical or opaque mode of presentation (or presence).

The first case looks to be the normal situation of one who thinks the second-order thought and in doing so also thinks the first-order thought. Such cases would include, for example, a case in which one endorses the thought that one endorses the thought that Hesperus twinkles. But someone who cannot think the first-order thought cannot be in that situation, so the requirement imposing form of second-order thought cannot be grasped by pairs of thinkers who cannot also grasp the first-order thought.

The second case, by contrast, can involve more than one thinker of the required second-order thought, since there is no requirement that thinkers that are able to engage the second-order thought can also engage with the first-order target of that thought. Such cases might include, for example, endorsement of the thought that a particular person endorses a thought that is true just in case Hesperus twinkles. For one might adopt that attitude without thinking its first-order target—which may be, for example, the thought that Phosphorous twinkles—so without possessing a capacity to think that first-order thought. However, the second case provides the basis for an account of at most disagreement with respect to some second-order thoughts that refer to an un-shareable first-order thought—namely, those second-order thoughts that fail to require grasp of the first-order thought. There will be no possibility of agreement or disagreement with respect to the second-order thoughts that do present the first-order thoughts in a way that imposes on the thinker a requirement to think the first-order thoughts. So there will be no possibility of agreement or disagreement with respect to second-order thoughts that so present the first-person thoughts that—according to [A1] and [A2]—are partial. Any such partial                                                                                                                49 See e.g. Burge 2005: 167–210, especially 172ff. Cp. also Kripke’s discussion of revelatory modes of presentation of senses, 2008: 187–89.

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first-order thoughts will give rise to partial second-order thoughts, thoughts that cannot therefore be loci of agreement or disagreement. And analogues of that result will be found at each level in the hierarchy of thoughts about thoughts. The first approach therefore fails to implement possible agreement and disagreement with respect to every thought either at second order or at higher orders.

The second approach attempts to restore an analogue of the possibility of first-order agreement and disagreement by appeal to second-order attitudes. The idea guiding the second approach is that genuine disagreement (and agreement) is determined through rational demands on patterns of attitudinal engagement with thoughts. In the basic cases, those demands are enforced by relations between the thoughts engaged in the adoption of first-order attitudes. And that is not possible in the target cases of un-shareable first-person thoughts. However, such demands might be imposed through a combination of first- and second-order attitudes. For instance, if one endorsed a thought T1 and also endorsed the thought that T1 is incompatible with a thought T2 (the thought that it can’t be that T1 and T2 are both true), then retention of one’s attitudes would impose on one a rational requirement not to endorse T2. That is, one would be subject to the rational requirement either to refuse to endorse T2 or to give up one of the incompatible attitudes towards T1. And the imposition of such a demand might appear to be possible even in cases where—absent the operative endorsement of the second-order thought—one might have rationally endorsed both T1 and T2, and so cases in which the constituent senses (or sense-like elements) of those thoughts do not converge. Similarly, according to the second approach, if a thinker adopted the required pattern of attitudes, they might thereby count as in a form of genuine disagreement with a thinker who endorsed T2, despite the fact that none of the second thinker’s attitudes were in rational conflict with any one of the first thinker’s attitudes.

Now it is clear that the second approach is able to deliver circumstances in which two thinkers cannot both be right. If one thinker holds both that T1 and that T1 excludes T2, and a second thinker holds T2, then at least one of the thinkers must be wrong. But it is also clear that the fact that two thinkers can’t both be right doesn’t in general suffice for their instancing a genuine disagreement. For example, it is possible for one thinker to hold that Hesperus twinkles while another thinker denies that Phosphorous twinkles—so that the thinkers have attitudes that cannot both be correct—without the two thinkers genuinely disagreeing. What is required in addition to incompatibility if genuine disagreement is to be implemented? The requirement that fits most naturally with Frege’s account is the one that we exploited above. According to that requirement, there is genuine disagreement between two thinkers with respect to some range of attitudes only if two conditions are met. First, there need be no irrationality involved in a thinker having the relevant attitudes of either thinker. And, second, for an otherwise rational thinker to adopt the relevant range of attitudes of both thinkers, they would thereby have to flout demands of rationality. (On Frege’s account, as explained above, it would therefore be

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impossible for an individual to adopt in a non-derivative way the required range of attitudes, even though they might adopt exhaustive proper sub-sets of the range.) How does the second approach fare with respect to that test?

Again, there are two main cases to consider. The first case is one in which the subject-referent of a first-person thought adopts an attitude towards that thought and a second person attempts to disagree with respect to that attitude through adoption of a suitable range of first- and second-order attitudes. The second case is one in which the subject-referent of a first-person thought adopts an attitude towards that thought, together with a suitable range of first- and second-order attitudes, and a second person attempts to disagree with respect to the attitude towards the first-person thought. The question in both cases is whether anyone could take on the attitudes of the first and second thinker without flouting the demands of rationality. On the assumption that the senses and sense-like elements associated by the first person with the first-person thought cannot be grasped by the second person, or by anyone other than the first person, the test must be carried out in both cases with respect to the first person, the subject-referent of the first-person thought. I shall take the cases in order, starting with the first case.

We know that the second person cannot engage the senses or sense-like elements through which the first person engages the target first-person thought. Hence, the pattern of attitudes held by the second person must differ at the level of sense or sense-like elements from the first person’s attitudes to the first-person thought. So, for example, using brackets to specify the senses and sense-like elements that individual thinkers associate with thoughts, the two thinkers exhibit the following pattern. The second person endorses thought T1 (with sense S1) and the thought that the truth of the thought T1 excludes the truth of the thought T2 (where T2 has sense S2). The first person endorses the thought T3 (with sense S3), where T3 may be identical with T2—the second account holds that it can be, while the third account denies this—but S3 must differ from S2. In that case, however, it seems that the first person can adopt the entire range of attitudes while meeting the demands of rationality. For the difference in associated sense of the first person’s attitudes to T2 and T3 allows that there is no irrationality in the first person holding T1, that T1 excludes T2, and T3.50 Compare here a thinker who holds that Hesperus twinkles, that the truth of the thought that Hesperus twinkles excludes the truth of the thought that it’s not the case that Phosphorous twinkles, and also denies that Venus twinkles. Alternatively, if a thinker can’t adopt the entire range of attitudes, then we have no reason to distinguish S2 and S3. For that distinction must be based upon application of principle (I) (or perhaps [G1]), and such an application requires that a single thinker might exhibit the required pattern of attitudes. Hence, we lack grounds for viewing the first case as involving genuine disagreement between the first and second person.

                                                                                                               50 I assume here that there is no immediate logical connection between T2 and T3.

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Now consider the second case. In that case, nothing rules out sameness of sense across operative thoughts held by the first and second person. Thus, consider a case in which the first person endorses a first-person thought, T1 (with sense S1), together with the thought that the truth of T1 excludes the truth of T2 (with sense S2). In that case, nothing rules out the possibility that a second person endorses T2 (with sense S2). And in that case, the first person cannot without irrationality endorse T1 (with sense S1), the thought that the truth of T1 excludes the truth of T2 (with sense S2), and T2 (with sense S2). Hence, in the second case, we have grounds for treating the first and second person as in genuine disagreement. However, in the second case, the possibility of genuine disagreement depends upon the first person exhibiting a specific range of attitudes in addition to the target attitude towards the first-person thought. Absent the first person’s adoption of the additional pattern of attitudes, there is no way for any second person to pass the test and so genuinely to disagree with the first person. Put another way, disagreement between the two thinkers might lapse without the first person rescinding their endorsement of T1 and without the second person rescinding their endorsement of T2. Furthermore, in the cases we are considering, the most basic disagreement concerns the thinkers’ attitudes to the consequential thought T2 rather than to the target attitude toward the first-person thought. The first-person thought provides a partial explanation for why the first person is rationally committed to denying T2, but it is the denial itself, rather than the explanation, that provides the locus of disagreement. Had the first person denied T2 on some ground other than their endorsement of T1, the very same disagreement would have been implemented. So, although the second case meets the test for genuine disagreement, it fails to provide reason to treat the disagreement it implements as disagreement over the standing of the first-person thought T1.

In neither case, then, is it possible to find an analogue of genuine disagreement over an un-shareable first-person thought. In the first case, the second person is able specifically to target the first-person thought so that if it were a case of genuine disagreement, the first-person thought would serve as a locus for that disagreement. However, the first case does not involve genuine disagreement. In the second case, there is genuine disagreement. However, in the second case, the first-person thought cannot be specifically targeted by the second person as the locus of genuine disagreement. And none of the other approaches to implementing genuine agreement and disagreement that we have considered were successful. It seems, therefore, that neither of the two approaches to resolving the conflict amongst the principles and the claim that there are partial first-person senses or sense-like elements is in any obvious way able to underwrite a fundamental explanatory role for thoughts or senses. Again, I lack space to demonstrate that no such approach is viable, or that some other motivation might be found for classifying what is not shareable, on the two approaches, together with attitudes to shareable thoughts. But again there is no immediate ground for optimism on that score. Moreover, we’ve seen that there

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is substantial motivation, from Frege’s perspective, to endorse the conjunction of principles (I)–(V). 5. CONCLUSION I’ve argued that there are powerful reasons for Frege to retain the fully general versions of principles (I)–(V) presented in section 2. I offered an initial defence of those principles in section 2, and then a more developed defence in section 4, by examining the havoc wrought to Frege’s account by rejection either of principle (III)—the claim that the mode of access to thought that must be shared, according to principle (V), is grasp—or principle (IV)—according to which grasp of a thought requires grasp of a specific range of senses or sense-like elements. An account that fails to include fully general versions of principles (III) and (IV) allows for thoughts that cannot play an essential role in marking points of possible agreement or disagreement amongst thinkers. Marking possible points of agreement or disagreement is a central role for thoughts in Frege’s account. Hence, no such account can be accepted as a development of Frege’s basic account.

I believe that the responses to the conflict considered above are driven by concerns different from those that most fundamentally shape Frege’s account. Frege’s most basic concern is to understand thoughts as elements in the domain of reason, where reason has inter-personal as well as intra-personal reach. The responses we have considered are shaped instead by the aim of providing an account of linguistic communication and understanding.51 Given the latter aim, the impersonality of thought has a lesser importance than it had for Frege. For it is far from obvious that all cases of communication or linguistic understanding require shared engagement with thought. In many cases, at least, communication and understanding might be implemented by the sorts of accounts we’ve considered, wherein second-order cognition of thought does significant work and shared grasp of a thought is not required. And it is far from obvious that shared engagement with thought can suffice for communication or understanding. Even in cases where shared engagement with a thought is operative, communication or understanding might well require supplementation at higher orders of cognition in order to ensure that subjects are appropriately sensitive to the fact that there is shared engagement. So for all I’ve said here, it may be that the sort of account we’ve considered is required, and is all that is required, in order to provide an adequate account of communication and understanding. However, the claim that impersonal thoughts are dispensable for some explanatory purposes does not entail the claim that they are dispensable simpliciter. In particular, it does not entail that impersonal thoughts are dispensable for Frege.

In my view, it is time to reconsider the standing of the conflicting claim that there are partial senses or sense-like elements—modes of presentation or

                                                                                                               51 These aims are explicit in Dummett 1973/1992, 1981, Heck 2002, McDowell 1984/1998, and operative, I believe, in May 2006a.

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presence that can be grasped by at most one thinker. In the sister paper mentioned in the introduction, I argue that the claim cannot simply be read-off from [A]. And I consider and reject arguments that the claim is supported by central components of Frege’s account—for instance, applications of principle (I) to attitudes towards first-person thoughts. But I hope to have done enough here to indicate that, even if there were compelling arguments in favour of partial modes of presentation or presence, then the result of those arguments would not merely compel a mild revision of Frege’s account. For Frege’s commitment to the impersonality of elements governed by principle (I)—senses and other sense-like elements—is both central and thoroughgoing. In this respect, as in many others, Frege’s work builds on and goes beyond Kant’s. According to Georg Friedrich Bauch, Kant held that incommunicable things would be unimportant to us. Frege provides reason to think that there are no such things. REFERENCES Bermudez, J. L. 2005. “Evans and the Sense of ‘I’.” In Thought, Reference, and

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