Before we deny the existence of anything whatever, we have to represent it as
existing
in order to go on to deny existence of it.
Gottlob-Frege-Posthumous-Writings
F.
32. P. 33. F.
something affecting the ego'. Only then can we assign the name 'this' to what has done the affecting, to what corresponds to my idea.
'The idea of the this has been formed as a result of the ego's being affected by the this' is only another way of saying 'To this idea of mine there corresponds something that can be experienced'.
I understand your remark (20) in the following way: If you want to say that B is an idea that does not originate from the ego alone, but is formed through something affecting the ego, then you use the words 'The object of B can be experienced'. The two sentences are synonymous. Is that right?
Instead of 'B is an idea that etc. ' I should say 'The idea B is etc. ', assuming straight off that B is an idea.
I grant that it is not self-evident and pleonastic to say 'The idea B does not originate from the ego alone, but is formed through something affecting the ego'; for not every idea is formed through something affecting the ego; at least the point is a debatable one. The negation of this sentence would be 'The idea B is not formed through something affecting the ego' if we assume that B is an idea. In that case the negation has a perfectly good sense and hence it is not pleonastic and self- evident to utter the sentence 'The idea B is formed through something affecting the ego' or the sentence 'The object of B can be experienced', which you maintain to have the same meaning. But if these sentences have the same meaning, then in the judgement 'The negation of the sentence "The idea B is formed through something affecting the ego" has a good sense' we may replace 'The idea B is formed through something affecting the ego' by 'The object of B can be experienced'. We then obtain the judgement: The negation of the sentence 'The object of B can be experienced' has a good sense. This contradicts your earlier position.
There is no contradiction in calling the negation of the statement 'The object of the idea B can be experienced' legitimate, but the negation of the statement 'The object B can be experienced' illegitimate.
If I understand you rightly, the contradiction is resolved as follows: In the expression 'The object of the idea' the word 'object' is used in a different sense from in 'The object A can be experienced'.
No. The word 'object' has the same meaning, but 'object of an idea' means something different from 'object'.
Does adding 'of an idea' merely serve to restrict the sense? 'Object' by itself means object that is not merely object of an
34. P.
35. F.
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41). P. 50. F. 51. P. 52. F.
53. P.
54. F. 55. P. 5o. F.
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[Dialogue with Piinjer on Existence] 57 idea, but of experience. The contrast to draw should really be
that between object of an idea and object of experience.
(referring to 26 & 27) Number cannot be experienced in the same sense as Paul.
So you distinguish two senses of'can be experienced'?
No. Number can be experienced in the same general sense. The concept of that which can be experienced is in both cases the same; it is the same whether I say number, thing or colour can be experienced.
You do not always understand by 'can be experienced' something that can be experienced on its own?
What cannot be experienced on its own can still be experienced, as e. g. a colour, which can only be experienced in something. You said (26) that you would not say '4 exists'. Are you here using 'exist' in the same sense as 'capable of being ex- perienced'?
Yes, I take it back that I would not say '4 exists', 'a square root of 4 exists'.
The difference between the judgements 'There are men' and 'There are square roots of 4' does not lie in the 'there are' but in the difference between the concepts 'man' and 'square root of 4'. We understand by a man something that exists in its own right, but we do not understand this by a square root of 4.
I agree with that.
Is the sentence 'A can be experienced' right, if A is taken to be an idea?
Yes. An idea can be experienced.
Is there an idea of an idea?
There are ideas of ideas.
You once referred to an idea as a fluctuating image, a series of inner perceptions. What are the inner perceptions out of which the idea of the idea A is formed?
They are the particular mental acts performed in having the idea A.
Do 'act of forming an idea' and 'idea' mean the same?
Yes.
So we are wrong to distinguish the act of forming an idea from an idea.
Yes.
From your remarks (18) and (20) it follows that 'This can be experienced' has the same meaning as 'To this idea of mine there corresponds something that can be experienced'. Here 'can be experienced' is defined in terms of itself.
? ? ? 58
[Dialogue with Piinjer on Existence]
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But it isn't meant to be a definition. I still maintain that the expression 'The idea of the this' can always be used.
Has every idea an object?
Yes. Every idea has of necessity an object. 'object of an idea' is the same as 'content of an idea'.
Is the content of the idea A the same as A?
No. What is represented in the idea is the fluctuating image. To
be exact, it should be distinguished from the idea. What is represented does not include the mental act.
Is the object of an idea different from what is represented in it? Y es.
If you see a Fata morgana or have an hallucination, what then is the object of your idea? 1 (no reply).
Do you admit that the negation of the sentence 'The object of B can be experienced' has a good sense?
Y es.
Do you admit that one can give the name A to the object of the ideaB?
Y es.
Then you admit that the negation of the sentence 'A can be experienced' has a good sense.
Yes. But in your question (8) A was understood not as an object of an idea, but as an object of experience.
I didn't say of A that it was meant to be an object of an idea or an object of experience; I left the matter quite open. That is why I understood your answer (10) more generally that you now seem to understand it. However, since I had used the expression 'idea ofA' in (6), the suggestion was rather that A be understood as an object of an idea.
But surely A was there expressly understood to be an object of experience.
I don't see that. Perhaps we can take things further by asking: Do you admit that there are objects of ideas, where these ideas have not been caused by something affecting the ego?
1 This part of the dialogue-from 52 onwards-is particularly obscure. Because there are clear Kantian overtones in the use here of 'Vorstellung' ('idea') and 'Anschauung' ('inner perception'), it might be thought better to have translated the former by 'representation' and the latter by 'intuition'. It is, however, doubtful whether the use of overt Kantian terminology would have made things any clearer. Fortunately, we do not need to understand Piinjer at this point in order to follow the objections that Frege later brings against him (trans. ).
? 76. P.
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Yes.
Do you admit that objects of ideas which have not been caused by something affecting the ego do not exist?
Yes.
Then it follows that there are objects of ideas-ideas which have not been caused by something affecting the ego-which do not exist. Now if you are using the word 'exists' in the same sense as the expression 'there is', then you have at the same time both asserted and denied the same predicate of the same subject. The inference is valid; for the concept 'objects of ideas which have not been caused by something affecting the ego' is exactly the same in both premises, and is exactly the same as it is in the conclusion. Do you grant this?
Yes. But the word 'there is' is wrongly used in this context.
Then put in its place another expression that will express the matter better.
We can't: any other expression would again fail to say what is meant to be expressed.
So in your opinion we have here a contradiction in the nature of things-one to which reason is necessarily captive; for we cannot get rid of it by merely changing the mode of expression.
Before we deny the existence of anything whatever, we have to represent it as existing in order to go on to deny existence of it. But I don't think that we shall get any further along these lines. How do you explain 'there are men'?
(What follows this is left out, because we went round in a circle, coming back again to the question:)
How do you explain 'There are living beings'?
As follows: the statement that A, no matter what I take A to be, does not fall under the concept 'living being' is false.
What are we supposed to have in mind by A?
The meaning I assign to A is not meant to be subject to any restriction at all. If I am meant to say anything about it, it can only be something self-evident, such as A= A.
The mistake rests on the fact that you continue to think ofA as a thing that has being, with the consequence that you are simply presupposing the 'there is'.
A is not subject to the restriction that it is something that has being, unless we understand by has being something that goes without saying, in which case the restriction is no restriction. What is 'going without saying'?
I say a statement goes without saying if it does nothing to qualify the thing it is made about.
You only recognize statements that are made about something? 'There are statements which are not made about anything'
KO. P. Kl. F.
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[Dialogue with Piinjer on Existence] 59
? ? 60
[Dialogue with Piinjer on Existence]
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would mean 'There are judgements in which there is no distinguishing subject and predicate'.
What do you understand by a thing of which a statement can be made?
Whatcanbemadeintothesubjectofajudgement.
'Some men are Germans' means the same as 'There are German men'. As from 'Sachse is a man' there follows 'There are men' so from 'Sachse is a man' and 'Sachse is a German' there follows 'Some men are German' or 'there are German men'.
'Some men are Germans' does not mean the same as 'There are German men'. 'There are men' cannot be inferred from 'Sachse is a man' alone; you need the further sentence 'Sachse exists' as well.
My reply to this would be: If 'Sachse exists' is supposed to mean 'The word "Sachse" is not an empty sound, but designates something', then it is true that the condition 'Sachse exists' must be satisfied. But this is not a new premise, but the presupposition of all our words-a presupposition which goes without saying. The rules of logic always presuppose that the words we use are not empty, that our sentences express judgements, that one is not playing a mere game with words. Once 'Sachse is a man' expresses an actual judgement, the word 'Sachse' must designate something, and in that case I do not need a further premise in order to infer 'There are men' from it. The premise 'Sachse exists' is redundant, if it is to mean something different from the above-mentioned presupposition of all our thinking. Can you furnish an example where a sentence of the form 'A is aB' has a sense and is true-A being the name of an individual-whilst 'there are B's' is false? 'Some men are Germans' can also be expressed 'A part of mankind falls under the concept "a German". ' But by part here we are to understand a non-empty part, a part containing individuals. If this were not the case, there would be no men who are Germans, so we should say 'No man is a German'; this, however, is the contradictory opposite of 'Some men are Germans'. Hence from 'Some men are Germans' we can infer conversely 'there are German men'. 'Some men are Germans' can also be . . . 1
1 The manuscript breaks ofT at this point (cd. ).
? [Dialogue with Piinjer on Existence] 61
[11. Frege's concluding comments) Formulation of the dispute:
We considered the sentences 'This table exists' and 'There are tables'. The 4uestion arose whether the word 'exists' in the first sentence has essentially the same content as does the 'there are' in the second.
You did not dispute, I think, that these sentences are not only distinguished by their subjects' being different, but that the predicates also differ in a certain respect; but in spite of this you maintained that the meaning is essentially the same. Can you now tell me just what, according to you, they have in common and where the difference lies?
We need to come to an understanding about how a particular affirmative judgement with 'some' is to be understood. I believe the way it is to be generally understood in logic is brought out by adding the gloss 'at least one-possibly all'. Then 'Some men are negroes' would mean 'Some-possibly all-but at least one man is a negro'.
If we are agreed on this, then a particular affirmative judgement such as ? some men are negroes' can be converted into 'Some negroes are men'. The resistance one naturally has to this is based on the fact that one involuntarily adds in thought 'but some negroes are not men'. This thought is excluded by our rider 'possibly all'.
Now you wanted to construe the expression 'Men exist' as having the same meaning as 'Something existing is a man'. The trouble with the latter is that, grammatically, it is not existence but being a man which occurs as predicate. But it is existence that is really meant to be asserted. Now we can adopt a grammatical form which brings this out by converting and saying 'Some men exist', taking this in the sense of 'Some-possibly all-but at least one man exists'. It will then follow that this means the same as 'Men exist'.
Now I have understood throughout that on your view you take the difference in meaning of 'exist' in 'Leo Sachse exists' and 'Men exist' to be of the same kind as the difference in meaning of'is a German' in 'Leo Sachse is u German' and 'Some men are German', so that 'exists' is related to 'exist' in the first two sentences as, in the last two, 'is a German' is related to 'are German'. I have deliberately made the subjects 'Leo Sachse' and 'some men' the same in both cases to create the impression that they do parallel one another. I believe the only reason we omit the 'some' in the sentence 'men exist' is to forestall the objection 'not all? '
Now you marshalled your argument, I believe, as follows.
First of all you wanted me to admit that 'There are men' means the same as 'Among that which has being is some man' or 'A part of what has being is a man', or 'Something that has being is a man'. As expressions with the same meaning as 'has being' you also used 'can be experienced', 'existing', 'that whose idea has been caused by something affecting the ego'. These
? ? 62 [Dialogue with Piinjer on Existence]
variants, I believe, make no essential difference. With them some secondary difficulties may crop up or disappear. The main difficulty remains the same and so does the general outline of the plan of attack. I now had further to be brought to admit that the verb 'to be' ('to exist') is used in the same sense as in the sentence 'Leo Sachse is' or 'exists'. ' With that you seemed to have won the day.
Now I can readily grant that the expression 'there are men' means the same as 'Something existing is a man'-only, however, on condition that 'exists' predicates something self-evident, so that it really has no content. The same goes for the other expressions which you use in place of'exist'.
But if the proposition 'Leo Sachse is' is self-evident then the 'is' cannot have the same content as the 'there are' of 'There are men', for the latter does not say something self-evident. Now if you express what is said by 'There are men' by 'Men exist' or 'Among that which has being is some man', that the content of the statement cannot lie in the 'exist' or 'has being' etc. And this is the npwrav l{leVOac; by which you could not help but be forced into making contradictory judgements-the error of thinking that the content of what is predicated in 'Some men exist' or 'Something existing is a man' or 'Men exist' is contained in the word 'exist'. This is not the case; this word only contains the form of a predicate as does the copula 'is' in the sentence 'The sky is blue'. Like the 'it' in 'it is raining', the 'exist' in 'Men exist' is to be understood as a mere auxiliary. As language, feeling at a loss for a grammatical subject, invented 'it', so here, feeling at a loss for a grammatical predicate, it has invented 'exist'.
I shall use the fact that instead of 'exists' one can also say 'is identical with itself' to show that the content of what is predicated does not lie in the word 'exists'. 'There are men' means the same as 'Some men are identical with themselves' or 'Something identical with itself is a man'. Neither in 'A is identical with itself' nor in 'A exists' does one learn anything new about A. Neither statement can be denied. In either you can put what you like for A, and it still remains true. They do not assign A to one of two classes in order to mark it off from some B which does not belong to that class. The point in saying 'A is identical with itself can only be to express the logical law of identity; the point cannot be to impart any further knowledge about A. Just as it could be maintained that 'exist' means the same in 'This table exists' and 'Tables exist', so we can say that the predicate 'identical with itself has the same sense in 'This table is identical with itself' and 'Tables are identical with themselves'. But in that case we have also to acknowledge that the judgements 'This table exists' and 'This table is identical with itself are completely self-evident, and that consequently in these judgements no real
1 If the reader is to follow the argument at this point, he should bear in mind that in German the expression 'there are', as in Frege's example 'There are men', is not rendered by a form of the verb 'to be' ('sein') but by 'es gibt' which comes from 'geben', meaning 'to give'. The corresponding English expression 'there is' is likewise so rendered (trans. ).
? [Dialogue with Piinjer on Existence] 63
content is being predicated of this table. Just as we call statements such as 'Men exist' existential judgements, thinking the content of what is predicated to lie in the word 'exist', so we might call the statement 'Some men are identical with themselves' an identity judgement, and 'There are men' would be an identity judgement. In general, in any attempt to prove that the content of what is predicated in 'There are men' was located in the 'exist' of 'Men exist', we could, without any falsification, switch 'are identical with themselves' throughout for 'exist'. I shall seek to show this.
But if the content of what is predicated in the judgement 'Men exist' does not lie in the 'exist', where then does it lie? I answer: in the form of the particular judgement. Every particular judgement is an existential judge- ment that can be converted into the 'there is' form. E. g. 'Some bodies are light' is the same as 'There are light bodies'. 'Some birds cannot fly' is the same as 'There are birds that cannot fly', and so on. It is more difficult to do the opposite and convert a judgement with 'there is' into a particular judgement. Out of context the word 'some' has no sense; it is an auxiliary like 'all', 'each', 'none' and so on, which, in the context of a sentence, has a logical function to perform. This function consists in putting two concepts into a certain logical relationship. In 'Some men are negroes' the concepts 'man' and 'negro' are put into this relationship. So we always need two concepts if we want to form a particular judgement. Now of course the sentence 'There are flying fish' can easily be converted into 'Some fish can fly', because we have two concepts 'fish' and 'being able to fly'. It becomes more difficult if we try to put 'There are men' into the form of a particular judgement. If we define man = rational living being, we may say 'Some living beings are rational' and, assuming the definition to be correct, this means the same as 'There are men'.
This recourse is only open to us when the concept can be analysed into two characteristic marks. There is another method closely connected with this one. E. g. if we have to convert 'There are negroes', we may say that negro = negro that is a man, because the concept 'negro' is subordinate to the concept 'man'. Here again we have two concepts and may say 'Some men are negroes' or 'Some negroes are men'. But this works only in the particular case of the concept 'negro'. For 'There are birches' we should have to select a different superordinate concept, such as 'tree'. If one wants to do the thing quite generally, one needs to look for a concept superordinate to all concepts. Such a concept, if one wishes to give it that name, can no longer have any content at all since its extension will be unlimited; for any content can only consist in a certain delimitation of the extension. As such a concept we might select that of 'being identical with itself, since we said that 'There are men' is the same as 'There are men identical with themselves' or 'Something identical with itself is a man'.
Language has availed itself of a different resource. The copula, i. e. the mere form of a predicate without content, was excellently suited for forming a concept without content. In the sentence 'The sky is blue' the predicate is
? 64 [Dialogue with Piinjer on Existence]
'is blue', but strictly the content of the predicate lies in the word 'blue'. Leave this out and what remains-'The sky is'-is a predicate without content. In this way we form a quasi-concept-'being'-without content, since its extension is unlimited. This makes it possible to say: men = men that have being; 'There are men' is the same as 'Some men are' or 'Something that has being is a man'. Thus here the real content of what is predicated does not lie in 'has being' but in the form of the particular judgement. Faced with an impasse, language has simply created the word 'being' in order to enable the form of the particular judgement to be employed. When philosophers speak of'absolute being', that is really an apotheosis ofthe copula.
But it is easy to see now how this came about. People felt that the sentence 'There is a centre of mass of the earth' is not self-evident, and that consequently there is a content to what is predicated. And it is now readily intelligible why, when they employed the form 'A centre of mass of the earth exists', people believed this content to reside in the word 'exist'. In this way a content was packed into the word 'exist', without anyone's being able to specify in what this content really consists.
It may now be shown how Piinjer, as a result of the 7C{Jwruv 'lfevar; of seeing in the 'exist' the content of what is predicated in 'Men exist', was bound to be driven into making contradictory assertions. I was easily able to convince him that the denial of 'A can be experienced' is impossible where can be experienced = is = exists. He had also to concede that to say of a thing that it can be experienced does not characterize that thing in any way. On the other hand, however, he wanted to salvage a content for a statement saying of something that it can be experienced. Something was surely meant to be said in the sentence 'This table can be experienced', 'This table exists'; it was surely meant to state something that was not pleonastic or self-evident. So he was forced into the contradiction of taking the denial of 'This table can be experienced' as something that was not pleonastic and self-evident. 1 He had to deprive the expression 'can be experienced' of all content without making it devoid of content. Piinjer wanted to convey the content of the judgement 'This can be experienced' by 'The idea of the this is not an hallucination, it is not something which originates from myself alone, but the idea has been formed as a result of the ego's being affected by the this'. To this I had to object that one only has the right to form the expressions 'idea of the this', 'the ego's being affected by the this', after having made the judgement 'something corresponds to this idea of mine'. If nothing corresponds to this idea of mine, then the expression 'idea of the this' has no sense and thus the sentence as a whole has no sense. Piinjer then altered his account, though without conceding that it was incorrect: 'The object of the idea B can be experienced' means 'The idea B has been formed through something affecting the ego'. I was now able to infer from this that the negation of t11e sentence 'The object of the idea B can be experienced' has a
1 sic (trans. ).
? [Dialogue with Piinjer on Existence] 65
good sense. But Piinjer had said earlier that the negation of the sentence 'A can be experienced' is impossible. We now have to qualify this somewhat and say: If A is an object of experience, then the negation of 'A can be experienced' is impossible, but if A is object of an idea, then the negation of that sentence is possible. We see how this example confirms that it is impossible to assign to the predicate 'can be experienced' a sense that is not self-evident whilst making the general claim that it has no sense to deny of a thing that it can be experienced. At the same time we see that the concept of what can be experienced acquires a content only through its extension being delimited in some way. In fact all objects are divided into two classes: objects of experience and objects of ideas. The latter do not all fall under the concept 'what can be experienced'. From this it can be further inferred that not every concept is subordinate to the concept of what can be experienced-for the concept 'object of an idea' is not. And from this it follows that the concept of what can be experienced is not generally suited for the purpose of expressing a judgement with 'there is' in the form of a particular judgement. In order to justify the expression 'object of an idea' as being generally applicable, Piinjer had to maintain that every idea has an object, that there are ideas of objects which have not been formed through something affecting the ego. If we apply to this his definition of sentences with 'there is', a contradiction must emerge. In fact, according to this definition, the judgement 'there are objects of ideas that have not been formed through something affecting the ego' is synonymous with 'Among what can be experienced is something that falls under the concept "object of an idea that has not been formed through something affecting the ego"'. But now according to Piinjer's account, objects of ideas not formed by virtue of something affecting the ego cannot be experienced.
32. P. 33. F.
something affecting the ego'. Only then can we assign the name 'this' to what has done the affecting, to what corresponds to my idea.
'The idea of the this has been formed as a result of the ego's being affected by the this' is only another way of saying 'To this idea of mine there corresponds something that can be experienced'.
I understand your remark (20) in the following way: If you want to say that B is an idea that does not originate from the ego alone, but is formed through something affecting the ego, then you use the words 'The object of B can be experienced'. The two sentences are synonymous. Is that right?
Instead of 'B is an idea that etc. ' I should say 'The idea B is etc. ', assuming straight off that B is an idea.
I grant that it is not self-evident and pleonastic to say 'The idea B does not originate from the ego alone, but is formed through something affecting the ego'; for not every idea is formed through something affecting the ego; at least the point is a debatable one. The negation of this sentence would be 'The idea B is not formed through something affecting the ego' if we assume that B is an idea. In that case the negation has a perfectly good sense and hence it is not pleonastic and self- evident to utter the sentence 'The idea B is formed through something affecting the ego' or the sentence 'The object of B can be experienced', which you maintain to have the same meaning. But if these sentences have the same meaning, then in the judgement 'The negation of the sentence "The idea B is formed through something affecting the ego" has a good sense' we may replace 'The idea B is formed through something affecting the ego' by 'The object of B can be experienced'. We then obtain the judgement: The negation of the sentence 'The object of B can be experienced' has a good sense. This contradicts your earlier position.
There is no contradiction in calling the negation of the statement 'The object of the idea B can be experienced' legitimate, but the negation of the statement 'The object B can be experienced' illegitimate.
If I understand you rightly, the contradiction is resolved as follows: In the expression 'The object of the idea' the word 'object' is used in a different sense from in 'The object A can be experienced'.
No. The word 'object' has the same meaning, but 'object of an idea' means something different from 'object'.
Does adding 'of an idea' merely serve to restrict the sense? 'Object' by itself means object that is not merely object of an
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[Dialogue with Piinjer on Existence] 57 idea, but of experience. The contrast to draw should really be
that between object of an idea and object of experience.
(referring to 26 & 27) Number cannot be experienced in the same sense as Paul.
So you distinguish two senses of'can be experienced'?
No. Number can be experienced in the same general sense. The concept of that which can be experienced is in both cases the same; it is the same whether I say number, thing or colour can be experienced.
You do not always understand by 'can be experienced' something that can be experienced on its own?
What cannot be experienced on its own can still be experienced, as e. g. a colour, which can only be experienced in something. You said (26) that you would not say '4 exists'. Are you here using 'exist' in the same sense as 'capable of being ex- perienced'?
Yes, I take it back that I would not say '4 exists', 'a square root of 4 exists'.
The difference between the judgements 'There are men' and 'There are square roots of 4' does not lie in the 'there are' but in the difference between the concepts 'man' and 'square root of 4'. We understand by a man something that exists in its own right, but we do not understand this by a square root of 4.
I agree with that.
Is the sentence 'A can be experienced' right, if A is taken to be an idea?
Yes. An idea can be experienced.
Is there an idea of an idea?
There are ideas of ideas.
You once referred to an idea as a fluctuating image, a series of inner perceptions. What are the inner perceptions out of which the idea of the idea A is formed?
They are the particular mental acts performed in having the idea A.
Do 'act of forming an idea' and 'idea' mean the same?
Yes.
So we are wrong to distinguish the act of forming an idea from an idea.
Yes.
From your remarks (18) and (20) it follows that 'This can be experienced' has the same meaning as 'To this idea of mine there corresponds something that can be experienced'. Here 'can be experienced' is defined in terms of itself.
? ? ? 58
[Dialogue with Piinjer on Existence]
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But it isn't meant to be a definition. I still maintain that the expression 'The idea of the this' can always be used.
Has every idea an object?
Yes. Every idea has of necessity an object. 'object of an idea' is the same as 'content of an idea'.
Is the content of the idea A the same as A?
No. What is represented in the idea is the fluctuating image. To
be exact, it should be distinguished from the idea. What is represented does not include the mental act.
Is the object of an idea different from what is represented in it? Y es.
If you see a Fata morgana or have an hallucination, what then is the object of your idea? 1 (no reply).
Do you admit that the negation of the sentence 'The object of B can be experienced' has a good sense?
Y es.
Do you admit that one can give the name A to the object of the ideaB?
Y es.
Then you admit that the negation of the sentence 'A can be experienced' has a good sense.
Yes. But in your question (8) A was understood not as an object of an idea, but as an object of experience.
I didn't say of A that it was meant to be an object of an idea or an object of experience; I left the matter quite open. That is why I understood your answer (10) more generally that you now seem to understand it. However, since I had used the expression 'idea ofA' in (6), the suggestion was rather that A be understood as an object of an idea.
But surely A was there expressly understood to be an object of experience.
I don't see that. Perhaps we can take things further by asking: Do you admit that there are objects of ideas, where these ideas have not been caused by something affecting the ego?
1 This part of the dialogue-from 52 onwards-is particularly obscure. Because there are clear Kantian overtones in the use here of 'Vorstellung' ('idea') and 'Anschauung' ('inner perception'), it might be thought better to have translated the former by 'representation' and the latter by 'intuition'. It is, however, doubtful whether the use of overt Kantian terminology would have made things any clearer. Fortunately, we do not need to understand Piinjer at this point in order to follow the objections that Frege later brings against him (trans. ).
? 76. P.
77. F.
78. P.
7l). F.
Yes.
Do you admit that objects of ideas which have not been caused by something affecting the ego do not exist?
Yes.
Then it follows that there are objects of ideas-ideas which have not been caused by something affecting the ego-which do not exist. Now if you are using the word 'exists' in the same sense as the expression 'there is', then you have at the same time both asserted and denied the same predicate of the same subject. The inference is valid; for the concept 'objects of ideas which have not been caused by something affecting the ego' is exactly the same in both premises, and is exactly the same as it is in the conclusion. Do you grant this?
Yes. But the word 'there is' is wrongly used in this context.
Then put in its place another expression that will express the matter better.
We can't: any other expression would again fail to say what is meant to be expressed.
So in your opinion we have here a contradiction in the nature of things-one to which reason is necessarily captive; for we cannot get rid of it by merely changing the mode of expression.
Before we deny the existence of anything whatever, we have to represent it as existing in order to go on to deny existence of it. But I don't think that we shall get any further along these lines. How do you explain 'there are men'?
(What follows this is left out, because we went round in a circle, coming back again to the question:)
How do you explain 'There are living beings'?
As follows: the statement that A, no matter what I take A to be, does not fall under the concept 'living being' is false.
What are we supposed to have in mind by A?
The meaning I assign to A is not meant to be subject to any restriction at all. If I am meant to say anything about it, it can only be something self-evident, such as A= A.
The mistake rests on the fact that you continue to think ofA as a thing that has being, with the consequence that you are simply presupposing the 'there is'.
A is not subject to the restriction that it is something that has being, unless we understand by has being something that goes without saying, in which case the restriction is no restriction. What is 'going without saying'?
I say a statement goes without saying if it does nothing to qualify the thing it is made about.
You only recognize statements that are made about something? 'There are statements which are not made about anything'
KO. P. Kl. F.
K2. P.
K3. F.
K4. P.
K5. P.
Ko. F.
K7. P.
K8. F.
Kl). P.
llO. F.
lJI. P. n. F.
lJJ. P. lJ4. F.
[Dialogue with Piinjer on Existence] 59
? ? 60
[Dialogue with Piinjer on Existence]
95. P. 96. F.
[97. ) F.
[98. ) P.
[99. F. )
would mean 'There are judgements in which there is no distinguishing subject and predicate'.
What do you understand by a thing of which a statement can be made?
Whatcanbemadeintothesubjectofajudgement.
'Some men are Germans' means the same as 'There are German men'. As from 'Sachse is a man' there follows 'There are men' so from 'Sachse is a man' and 'Sachse is a German' there follows 'Some men are German' or 'there are German men'.
'Some men are Germans' does not mean the same as 'There are German men'. 'There are men' cannot be inferred from 'Sachse is a man' alone; you need the further sentence 'Sachse exists' as well.
My reply to this would be: If 'Sachse exists' is supposed to mean 'The word "Sachse" is not an empty sound, but designates something', then it is true that the condition 'Sachse exists' must be satisfied. But this is not a new premise, but the presupposition of all our words-a presupposition which goes without saying. The rules of logic always presuppose that the words we use are not empty, that our sentences express judgements, that one is not playing a mere game with words. Once 'Sachse is a man' expresses an actual judgement, the word 'Sachse' must designate something, and in that case I do not need a further premise in order to infer 'There are men' from it. The premise 'Sachse exists' is redundant, if it is to mean something different from the above-mentioned presupposition of all our thinking. Can you furnish an example where a sentence of the form 'A is aB' has a sense and is true-A being the name of an individual-whilst 'there are B's' is false? 'Some men are Germans' can also be expressed 'A part of mankind falls under the concept "a German". ' But by part here we are to understand a non-empty part, a part containing individuals. If this were not the case, there would be no men who are Germans, so we should say 'No man is a German'; this, however, is the contradictory opposite of 'Some men are Germans'. Hence from 'Some men are Germans' we can infer conversely 'there are German men'. 'Some men are Germans' can also be . . . 1
1 The manuscript breaks ofT at this point (cd. ).
? [Dialogue with Piinjer on Existence] 61
[11. Frege's concluding comments) Formulation of the dispute:
We considered the sentences 'This table exists' and 'There are tables'. The 4uestion arose whether the word 'exists' in the first sentence has essentially the same content as does the 'there are' in the second.
You did not dispute, I think, that these sentences are not only distinguished by their subjects' being different, but that the predicates also differ in a certain respect; but in spite of this you maintained that the meaning is essentially the same. Can you now tell me just what, according to you, they have in common and where the difference lies?
We need to come to an understanding about how a particular affirmative judgement with 'some' is to be understood. I believe the way it is to be generally understood in logic is brought out by adding the gloss 'at least one-possibly all'. Then 'Some men are negroes' would mean 'Some-possibly all-but at least one man is a negro'.
If we are agreed on this, then a particular affirmative judgement such as ? some men are negroes' can be converted into 'Some negroes are men'. The resistance one naturally has to this is based on the fact that one involuntarily adds in thought 'but some negroes are not men'. This thought is excluded by our rider 'possibly all'.
Now you wanted to construe the expression 'Men exist' as having the same meaning as 'Something existing is a man'. The trouble with the latter is that, grammatically, it is not existence but being a man which occurs as predicate. But it is existence that is really meant to be asserted. Now we can adopt a grammatical form which brings this out by converting and saying 'Some men exist', taking this in the sense of 'Some-possibly all-but at least one man exists'. It will then follow that this means the same as 'Men exist'.
Now I have understood throughout that on your view you take the difference in meaning of 'exist' in 'Leo Sachse exists' and 'Men exist' to be of the same kind as the difference in meaning of'is a German' in 'Leo Sachse is u German' and 'Some men are German', so that 'exists' is related to 'exist' in the first two sentences as, in the last two, 'is a German' is related to 'are German'. I have deliberately made the subjects 'Leo Sachse' and 'some men' the same in both cases to create the impression that they do parallel one another. I believe the only reason we omit the 'some' in the sentence 'men exist' is to forestall the objection 'not all? '
Now you marshalled your argument, I believe, as follows.
First of all you wanted me to admit that 'There are men' means the same as 'Among that which has being is some man' or 'A part of what has being is a man', or 'Something that has being is a man'. As expressions with the same meaning as 'has being' you also used 'can be experienced', 'existing', 'that whose idea has been caused by something affecting the ego'. These
? ? 62 [Dialogue with Piinjer on Existence]
variants, I believe, make no essential difference. With them some secondary difficulties may crop up or disappear. The main difficulty remains the same and so does the general outline of the plan of attack. I now had further to be brought to admit that the verb 'to be' ('to exist') is used in the same sense as in the sentence 'Leo Sachse is' or 'exists'. ' With that you seemed to have won the day.
Now I can readily grant that the expression 'there are men' means the same as 'Something existing is a man'-only, however, on condition that 'exists' predicates something self-evident, so that it really has no content. The same goes for the other expressions which you use in place of'exist'.
But if the proposition 'Leo Sachse is' is self-evident then the 'is' cannot have the same content as the 'there are' of 'There are men', for the latter does not say something self-evident. Now if you express what is said by 'There are men' by 'Men exist' or 'Among that which has being is some man', that the content of the statement cannot lie in the 'exist' or 'has being' etc. And this is the npwrav l{leVOac; by which you could not help but be forced into making contradictory judgements-the error of thinking that the content of what is predicated in 'Some men exist' or 'Something existing is a man' or 'Men exist' is contained in the word 'exist'. This is not the case; this word only contains the form of a predicate as does the copula 'is' in the sentence 'The sky is blue'. Like the 'it' in 'it is raining', the 'exist' in 'Men exist' is to be understood as a mere auxiliary. As language, feeling at a loss for a grammatical subject, invented 'it', so here, feeling at a loss for a grammatical predicate, it has invented 'exist'.
I shall use the fact that instead of 'exists' one can also say 'is identical with itself' to show that the content of what is predicated does not lie in the word 'exists'. 'There are men' means the same as 'Some men are identical with themselves' or 'Something identical with itself is a man'. Neither in 'A is identical with itself' nor in 'A exists' does one learn anything new about A. Neither statement can be denied. In either you can put what you like for A, and it still remains true. They do not assign A to one of two classes in order to mark it off from some B which does not belong to that class. The point in saying 'A is identical with itself can only be to express the logical law of identity; the point cannot be to impart any further knowledge about A. Just as it could be maintained that 'exist' means the same in 'This table exists' and 'Tables exist', so we can say that the predicate 'identical with itself has the same sense in 'This table is identical with itself' and 'Tables are identical with themselves'. But in that case we have also to acknowledge that the judgements 'This table exists' and 'This table is identical with itself are completely self-evident, and that consequently in these judgements no real
1 If the reader is to follow the argument at this point, he should bear in mind that in German the expression 'there are', as in Frege's example 'There are men', is not rendered by a form of the verb 'to be' ('sein') but by 'es gibt' which comes from 'geben', meaning 'to give'. The corresponding English expression 'there is' is likewise so rendered (trans. ).
? [Dialogue with Piinjer on Existence] 63
content is being predicated of this table. Just as we call statements such as 'Men exist' existential judgements, thinking the content of what is predicated to lie in the word 'exist', so we might call the statement 'Some men are identical with themselves' an identity judgement, and 'There are men' would be an identity judgement. In general, in any attempt to prove that the content of what is predicated in 'There are men' was located in the 'exist' of 'Men exist', we could, without any falsification, switch 'are identical with themselves' throughout for 'exist'. I shall seek to show this.
But if the content of what is predicated in the judgement 'Men exist' does not lie in the 'exist', where then does it lie? I answer: in the form of the particular judgement. Every particular judgement is an existential judge- ment that can be converted into the 'there is' form. E. g. 'Some bodies are light' is the same as 'There are light bodies'. 'Some birds cannot fly' is the same as 'There are birds that cannot fly', and so on. It is more difficult to do the opposite and convert a judgement with 'there is' into a particular judgement. Out of context the word 'some' has no sense; it is an auxiliary like 'all', 'each', 'none' and so on, which, in the context of a sentence, has a logical function to perform. This function consists in putting two concepts into a certain logical relationship. In 'Some men are negroes' the concepts 'man' and 'negro' are put into this relationship. So we always need two concepts if we want to form a particular judgement. Now of course the sentence 'There are flying fish' can easily be converted into 'Some fish can fly', because we have two concepts 'fish' and 'being able to fly'. It becomes more difficult if we try to put 'There are men' into the form of a particular judgement. If we define man = rational living being, we may say 'Some living beings are rational' and, assuming the definition to be correct, this means the same as 'There are men'.
This recourse is only open to us when the concept can be analysed into two characteristic marks. There is another method closely connected with this one. E. g. if we have to convert 'There are negroes', we may say that negro = negro that is a man, because the concept 'negro' is subordinate to the concept 'man'. Here again we have two concepts and may say 'Some men are negroes' or 'Some negroes are men'. But this works only in the particular case of the concept 'negro'. For 'There are birches' we should have to select a different superordinate concept, such as 'tree'. If one wants to do the thing quite generally, one needs to look for a concept superordinate to all concepts. Such a concept, if one wishes to give it that name, can no longer have any content at all since its extension will be unlimited; for any content can only consist in a certain delimitation of the extension. As such a concept we might select that of 'being identical with itself, since we said that 'There are men' is the same as 'There are men identical with themselves' or 'Something identical with itself is a man'.
Language has availed itself of a different resource. The copula, i. e. the mere form of a predicate without content, was excellently suited for forming a concept without content. In the sentence 'The sky is blue' the predicate is
? 64 [Dialogue with Piinjer on Existence]
'is blue', but strictly the content of the predicate lies in the word 'blue'. Leave this out and what remains-'The sky is'-is a predicate without content. In this way we form a quasi-concept-'being'-without content, since its extension is unlimited. This makes it possible to say: men = men that have being; 'There are men' is the same as 'Some men are' or 'Something that has being is a man'. Thus here the real content of what is predicated does not lie in 'has being' but in the form of the particular judgement. Faced with an impasse, language has simply created the word 'being' in order to enable the form of the particular judgement to be employed. When philosophers speak of'absolute being', that is really an apotheosis ofthe copula.
But it is easy to see now how this came about. People felt that the sentence 'There is a centre of mass of the earth' is not self-evident, and that consequently there is a content to what is predicated. And it is now readily intelligible why, when they employed the form 'A centre of mass of the earth exists', people believed this content to reside in the word 'exist'. In this way a content was packed into the word 'exist', without anyone's being able to specify in what this content really consists.
It may now be shown how Piinjer, as a result of the 7C{Jwruv 'lfevar; of seeing in the 'exist' the content of what is predicated in 'Men exist', was bound to be driven into making contradictory assertions. I was easily able to convince him that the denial of 'A can be experienced' is impossible where can be experienced = is = exists. He had also to concede that to say of a thing that it can be experienced does not characterize that thing in any way. On the other hand, however, he wanted to salvage a content for a statement saying of something that it can be experienced. Something was surely meant to be said in the sentence 'This table can be experienced', 'This table exists'; it was surely meant to state something that was not pleonastic or self-evident. So he was forced into the contradiction of taking the denial of 'This table can be experienced' as something that was not pleonastic and self-evident. 1 He had to deprive the expression 'can be experienced' of all content without making it devoid of content. Piinjer wanted to convey the content of the judgement 'This can be experienced' by 'The idea of the this is not an hallucination, it is not something which originates from myself alone, but the idea has been formed as a result of the ego's being affected by the this'. To this I had to object that one only has the right to form the expressions 'idea of the this', 'the ego's being affected by the this', after having made the judgement 'something corresponds to this idea of mine'. If nothing corresponds to this idea of mine, then the expression 'idea of the this' has no sense and thus the sentence as a whole has no sense. Piinjer then altered his account, though without conceding that it was incorrect: 'The object of the idea B can be experienced' means 'The idea B has been formed through something affecting the ego'. I was now able to infer from this that the negation of t11e sentence 'The object of the idea B can be experienced' has a
1 sic (trans. ).
? [Dialogue with Piinjer on Existence] 65
good sense. But Piinjer had said earlier that the negation of the sentence 'A can be experienced' is impossible. We now have to qualify this somewhat and say: If A is an object of experience, then the negation of 'A can be experienced' is impossible, but if A is object of an idea, then the negation of that sentence is possible. We see how this example confirms that it is impossible to assign to the predicate 'can be experienced' a sense that is not self-evident whilst making the general claim that it has no sense to deny of a thing that it can be experienced. At the same time we see that the concept of what can be experienced acquires a content only through its extension being delimited in some way. In fact all objects are divided into two classes: objects of experience and objects of ideas. The latter do not all fall under the concept 'what can be experienced'. From this it can be further inferred that not every concept is subordinate to the concept of what can be experienced-for the concept 'object of an idea' is not. And from this it follows that the concept of what can be experienced is not generally suited for the purpose of expressing a judgement with 'there is' in the form of a particular judgement. In order to justify the expression 'object of an idea' as being generally applicable, Piinjer had to maintain that every idea has an object, that there are ideas of objects which have not been formed through something affecting the ego. If we apply to this his definition of sentences with 'there is', a contradiction must emerge. In fact, according to this definition, the judgement 'there are objects of ideas that have not been formed through something affecting the ego' is synonymous with 'Among what can be experienced is something that falls under the concept "object of an idea that has not been formed through something affecting the ego"'. But now according to Piinjer's account, objects of ideas not formed by virtue of something affecting the ego cannot be experienced.
