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ORIGINAL ARTICLE

A Refutation of Freges Context Principle?

Aaron Barth
The University of Western Ontario

This paper explores the limitations of current empirical approaches to the philosophy of language in light of a recent criticism of Freges context principle. According to this criticism, the context principle is in conict with certain features of natural language use and this is held to undermine its application in Foundations of Arithmetic. I argue that this view is mistaken because the features with which the context principle is alleged to be in conict are irrelevant to the principles methodological signicance for our understanding of the role of analysis in analytic philosophy.

DOI:10.1002/tht.4

Introduction Freges context principle tells us that a word has meaning only in the context of a sentence. When interpreted as an empirical hypothesis about natural language, the principle is in tension with a fact about assertion, namely, the fact that speakers are capable of expressing propositions by uttering single words and other subsentential expressions. In light of this fact, and contrary to the context principle, words have propositional content, and therefore meaning, when they are not embedded in sentences. This argument against the context principle is developed at length in Robert Staintons Words and Thoughts. Staintons defence of subsentential assertion and his subsequent rejection of the context principle have been met with approval by both Kent Bach (739) and Edouard Machery(Review of Words and Thoughts: Subsentences, Ellipsis, and the Philosophy of Language, by Robert Stainton). In the course of their favourable assessments of Staintons work, both Bach and Machery express substantive views of their own regarding the context principle. Bach, for example, considers the claim that a word has meaning only in the context of sentence and asks, Whatever that means, could it plausibly deny that sentences mean what they mean in virtue of what their constituents mean? (Bach 742). And Machery wonders whether a belief in the context principle might derive from the idea that, in natural language, sentences are central to speech acts in general. Such comments raise the question of how well the context principle is understood by contemporary linguists and philosophers of language, including the growing number of theorists who, like Stainton, understand their work to fall in the intersection of these two disciplines.
Correspondence to: abarth2@uwo.ca
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A Refutation of Freges Context Principle?

The issue I will address in this paper is whether Frege is in any way compromised for failing to acknowledge the phenomenon of subsentential assertionor more generally, by the empirical study of natural language. That he is, is an implicit assumption of Staintons claim for the methodological interest of the empirical data he brings forward: Stainton claims to have given an empirical refutation of the context principle, on any of several readings of it. I believe Staintons project to be seriously misguided. For Frege, the context principle grounds a conception of meaning and truth that is used to address fundamental questions about our knowledge of arithmetic. When Freges use of the principle is placed in its proper conceptual setting, we will see that although it is subject to empirical constraints of a particular sort, these constraints threaten neither the soundness of the principle nor Freges application of it. By assuming that empirical facts about subsentential speech seriously compromise Freges principle, we obscure both the nature of analysis in Freges early philosophy, and the role that analysis of language has played within the analytic tradition. My discussion will proceed as follows. In the rst section, I will outline Freges use of the context principle in Foundations of Arithmetic. In the second section, I will turn to the empirical interpretation of the context principle proposed by Stainton in Words and Thoughts and related writings on subsentential assertion. In the third section, I will evaluate Staintons understanding of the context principle in connection with Freges program. Freges context principle The context principle is formulated in the introduction to Foundations as the second of three fundamental principles which are to be strictly adhered to throughout Freges investigation and are constitutive of the method that guides his analysis. It is stated in the form of a proscription: Never to ask for the meaning of a word in isolation, but only in the context of a sentence (Frege The Foundations of Arithmetic). Here I am following Dummetts translation rather than Austins (as does Stainton). Dummett writes: [T]he context principle is stated as an explicitly linguistic one, a principle concerning the meanings of words and their occurrence in sentences. (Dummett 111). However, as we will soon see, and as Dummett himself notes, the context principle is not a mere linguistic principle. The principle plays a crucial role in both the critical and constructive phases of Foundations. To see the critical role of the principle, let us consider its bearing on psychologism. A psychologistic account of number holds that numbers are to be identied with certain ideas or mental representations. On this account, the propositions of mathematics are true in virtue of psychological laws obtaining between ideas; they are, in the end, truths about the way humans think. Frege vehemently opposes this view since the nature of ideas and mental representations makes them unsuitable as candidates for the subject matter of arithmetic: While ideas are inherently private to those whose ideas they are, numbers are inherently public. And so while ideas are subjective, the numbers, and the truths of arithmetic that concern them, are objective and intersubjectively accessible. The
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A Refutation of Freges Context Principle?

acceptance of psychologism would on Freges view make the objectivity of mathematics quite impossible. We are easily led to psychologism and to associate the meanings of number words with mental pictures or ideas if we think of their meaning in isolation. The context principle is a remedy to this way of proceeding, since it invites us to think of the meaning of a word as its contribution to the semantic valuethe truth valueof the sentences in which it occurs. The special emphasis that the principle places on sentences is warranted by the unique relation between sentences and truth. This is not the case for subsentential expressions: even if among their semantic values we countenance truth values, truth values do not exhaust their possible semantic values. By demanding that we consider the meaning of a word only in the context of a sentence, Frege is urging us to give an explanation of its meaning relative only to the contribution it makes to the truth of the statements in which it gures. The truth of mathematical statements is objective, and the numbers are intersubjectively accessible. As such, adhering to the principle allows one to give an account of the meaning of numerical terms which is compatible with the objectivity of mathematics. Moreover, when we follow the principle we are no longer tempted to identify the meaning of a numerical term with an idea because we are directed toward a notion of meaning that is based on truth rather than subjective association. This, then, is one role for the context principle in Foundations, namely, Freges critical assessment of psychologism. The contribution which the principle makes to Freges positive proposal, however, is even more important. Freges positive analysis of number is constructed around what Dummett (Frege: Philosophy of Mathematics) calls Foundations fundamental problem: Given that numbers are independent, abstract objects which cannot be perceived or intuited, how are they given to us? In order to answer this fundamental epistemological question, Frege, at sec. 62 of Foundations, invokes the context principle: How, then, are numbers to be given to us, if we cannot have any ideas or intuitions of them? Since it is only in the context of a sentence that words have any meaning, our problem becomes this: To dene the sense of a sentence in which a number word occurs. (Frege 73) Freges strategy here is as subtle as it is ingenious. By invoking the context principle, Frege converts this vexing epistemological problem into an investigation into the linguistic expressions which contain numerical singular terms. Since it is only in the context of a sentence that words have meaning, it is in grasping the senses of sentences containing terms for numbers that numbers are given to us. This is Freges answer to the fundamental problem. When Frege invokes the context principle at sec. 62 and directs our attention to the senses of sentences containing terms for numbers, what he is doing is singling out sentences as the primary bearers of truth, and making the following methodological suggestion (a suggestion already pre-echoed in his rejection of psychologism): To give a denition of number it is enough to consider only the contribution that numerical
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singular terms make to the truth of sentences containing them; there is no more epistemic weight for a theory of number to bear than that it should correctly explain the contribution numerical singular terms make to the truth of the sentences into which they enter. This is a deep methodological idea, possibly suggestive of a strategy for dealing with our knowledge of abstract objects in general. Its key innovation is that by taking sentences as the primary bearers of truth, it provides a systematic means for addressing a distinctively philosophical problemthat of explaining our grasp of the numbersby an analysis of our grasp of certain linguistic expressions. In short, it allows one to return a linguistic answer to a nonlinguistic philosophical question. But what is the appropriate class of sentences whose understanding enables us to grasp the senses of numerical singular terms? Though the context principle directs us toward the contribution numerical singular terms make to the sentences in which they occur, it does not by itself provide us with such a distinguished class of sentences or the central notion in terms of which the denition of the numbers is to be constructed. Freges strategy is to isolate the use of the cardinality operator, expressed by the locution, The number of Fs, for F a concept, in what he calls recognition judgements, sentences used to assert that the same number has been given to us in two different ways, as the number of two different concepts. Such statements involve the relation of identity and have the form: (*) The number of Fs is the same as the number of Gs. Since recognition judgements involve the relation of identity, they raise the question of a criterion of identity for numbers, a principle which tells us in an informative way the condition under which (*) is true. Freges proposed criterion of identity is the principle: The number of Fs is the same as the number of Gs if and only if there is a one-one correspondence between Fs and Gs. In the context of second order logic, the theory consisting of just this principle has as a denitional extension the Dedekind-Peano axioms. Whether this result constitutes a vindication of Freges logicism is a matter of controversy, but its philosophical interest can hardly be denied. It tells us that the basic laws of arithmetic can be derived from a principle which articulates the general condition controlling our application of the numbers.1 The context principle plays a central role in this result. The context principle as an empirical hypothesis Let us now turn to Staintons evaluation of the context principle. Staintons argument is roughly this: Given the empirical fact that speakers can use words and other subsentential phrases in isolation to make assertions (i.e. to express propositions), it is an empirical fact that words and phrases have meaning in isolation. The context principle claims that words and phrases only have meaning when they are embedded in sentences. Thus, if the empirical data is correct, the context principle is false. As Stainton puts it: So we can safely infer that ... [s]peakers can make assertions by uttering ordinary, unembedded, words and phrases. To the degree that [this] [c]laim really is in
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tension with the primacy of sentences (i.e., the view that ... only sentences are meaningful in isolation) this doctrine must also be rejected. (Stainton Nonsentential Assertions and Semantic Ellipsis 295) An example of the phenomenon Stainton has in mind is the following: Sanjay and Silvia are loading up a van. Silvia is looking for a missing table leg. Sanjay says, On the stoop. Sanjay conveys a proposition in this circumstance. Lets agree that he communicates, about this table leg, that it is on the stoopa singular de re proposition. Yet what is produced is a mere phrase. (Stainton Words and Thoughts 5) Generalizing from this sort of example, what appears to be the case is that agents can produce ordinary words and phrases and thereby perform speech acts. In particular, they appear to be able to make assertions while speaking subsententially, and thus appear to be able to communicate complete thoughts using subsentential expressions. The reason why this is held to be interesting is that there is a patent mismatch between the literal meaning of the subsentential expression uttered and the content which the speaker is able to get across: Speakers appear to utter linguistic expressions with neither the syntax nor the semantics normally thought to carry full propositional content. However, if the appearances are genuine, it is precisely a proposition that the hearer recovers. Staintons goal is to show that the appearances are genuine and that speakers really do communicate propositions using subsentential expressions. Let us simply grant that Stainton provides plausible grounds for accepting the genuineness of subsentential assertion.2 What exactly does this entail for the context principle? According to Stainton, the context principle is a primacy thesis about sentences. Specically, what the context principle asserts is that sentences are prior to words. (Stainton Words and Thoughts 191) There is an obvious and straightforward sense in which the genuineness of subsentential assertion conicts with the supposed primacy of the sentence. This is especially clear when we baldly read the context principle as either the claim that words have meaning only in the context of a sentence (Stainton Words and Thoughts 22), or that only sentences have meaning in isolation (Stainton The Context Principle 108), two general readings of the principle which Stainton endorses in order to emphasize the conict he sees. For, granting as we have, that by uttering ordinary words and phrases in isolation speakers can make assertions, words simply do have meaning independently of their occurrence in sentences. This immediately casts serious doubt on these bald readings of the context principle. To further clarify how the context principle is to be read, and how the phenomenon of subsentential assertion actually sits in relation to it, Stainton also canvases ve specic readings of the principlewhat he calls methodological, metasemantic, pragmatic, semantic, and psychological/interpretationalsubjecting each one to evaluation in light of the genuineness of subsentential assertion. Since it is a methodological application of the principle which is important for Fregea point which has already been stressed but which will be further elaborated shortlylet us examine Staintons evaluation of this reading.
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Staintons methodological reading of the principle boils down to the following claim: [t]o nd word meanings, look at what they contribute to sentences. (Stainton The Context Principle 110) In essence, this reading of the context principle is a constraint on how and where lexical semanticists should look to provide the meanings of words; they should do so by contemplating the effect that a word can have on sentences in which it can be embedded. Stainton concludes that his methodological reading is in trouble when confronted with the genuineness of subsentential assertion. For, if words and phrases can be used to make assertions, then, in attempting to locate the meanings of words it is a bit strong to demand that one never consider the word in isolation. (Stainton The Context Principle 112) The point is fairly straightforward in the face of the empirical data: if we can understand and use unembedded expressions in communication, then such instances provide another porthole into which we may look to determine word meaning. In other words, while it may be foolhardy to ignore the contribution that words/phrases make to complete sentences when searching for word meaning, if subsentential assertion is genuine (which we are assuming it is) it would be an equally serious methodological mistake to disregard the unembedded use of words/phrases. Thus, Stainton concludes, the constraint which the context principle imposes needs to be relaxed, prompting him to offer the following reformulation of his methodological reading: Never only consider the word in isolation, but instead also consider its behaviour when embedded in whole sentences. Insofar as we are forced to reformulate this methodological reading of the principle to accommodate the genuineness of subsentential assertion, the context principle emerges as an uninterestingly weak precept regarding the search for word meaning. The status of the principle Recall the question with which we began: Can the empirical phenomenon of subsentential assertion show us that there is something problematic about Freges use of the principle in Foundations? Reection upon the present understanding of Freges project makes it plain that the answer to this question is No. To see this, recall that when Frege deploys the context principle, it is combined with a methodology that singles out sentences because it is completely uncontroversial that sentences can express truths. The context principle is intended to exploit this fact about sentences. What it tells us is that sentences are the primary bearers of truth, while the association of names or individual singular terms with truth rests on their contribution to the truth value of sentences. The truth value of a sentence is thus a function of (among other things) the semantic values of the singular terms it contains. Frege then uses this conception of the semantic function of sentences as a model to carry out an epistemological analysis of mathematical statements. As we have seen, this model provides Frege with an answer to the fundamental problem of how we grasp numbers, and it allows him to pursue an analysis of number by considering the contribution numerical singular terms make to the truth value of the sentences in which they gure.
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When we see the context principle in this light, it is more informatively viewed not as a thesis about the primacy of sentences, but as a thesis about the primacy of truth, since truth is the notion which Frege takes as fundamental to the theory of meaning. This has the consequence that semantics should lie at the core of a theory of meaning. And this is precisely what the context principle achieves. According to the principle, we begin with sentences because they are unproblematically true or false. How they function then serves as a prototype for an account of the meaning of linguistic expressions in general. When we interpret the context principle as a truth primacy thesis, Staintons notion that what the principle asserts is that sentences are prior to words falls away. With respect to the notion of truth, far from taking sentences to be prior to words, Freges construction takes both expressions as equally fundamental. We dont get the expression of a truth without the embedding of individual singular terms or names within sentences. For Frege, sentences and names are equally fundamental to the expression of truths. The crucial thing to note is that, on this account, Frege is not putting the context principle forward as an explanation of how linguistic expressions are capable of expressing truths, or of the kinds of expressions we are capable of interpreting. These are concerns for the theory of natural language. Rather, it is part of a methodological proposal which exploits, rather than purports to explain, the truth-expressing properties of language in general, and of sentences in particular. In the case of Foundations, the point of the proposal is to provide a systematic means of addressing our knowledge of arithmetic. When we bear this in mind, the question of whether empirical facts about subsentential speech can show us that there is something problematic about Freges context principle comes down to this: Do such data reveal the illegitimacy of Freges proposal to begin with sentences and a supposition about their unique semantic properties? There is something ill-formed about such a question. The role of empirical data in science is to conrm or disconrm hypotheses. It tells us whether individual claims, or theses, or even entire theories, are likely to be true or false. Methodological proposals, however, are not hypotheses. They are not even, strictly speaking, assumptions. Rather, they are precepts, or rules, which unlike claims, are not the sort of thing that can be true or false. Precepts are normative not descriptive. They are rules which guide theoretical analyses and controlled observations, but are not conrmed or disconrmed by empirical data. Of course, they can be good or bad in the sense that they can be fruitful or foolhardy. But they cant be false. So when Stainton says, Even assuming that these Frege-inspired doctrines are not falsied by the use of subsentences, at a minimum the phenomenon of sub-sentential speech acts calls for a careful examination of what exactly is being claimed by proponents of sentence primacy... (Stainton Words and Thoughts 23) he cant be talking about a methodological application of the principle, since when the context principle is deployed in this way, it isnt the sort of thing that can be falsied by the empirical reality of subsentential assertion.
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The normative character of precepts provides one reason to dismiss the suggestion that the empirical reality of subsentential assertion refutes Freges principle. But the proponent of subsentential assertion might quite correctly respond by saying that although the context principle is best understood as a precept, we can still ask whether and when a precept or rule can be correctly applied. If it cannot be correctly applied, then we certainly can be moved to abandon it. In the present case, does not the empirical fact that we can assert truths with subsentential expressions and not just sentences infringe on the applicability of the construction Frege proposes? Here, again, I dont think the principle is in any way compromised. As we just saw, one way to think about the construction Frege proposes is to see it as exploiting the fact that sentences can be used to express truths. Relative to this proposal, words, taken in isolation, are not accorded this status; indeed, that is how the construction is effected. But in making this proposal, Frege is not thereby denying that unembedded words can be used to express truths in natural language. He is merely proposing that we limit our attention to sentences, regardless of whether other kinds of expressions have the capacity to express truths: the point of his proposal is that sentences clearly do have this capacity and it is this capacity which he wishes to call to our attention. With respect to Foundations, the question of the applicability of the precept concerns whether this sentential construction is applicable to our use of numerical terms. As such, the only empirical fact about linguistic expressions that Frege requires in order that the rule expressed by the context principle should be applicable to the cases he is there interested in is that sentences involving numerical terms can express truths. And this is clearly the case: we certainly can use sentences involving numerical terms to express truths. Whether or not other types of expressions also have this property is neither here nor there with respect to this fact. Here is another way to get at this point. If Stainton were right, Frege could have proposed a rule which exploits our unembedded use of numerical terms since, given the genuineness of subsentential assertion, the truths of arithmetic can, in principle, be expressed with mere numerical terms and subsentential expressions involving them. This approach would still permit Frege to give an analysis of number relative to the truths in which number terms gurethe point of the principle according to our interpretation. Indeed, in every genuine example of subsentential assertion, a truth-evaluable contentor as Frege might put it, a judgment is expressed. In accordance with the present understanding of the context principle, in such cases we can therefore always ask: What contribution does the subsentential expression uttered make to the truth expressed by its means? Nothing in Staintons examples preclude or invalidate this question, even if part of the content asserted is supplied by context.3 Let us suppose that this is the strategy Frege adopted. Now ask: Would this proposal be made inapplicable because of the empirical fact that in natural language we also use sentences to express truths? Both constructions seem unproblematically applicable to our use of numerical terms. However, we may have reasons for preferring one method over the other and these need not be empirical reasons. For instance, we may prefer the sentential construction because investigating our unembedded uses of numerical terms could, despite our best efforts, lead us back to psychologism, or because such an investigation raises too many
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extraneous issues to illuminate the problem at hand. Another reason why we may prefer the sentential construction is that, unlike atomic expressions, complex expressions exhibit a logical structure that makes the common semantic contribution of numerical terms utterly more transparent. The point is this: The phenomenon of subsentential assertion shows that unembedded words or phrases can be used to express truths. But it does not show that the semantic contribution of words and phrases is not in some cases at least best illustrated by their use in sentences. And this is all that is required in order for the construction Frege proposes to be applicable to our use of numerical terms. Conclusion This paper began with the claim that because speakers can use words and other subsentential phrases to express propositions, words have meaning independently of their occurrences in sentences. Stainton argues that this fact can be developed into an empirical refutation of various readings of the context principle. The question we have addressed is whether this argument can be levelled, in particular, against Freges methodological application of the principle in Foundations of Arithmetic. What I hope to have shown is that when the role of the context principle in Foundations is properly understood, the genuineness of subsentential assertion fails to pose a problem for Freges principle. In fact, as we have seen, despite its initial appeal, and whatever its value for theories of natural language, the phenomenon of subsentential assertion is quite irrelevant to the context principle as Frege understood it.

Notes
1 Compare (Heck 204) and (Demopoulos 155). 2 For Staintons arguments see Stainton (Words and Thoughts; ch. 38) and Stainton (The Meaning of Sentences). 3 I wish to thank an anonymous referee for this journal for emphasizing this point.

Acknowledgments I wish to thank William Demopoulos for his unwavering support throughout this project. Discussions with Gareth Doherty, Jeremy MacBean, and Steven Bland on the core issues dealt with here were invaluable. Robert May made many helpful suggestions which led to numerous improvements. I am indebted to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for nancial support of my research. References
Bach, K. Review of Words and Thoughts: Subsentences, Ellipsis, and the Philosophy of Language, by Robert Stainton. Mind, 117.467 (2008): 73942. Demopoulos, W. Our Knowledge of Numbers as Self-Subsistent Objects. Dialectica, 59.2 (2005): 14159. Dummett, M. Frege: Philosophy of Mathematics. London: Duckworth, 1991.
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A Refutation of Freges Context Principle?

Frege, G. The Foundations of Arithmetic. Trans. J. L. Austin. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1980. Heck, R. Cardinality, Counting, and Equinumerosity. Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, 41.3 (2000), 187209. Machery, E. Review of Words and Thoughts: Subsentences, Ellipsis, and the Philosophy of Language, by Robert Stainton. Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, 2007. Web. 15 June 2007. Stainton, R. Non-sentential Assertions and Semantic Ellipsis. Linguistics and Philosophy, 18 (1995): 28196. . The Meaning of Sentences. No us, 34.3 (2000): 44154. . Words and Thoughts. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. . The Context Principle. Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. Ed. K. Brown. 2nd ed. Vol. 3. Oxford: Elsevier, 2006. 10815.

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