Dummett's Backward Road to Frege and to Intuitionism - Tripod

sometimes he has references more in mind, sometimes senses. But the sense-reference distinction
would in any case occur entirely on the objective side of the house in Grundlagen. The later Frege
gives a general theory of sense and reference. This allows him to see a second problem of realism
which is entirely on the objective side of the house. Namely, there might exist only senses, but no
references. The existence of senses by themselves establishes basic realism (objectivism), since they
are mind-independent entities. But the second problem of realism reveals a second core notion of
realism: we are realists only if we hold the things we refer to are mind-independent, as opposed to the
thoughts we express, however mind-independent our thoughts may be (compare Dummett 1981a: 133).
This raises a second problem of permutation, this time on the objective side of the house. To
communicate, we must avoid permutations of senses and of references just as much as we must avoid
permutations of ideas. (I believe Frege’s solution is explication. Dummett believes Frege’s solution is
translation—basically the same as Quine’s solution of translation into a home language, pace Dummett
(1995: 16, n.8; both rely on identity.)
The context principle’s role remains the same even as we shift from the first problem of realism
to the second, i.e., from Grundlagen to Grundgesetze, from ideas to senses. Namely, whether objects
are Grundlagen contents or Grundgesetze references, we have perceptual evidence of concrete objects,
but not of abstract (noncausal) objects such as numbers. The ontological role of the context principle is
to establish realism for abstract objects, even though its more general semantic role is to establish that
(in some sense) all terms, concrete and abstract alike, have meaning (be it content, sense, or reference)
only in the context of statements. In Grundgesetze, this devolves to the determinacy requirement: a
name refers to a reference only if it conforms to the law of excluded middle, i.e., only if every
statement in which it occurs have a determinate truth-value. Making names conform by specifying
truth-conditions for the statements is what I call regimentation. So far, I think we both agree.
Dummett’s project is to understand what Frege is specifically doing in Grundgesetze. We start
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