Frege’s Two Views Towards Psychology

Abstract

This paper argues that Gottlob Frege has two distinct views toward psychology. The first view is underappreciated. It consists in his dual claim that psychological and logical elements in thought are naturally intertwined and, furthermore, that his conceptual notation can be “scientifically justified” in terms of a psychological origin story. These claims are supported with evidence provided by an analysis of key elements of his logic in the Begriffsschrift, by a summary of the major psychological mechanisms presented in his first published defense of the Begriffsschrift: “On the Scientific Justification of a Conceptual Notation,” and by an appeal to textual evidence from his unpublished “Logic” (1879–1991). The second view is well known. It is his claim that there is a methodological imperative to isolate logic from psychological influences. This claim is developed in two ways: he proposes a contextualist semantics to reject any psychologistic dependence on ideas and also narrows the notion of content, with its reliance on ideas, to the notion of conceptual content which focuses on logical relations. Finally, it is argued that this narrowing provides the key elements of the framework for his criticisms of psychology in the Grundlagen.