The sense and reference of evaluative terms

Christine Tappolet

pp. 113-127

in: John Biró, Petr Kotatko (eds), Frege, Berlin, Springer, 1995

Abstract

What account of evaluative expressions, such as "is beautiful", "is generous' or "is good", should a Fregean adopt? Given Frege's claim that predicates can have both a sense and a reference in addition to their extension, an interesting range of only partially explored theoretical possibilities opens to Frege and his followers.¹ My intention here is to briefly present these putative possibilities and explore one of them, namely David Wiggins' claim that evaluative predicates refer to non-natural concepts and have a sense which is sentiment-involving. In order to defend this claim against objections which aim at showing that evaluative concepts do not really exist, I shall suggest that our awareness of evaluative concepts involves affective (or emotive) states. I shall start with a brief account of Frege's view of predicates.

Cited authors

Frege Gottlob

Wiggins David