4th International Lauener Symposium on Analytical
Philosophy
In Honour of Professor Sir Michael Dummett
Prof. Dr. Dale Jacquette
(Universität Bern)
Dummett on Truth-Makers, Frege’s Analysis of Sentence Meaning, and the Slingshot Argument
 
Michael Dummett interprets Frege as committed to the proposition that each thought
admits of a unique ultimate analysis. Dummett’s interpretation has been alleged
nevertheless to conflict with Frege’s criticism of synonymous meaning, according
o which any two sentences with the same truth value express the same thought in
the sense of designating the same objectified truth value, the True or the False.
Frege’s theory of sentence meaning and synonymy opens the door to slingshot arguments,
reducing truth-maker semantics to an absurdity. I defend Dummett’s account of Frege,
emphasizing the ultimacy of unique semantic analyses of sentence meaning, and blunting
the force of slingshot arguments in several ways in an account of truth-making states
of affairs for the truth values of propositions that vindicates Dummett’s clarification
of Frege’s theory of sentence meaning and the individuation of Gedanken.