Abstract:
No doubt, Gottlob Frege and A. J. Ayer are considered to be among the most prominent contemporary philosophers. Insofar as one of them has revolutionized the linguistic domain while the other has influenced the domain of ethics in a diametrical fashion. Ayer’s theory of emotivism is regarded as one of the most controversial moral theories in the past century. We believe that Frege, as a linguistic philosopher, has influenced emotivism in the methodological, logical, semantic, and epistemological domains. The emphasis on two fundamental principles of “compositionality” and “contextuality”; “the existence of mathematical concepts independent from mind”, “empiricism and verificationism” are all variables upon which emotivism is clearly dependent. The latter claim can be substantiated via analysis of the works of Ayer and particularly his “Language, Truth, and Logic” as well as his assertion in the introduction to this book concerning his debt to Frege. Among the most significant results of this essay, one can refer to the demonstration of the point that what constitutes the identity of the theory of emotivism is influenced by the “general line of linguistic analysis” in the aforementioned four domains.
Machine summary:
We believe that Frege, as a linguistic philosopher, has influenced emotivism in the methodological, logical, semantic, and epistemological domains.
Then, before reviewing the ideas of Frege scholars in this essay, we need to provide a short account of the content of this principle: “the meaning of a compound expression is a function of the parts and the role that they play in the sentence” (Janssen, 2001, pp.
Therefore, one can argue that regardless of the fact that the “Principle of Contextuality” is a proper methodology for the implementation of the theory of natural languages, as previously mentioned, a huge number of philosophers in this field who are known as seasoned Frege scholars, contend that this is itself one of Frege’s focal doctrines (Pelletier, 2001, p.
According to Frege, because traditional logic pays attention to mental notions and judgments and also the influence of language on logic, it is more a “psychological” study and classic logicians instead of dealing with the objective propositions independent from human minds and truth laws governing them and the process through which new propositions are inferred from existing propositions, have dealt with the conditions of the truth of propositions and the procedure of thinking and judgment.
The author believes that the universal spirit governing Frege’s thought, which is focused on linguistic analysis, meaningfulness or meaninglessness of words and propositions and, in general, dissection of the parts of a sentence, has influenced the spirit governing Ayer’s thought.