A context principle for the twenty-first century
pp. 183-203
in: Annalisa Coliva, Paolo Leonardi, Sebastiano Moruzzi (eds), Eva Picardi on language, analysis and history, Berlin, Springer, 2018Abstract
Taking a lead from Eva Picardi's work and influence, I investigate the significance of Frege's context principle for the philosophy of language (setting aside its role in Frege's argument for mathematical platonism). I argue that there are some interpretive problems with recent meta-semantic interpretations of the principle. Instead, I offer a somewhat weaker alternative: the context principle is a tool to license certain definitions. Moreover, I claim that it merely lays out one of many possible ways of licensing a definition. This means, among other things, that despite Frege's imperative injunctions, the context principle formulates a permission—not a requirement.
