Dummett's Backward Road to Frege and to Intuitionism - Tripod

in reported speech (1970f: 58–59). I think this sentence is not an anomalous break in the discussion of
reported speech, that is, is not an odd shift of topic to customary sense and customary reference. I think
this sentence is a continuous, not to say integral, part of the two-paragraph discussion of indirect sense
and indirect reference. In other words, I think this sentence indicates an exception to Frege’s rule that
expressions beginning with the singular definite article refer to objects. The exception is precisely for
reported speech, i.e., indirect quotation, which by definition refers to senses, as opposed to direct
quotation, which refers to names (1970f: 59, 65; 1980c: 149). Senses are indirectly tied to quotation
because they must be garbed in language; thus for Frege, the identity of a sense is never directly given
to us, but ultimately only via names, as functionally opposed to customary references.
I think this is obscured by the fact that the two paragraphs in question mainly discuss the
reported speech of a speaker, while in “the sense of expression ‘A’,” “A” is a piece of speech not being
attributed to a speaker. But “A” would not be an expression at all unless someone could use it, and in
that broad sense “the sense of expression ‘A’” does report speech. There is no doubt that words are
being quoted here. We often quote words without quoting a speaker. We simply surround the words
with quotation marks. E.g., “Fermat’s Last Theorem,” which is just an “A”.
Dummett is right that singular definite descriptions of the form “the F” customarily refer to
objects, because customarily they logically function as object-names. But if I am right, Frege classifies
“the sense of expression ‘A’” as indirect quotation, and therefore it has no customary reference, but
only an indirect reference, which is its sense. Unless Dummett has independent evidence that some
senses are objects, there is nothing here to show that some senses are objects. Indeed, on my reading it
follows that no senses can be objects, since senses are essentially indirect references. By parity of
reason, “the thought that A” refers to a thought as opposed to an object. The test is precisely that it
“designates” a thought (Frege 1970f: 66; see 59), and the mark is precisely that we are “concerned”
with thought as opposed to reference (1970f: 63, 67). At best, it could only refer to an object which
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