Theses Doctoral

Thoughts about Thoughts: The Structure of Fregean Propositions

Bice, Nathan Michael

This dissertation is about the structure of thought. Following Gottlob Frege, I define a thought as the sort of content relevant to determining whether an assertion is true or false. The historical component of the dissertation involves interpreting Frege’s actual views on the structure of thought. I argue that Frege did not think that a thought has a unique decomposition into its component senses, but rather the same thought can be decomposed into senses in a variety of distinct ways. I extend Frege’s position and use it to develop an account of the hierarchy of senses, the senses expressed by indexicals and demonstratives, and the distinction between logical and non-logical structure. I also discuss various connections with the nature of meta-representation, our capacity for reflective judgment, some aspects of the structure of conscious experience, the way we perceive regions of space and durations of time, and our conscious awareness of our own perceptions and events of thinking.

Files

  • thumnail for Bice_columbia_0054D_15254.pdf Bice_columbia_0054D_15254.pdf application/pdf 783 KB Download File

More About This Work

Academic Units
Philosophy
Thesis Advisors
Gaifman, Haim
Degree
Ph.D., Columbia University
Published Here
June 4, 2019