Referentiality in Frege's Grundgesetze

Abstract

In §§28-31 of his Grundgesetze der Arithmetik, Frege forwards a demonstration that every correctly formed name of his formal language has a reference. Examination of this demonstration, it is here argued, reveals an incompleteness in a procedure of contextual definition. At the heart of this incompleteness is a difference between Frege’s criteria of referentiality and the possession of reference as it is ordinarily conceived. This difference relates to the distinction between objectual and substitutional quantification and Frege’s vacillation between the two.