Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Persian Literature and Foreign Languages Allameh Tabataba'i University
10.22108/mph.2025.141373.1560
Abstract
Frege in Begriffsschrift says that modal concepts have no place in logic. Of course, he provides definitions for these concepts to explain how to use them in language but his definitions face two problems. First, they do not maintain the usual connections between the concepts of necessity and possibility, and second, their difference between a priori/a posteriori and analytic/synthetic concepts is not clear.
Here we present a version of Ferge's position on modal concepts, which firstly does not face these problems and secondly, is coherent with his other ideas and opinions. Frege doesn't use de re or de dicto modalities but considers modal concepts as properties of inferential relationship. Modal concepts express the characteristics of the inferential relationship, but just as it is not possible to talk about the inferential relationship in logic, there is no place to talk about its features in logic either. This reading, from Frege's point of view, preserves the traditional connection between the concepts of necessity and possibility and shows the difference between these concepts with a priori/a posteriori and analytic/synthetic concepts.