The Traceability Of Analytic Philosophy - From Kant, Bolzano To Frege

Since the 21st century,some philosophers are becoming more and more to concern about the history of analytical philosophy itself.Analytical philosophy has been seen as an ahistorical branch for a long time,however the development process of analytical philosophy has shown constantly its historical characteristics.From the basic concept or basic method point of view,there is a close and complex relationship between analytical philosophy and traditional western philosophy,especially between analytical philosophy and continental philosophy.So,how to seek out the starting point of analytical thought from traditional philosophy resource,how to evaluate the relationship between analytical and traditional philosophy,and so only doing such a work,we may have capacity to indicate the continuity of the development of western philosophy,and succession from traditional philosophy to analytical philosophy,as well as to really understand the peculiarities and the value of analytical philosophy.It is in line with this understanding,some analytical philosophers begin to pay close attention to Leibnize,Kant and modern German philosophy.As we know,"linguistic turn" symbolizes the birth of analytical philosophy.The origin of analytical philosophy embodies a transformation process from traditional epistemology to semantics,but the historical context of this "Turn" is still obscure by now,therefore it needs a great clarification.The aim of this study is to close up the historical breakage between Kant's theoretical philosophy(The Critic of Pure Reason)and analytical philosophy(Logical semantics of Frege)?Frege is the founding father of modern logic as well as analytical philosophy.However,Frege's logical semantics which characterized by "logical analysis" and"semantic analysis" has a long and profound continental philosophy foundation.In addition to the factor of modern logic,the origin of thought of analytical philosophy is a process of criticize,remodeling and responses to the theoretical philosophy of Kant.The purpose of Frege is to face and answer Kant's question:what is the ultimate condition and foundation of reason(For Kant,it is the synthetic a priori knowledge;for Frege,it is the mathematical knowledge)?Kant's question is "how is the knowledge of a synthetic a priori possible?" Frege transfers the just question into another one,as follows:how is the meaning of a proposition of a priori(logical)conditions possible(necessarily "true")?It is because of just the concern of "ultimate foundation" of truth,of knowledge and of belief,so a connection between Frege and Kant has been realized.In addition,the origin of logical semantics is based on the following two philosophical predicament and mission in 19th century,one is to oppose various kinds of naturalism,physiological and psychological explanation on philosophy at that time,another one is to oppose traditional logic and trying to construct new logic and philosophical language,including paying attention to the basis of mathematics.The completion of these two missions is not only an interaction of a theoretical process,but also a response to Kantian philosophy.Therefore,the thought of Leibniz and Kant are the seeds of logic-semantics,in this period,the new logic of Bolzano,Trendelenburg's idea of logical language,Lotze's thought of logic,logical school of New Kantianism,Boole's Algebra of Logic and the modern theories of numbers and so on,a main stream from which converged by these so many kinds of factors of thought and schools of philosophy as the branches into Frege.For this reason,analytical philosophy ought to have a qualification to start a historical research.Analytical philosophy not only has its developmental history,but also has its prehistoric stage.The goal of this dissertation is to make an investigation of prehistoric and an exploration of the source of analytical philosophy.The whole research process divided into three steps:Firstly,the history origin as well as varieties of influence factors of Frege's logical semantics(Chapter 1,Chapter 2);Secondly,a varieties of confronting problems and their solution when Frege's logical semantics is becoming to occur(Chapter 3);Thirdly,the content,philosophical foundation and its inner relation with Kant(Chapter 4,Chapter 5,Conclusion).In the first chapter,I introduce Bolzano's some basic thoughts in logic.Bolzano was the first to critique of Kant,he opposed Kantian epistemology which based on the concepts of "intuition" and“synthetic a priori",and invented some semantic concepts such as "sentence itself' and "concept itself' and so on,in addition,he completed his new logic construction on the basis of methodology of "Concept/Varieties".This kind of extensional logic is not only totally different from traditional logic,but also become the conceptual rudiment of the theory of "Function/Argument" in Frege's philosophy of meaning.The main concepts and methods of Bolzano's logic are becoming the key factors from which Kantian epistemology to Frege's logical semantics.However,Bolzano is not the only transitional role from which Kant to Frege,there are also another more pioneers's historical contributions should not been neglected.In the second chapter,according to the historical context of the origin of logical semantics,I elaborate and demonstrate the logic school of Neo-Kantianism,Rudolf Hermann Lotze's concept of pure logic as well as Boolean algebra.The trend of these thoughts plays an ecbolic role in the origin of Frege's logical semantics,and it makes the process of the origin more meticulous and plenary.It is Marburg school of Neo-Kantianism that advances the concepts such as "pure thought" and "transcendental methodology" and so on,the figures of the school influences on Frege through its re-interpretion of Kant's a priori logic.Some crucial concepts in Lotze's logic,such as "judgment priori to concept","theory of function" and "objectivity of thought" and so on,are becoming the harbingers of the arrival of Frege's logical semantics.The main goal of Boolean algebra is to restore logic to algebraic operation,however,the formalized operation and express of this sort of algebra have an immediate influence on the formal shape of Frege's logic,it is just the modern formal logic.Under the time and environment of Frege,that is to say,from later half of 19th century to the beginning of 20th century,the attitude toward Kantian philosophy and the revolution in the field of mathematics as well as of logic,are becoming the direct factors to the origin of logical semantics.So,this is the very mission of the second step(Chapter 3)in the whole research.The four factors that cause the birth of Frege's logical semantics are given in this chapter,they are as follows:(1)Frege makes a response to Leibnize which disagrees with Kant,and he inherits the thought of idealism which thinking of mathematics is from logical reasoning.(2)In the face of the flaw and imperfection of natural language and trying to establish a perfect language,Frege establishes the basic framework of mathematical logic——"Begriffsschrift".(3)Repelling psychological factor in logic is becoming a philosophical trend at the end of 19th century,in comparison to this repellent in phenomenology,Frege eliminates psychologism successfully in logic.(4)The construction of theory of meaning is an extension from logical objective,in comparison to the theory of meaning based on transcendentalism in phenomenology,Frege move towards the theory of meaning that based on modern logic.In a word,it is just the response and solution to these questions above,so that the thought of logical semantics has been established finally.In the fourth chapter,I interpret some basic philosophical concepts of Frege in the light of Kantian thoughts,such as analysis,a priori,objective and truth theory and so on,these key concepts which shared by epistemology and analytical philosophy are justified in Frege's logical framework.The purpose of doing so is to show the inner divergence and covert relevancy between Frege and Kant,as well as to show the main content,process of argumentation and philosophical basis of logical semantics and transcendental philosophy.In the fifth chapter as an end of this dissertation,I interpret and justify a deeper relevance between Frege and Kant,that is to say,the relevance exists in their different views about the foundation of mathematics.Kant believes that mathematics is a kind of synthetic a priori judgment,but Frege thinks that it is belong to an analytical truth which based on logical inference and knowledge extension.The justification of foundation of arithmetic which Frege has made,is not only the most key and profound solution in his logical semantics,but also becoming the land of his back-turning to Kant.When Frege 's logicism creed and logical framework encounter Russell's paradox,on the contrary,he appeals to intuition and takes geometrical intuition of Kant as the foundation of mathematics.In the conclusion of this study,I proceed a more interpretation and a more deep discussion on the relation between Frege and Kant,and between modern logic and transcendental logic,and I believe that modern logic and transcendental logic has shown a kind of relation of "contrariety and unity".Frege starts with critics on Kant's theories of judgment,and by means of the construction of predicate logic,he eliminated successfully the confusion and the mixture of logic and psychology.On this account,he lay the foundation of transformation from epistemology to semantics.However,the theory of modern quantifier,formalism of logic,judgment priori to conception as well as the structure of judgment of "Function/Argument",all of these modern thoughts of logic initiated by Frege,are actually lay the roots deeply in "Category/Intuition",which is a framework of Kant's transcendental logic.Therefore,the transcendental logic is one of the foundations of modern logic of Frege.The general conclusion of this study is the following:in the course of the birth of Frege's thought of analysis(logical semantics),it is initiated by Kant(critic on the idea that takes mathematics knowledge as synthetic a priori truth),deviated from Kant(eliminating all the intuitive factors,and take algebra as a kind of logic),and finally get back to Kant(take geometrical intuition or pure space as the basis of algebra).Therefore,I believe that Frege and Kant seek the following similar philosophical questions:What is the human reason,especially what is the pure reason?How reason reveals itself?From different philosophical points of view,as well as by the different way of arguments(one way is transcendental logic,another way is symbolic logic),they obtain almost the same conclusion,as following:the real object of reason is reason itself.