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Inverse View
It is not the case that We need a Begriffsschrift, distinct from natural languages, to depict the structures of propositions expressed by ordinary sentences.
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Reasons For
2 perspectives
Reason for 1 of 2
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1.
Wittgenstein's later work shows that meaning is constituted by rule-governed use within practices, not by hidden logical structures underlying surface grammar.
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2.
Frege's puzzle cases (e.g., 'every young doctor') can be resolved by attending carefully to the inferential norms already operative in natural language without positing a distinct formal language.
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3.
Positing a Begriffsschrift as the true bearer of propositional structure presupposes a picture theory of meaning that the ordinary language tradition has given substantial independent reasons to reject.
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Reason for 2 of 2
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1.
Montague demonstrated that natural language has a rigorous compositional semantics expressible within intensional type theory without recourse to a separate Begriffsschrift.
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2.
If natural language itself admits formal semantic treatment via lambda abstraction and type-theoretic composition, the gap between grammatical and logical form collapses.
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Reasons Against
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Reason against
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1.
Frege's logic handles a wide range of inferences (such as the valid inference from 'every young doctor' to 'every doctor' in the patient-doctor example) that had puzzled medieval logicians.
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2.
The Fregean logical forms seem to differ dramatically from the grammatical forms of ordinary sentences like (13–16).
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