First Paper, due Monday, February 10^th

• Your assignment is to figure out and explain what's going on in the passage of "On Sense on Nominatum" in which Frege discusses the subordinate clause "He who discovered the elliptical shape of the planetary orbits".

  • The passage can be seen as beginning (on p205) with the sentence "We are now going to consider clauses of another type, ..." and ending with the sentence "... for then it will be seen that whether a proper name has a nominatum can never depend upon the truth of a proposition."

  Be sure to eplain how the passage fits into the larger dialectical structure of Frege's article.

  • (What do I mean by this? Answers to this question could take one of the following forms, to give just two of many examples: (i) an exaplanation of what thesis is being argued for, and how that thesis is itself a step in the argument for the main thesis of the paper; (ii) or an explanaion of what objection to what thesis is being responded to.)

  You may wish to know that the German sentence has also been translated as follows:

  • "Whoever discovered the elliptical shape of the planetary orbits died in misery"

• The paper should be 2-3 pages long. Please be as concise and clear as possible. Remember, you are to write a purely exigetical paper.

Always provide specific page references and bibliographic information for work you discuss. (In general, when you attribute a view to an author, you must cite the work and page number of the passage on which your attribution is based. All quotes must be provided with page references.)

This page created by Delia Graff
URL: http://instruct1.cit.cornell.edu/research/graff/phil332/paper1.html
Last modified: "Sunday, 01 Jan 06, 13:56"