In the book I did not work through Frege's conception of judgment. It served my purpose to invoke a popular conception of judgment that is customarily believed to be indebted to Frege. However, the theme of the book acquires a further contour when it is approached through the idea of judgment expressed by Frege's stroke. That stroke is to express a conception of judgment in which judgment is recognized to be the object of logic; it represents Frege’s attempt at a non‐psychologistic idea of judgment. The attempt is botched because the separation of force from content opens up space for a conception of judgment as a propositional attitude. What follows shows how driving the force of judgment inside the content judged shuts down that space and thus realizes Frege’s ambition to develop logic as the science of judgment. 4

Frege distinguishes the force of judgment from the content judged (which he later calls thought) and describes judgment as the recognition of the truth of a content, or thought. This may appear to show that he understands judging to be adopting an attitude toward a thought, namely, recognizing it to be true. Thus one may find in the distinction of force and content the idea that judgment is a propositional attitude. However, this appearance is misleading. The sign of Frege's concept‐script that signifies the force of judgment—a small vertical stroke—is not a predicate; it does not signify something that may be said of something. Hence, insofar as “judge” expresses what Frege's small vertical stroke expresses, it does not signify an attitude. 3 And yet, we will see that the way in which Frege conceives force leaves room for the idea that there is, alongside its use to express force, a use of “judge” as a predicate. He leaves room for that idea precisely by separating out the force of judgment from the content judged. In this way, the separation of force from content leads to the idea that judgment is a propositional attitude.

In Self‐Consciousness and Objectivity , I reject the idea that judgment is a propositional attitude. More generally, I reject the idea that “I judge a is F” is a predicative judgment, predicating a determination signified by “__ judge a is F” of an object designated by “I”. It is clear that, if “I judge a is F” is of this form, specifically, if it represents someone to adopt an attitude, then what it judges is not the same as what is judged in “a is F”: the latter refers to a and predicates of it being F; the former refers not to a, but to a different object and predicates of it not being F, but a different determination. In the paragraph from which Hanks quotes, I link the idea that the force of judgment is external to the content judged to the conception of judgment as a propositional attitude. And while it would be wrong to identify the force–content–distinction with that conception, the latter is bound to the former: the separation of force from content cannot but give rise to the notion that judgment is a propositional attitude, more generally, that “__ judge p” signifies a predicative determination.

In his review of my Self‐Consciousness and Objectivity , Hanks quotes me, “If judgment is articulated into force and content, then I think p is a content alongside and different from p ,” 1 and comments, “No, that is not what the distinction means, nor is it a consequence of Frege's distinction. […] Rödl seems to think that Frege's distinction implies that the concept of judgment must be excluded from any content p , so that p and I judge p are distinct contents. But that is no consequence of this distinction. One could accept Rödl's claim that p and I think p are the same content and still hold, with Frege, that this content, p / I think p , is separate from the act of judging it.” 2 In what follows, I explain how Frege's conception of force as external to content, while it does not mean that “I judge p” is a content alongside “p”—precisely not—yet implies that.

2 TWO USES OF “I JUDGE __”

2.1 “I judge __” as sign of force Frege describes the structure of a formula of his concept‐script as follows: “A judgment will always be expressed by means of the sign … which stands to the left of the sign or complex of signs that specifies the content of the judgment. If one omits the small vertical stroke …, then this is to transform the judgment into a mere complex of representations, of which the writer does not express whether or not he recognizes its truth. […] The horizontal stroke … binds the symbols that follow it into a whole, and to this whole the affirmation relates, which is expressed by the vertical stroke at the left end of the horizontal one. Let the horizontal stroke be called content stroke, the vertical judgment stroke.”5 A writer uses the concept‐script to express judgments. Expressing a judgment, he deploys a sign that signifies the content of his judgment, and he deploys a further sign, a vertical stroke, that expresses that he affirms that content, or that he recognizes it as true. Frege speaks not only of the writer and what he expresses, but also of the reader and what he understands. And Frege is right to do so. After all, the writer writes for the reader. It is natural to think that the reader, understanding the writer’s vertical stroke, understands that the writer affirms the content expressed by the following sign. We will return to this. Here we note that this is not how Frege describes the reader’s understanding. While Frege does not say explicitly what the reader reads, reading the vertical stroke, he says that, reading a sign not preceded by that stroke, the reader is merely to represent what the sign expresses.6 He implies that in response to the vertical stroke the reader is not only to represent, but to affirm, to recognize as true, what the sign following the stroke expresses. As Frege explains in a letter: “She who understands the sentence that is put forth with assertoric force adds to it her acknowledgment of its truth.”7 Understanding the vertical stroke, the reader affirms the content that follows the stroke. The reader affirms what the writer affirms whom she reads. A writer or reader may think a content, or she may do not only that, but moreover affirm that content. This difference is not noted from the outside, by someone who describes the writer or reader. It is for the writer as she writes, and it is for the reader as she reads. She understands herself merely to think what thereby she thinks, or she understands herself to judge what thereby she judges, as the case may be. When Frege says that the writer, drawing a vertical stroke, expresses that she affirms the content, he does not mean that her use of that stroke expresses her affirmation in the way in which a dog's barking expresses its agitation. And when Frege suggests that the reader affirms the content preceded by the vertical stroke, he does not mean that she does so in reaction to the sign, but understanding it. If we seek in the language of life, as Frege calls it,8 a form of words that may do what the vertical stroke does in the concept‐script, then “I judge __” serves us well. For, first, the vertical stroke expresses a conception of the content as judged. So it is apt to use the word “judge”. Indeed, when Frege explains the stroke in the language of life, he calls it “judgment stroke.” Secondly, she who affirms the content as opposed to merely think it, understands herself to affirm it as opposed to merely think it. The first‐person pronoun, “I”, indicates this. Indeed, the phrase “I judge” is used in life in precisely the way in which Frege stipulates the vertical stroke be used: a writer may use “I judge” to express that he affirms the content signified by the sign that follows “I judge”. One may want to say that this is not the only use of “I judge”. We will come to that. Clearly it is a use. Using the vertical stroke, or “I judge”, a writer expresses his affirmation of the content, understanding himself to affirm it, which understanding is not a side‐thought, “Nebengedanke”,9 but internal to his affirming the content he thereby affirms. There is a further form of words in the language of life that Frege uses to explain the vertical stroke: the writer, he says, expresses by that stroke that he recognizes the content as true. Thus the language of life provides a further form of words that is used as the vertical stroke is used in the concept‐script: “__ is true”. Yet another is “__ is a fact”: Frege proposes to render, in the language of life, the vertical stroke to the left of a sign as that phrase to its right.10 We may think something has gone wrong. “I judge __” and “__ is true” surely differ in meaning. Therefore, it cannot be that both render the vertical stroke. Now when we think this, we bring to the vertical stroke an idea of the meaning of a sign, namely, that it represents certain content distinct from other contents: “I judge __” represents a different content from “__ is true”. But this idea is inapplicable to the vertical stroke and therefore to “I judge __” and “__ is true” insofar as these are used as the vertical stroke is used. A concept‐script formula places a vertical stroke to the left of a sign of content. The unity of the vertical stroke and the sign to its right is different from the unity of that sign, the sign that signifies the content. A sign of content fit to stand to the right of a vertical stroke exhibits predicative unity. Predicative unity, in the elementary case, the unity of name and predicate, is functional unity: an unsaturated expression, predicate, signifying a function, is saturated by a saturated expression, name, signifying an argument. By contrast, the unity of the sign of force and a sign of content is not functional. The sign that follows the vertical stroke is a saturated expression. But the vertical stroke is no unsaturated expression. It is not a predicate. This reflects a thought that Frege regards as a lasting insight: assertoric force is separate from predication.11 Predicating something of something, I think something. I do not, not yet, judge anything. Conversely, judging something is not predicating something of something. Whatever I may predicate of something, specifically, whatever I may predicate of a thought, I therein merely think something. I do not recognize anything as true. Insofar as “__ is true” expresses force—insofar as it expresses the recognition of __ as true—it is not a predicate; it does not signify a determination of anything, specifically not a determination of thoughts. The same holds for “I judge __”. “I judge __”, insofar as it is used in the way in which the vertical stroke is used, is not a predicate of thoughts. Force—what is expressed by “__ is true” or “I judge __”—is incapable of being a component of a content judged. A vertical stroke can never appear to the right of a vertical stroke. “I judge __”, “__ is true”, the vertical stroke: these expressions express no content whatsoever. This makes it pointless to ask whether “I judge p” expresses the same content as or a different content from “p”. She who asks this question does not, in asking it, use “I judge __” as the sign of force.12

2.2 “I judge __” as a predicate “I judge __”, insofar as it is used in the way in which the vertical stroke is used, does not signify a content. But it seems that these words have a use in which they do signify a content. For it seems that, when I say “Smith judges p”, a content is indicated by the name “Smith” and the verb “judge” that forms no part of the content of “p”. If this is so, then there is a use of “I judge __” that signifies a content. For it is not possible to isolate Smith's “I judge p” from my “Smith judges p”, nor my “I judge p” from Smith's “SR judges p”. We saw that Frege suggests that a reader of something Frege has written, coming upon the vertical stroke, is not to think that Frege affirms the content signified by the sign that follows. Rather, she is to affirm that content. But even if this is so, the reader cannot be said to misunderstand Frege when she expresses her understanding of what Frege has written by saying “Frege affirms __”. After all, Frege told her that this is how he uses the vertical stroke: he uses it to express that he recognizes as true the content that follows it: “der Schreiber drückt aus, daß er ihr Wahrheit zuerkenne.” In general, she to whom I say “I judge __” does not fall out of our conversation when she understands me to say something she would express by “SR judges __”. It seems that “Smith judges p” expresses a content different from the content expressed by “p”. Indeed, it seems that “Smith judges p” employs a predicate “Smith judges __” and applies it to a thought. And insofar as I say, with “Smith judges p”, what I understand Smith to say as she says “I judge p”, the same is true of “I judge p”. We may propose a different analysis of the logical form of “Smith judges p”, according to which, say, “p”, in this context, does not signify an object, but indicates the form or type of judgment ascribed to Smith. This does not matter. What matters is this: “Smith judges p” expresses a content; “Smith” and “judge p” contribute to this content, “Smith” as a name that designates an object, “judge p” as a predicate that signifies a determination. When “I judge p” is used in this way—“I” as referring to an object, “judge p” as specifying a predicative determination—then it is not used as Frege says the vertical stroke is used.

2.3 Empirical and logical concept So there are two uses of “I judge”: as sign of force and as sign of a certain content. In a recent essay, Maria van der Schaar proposes that we understand this as follows. There are two concepts of judgment, a logical concept and an empirical concept; the vertical stroke signifies the former, a particular predicate the latter. The empirical concept of judgment is the concept using which I think of someone other judging and of myself as someone other to someone other. Thus this concept is used, as van der Schaar puts it, from the perspective of the third person. The logical concept, by contrast, is the concept through which I think my own judgment as my own. It is the concept of judgment I use from the first‐person perspective. The two “I judge __”, sign of force and sign of content, are to signify two concepts of judgment. This makes no sense. It makes no sense to think that these two uses of “I judge” give voice to two ways of being conscious of the same, namely, judgment. For the first concept, the logical concept, has no content. By contrast, the second concept, the empirical concept, has a determinate content; it is used to think something specific of something specific, of a certain thing (Smith) that it is so (judges p).13 Nothing is not the same as something. The difficulty affects the popular idea that first‐person thought of thought is transparent. Gareth Evans explains: “I get myself in a position to answer the question whether I believe that p by putting into operation whatever procedure I have for answering the question whether p.”14 When arrived at in this way, the statement “I judge p” is said to be transparent to the statement “p”. That is, “I judge __”, in this use, has no content: the procedure for judging “I judge p” does not reflect any content beyond p. The content of “I judge p” would reside in the meaning of the name “I” and the meaning of the predicate “judges p”. But as Evans explains, judging “I judge a is F”, I do not pick out an object signified by “I” and do not apply to it a procedure for determining whether something satisfies the predicate “judges a is F”. The only content in view is “a is F”: I pick out a and apply to it a procedure for determining whether something is F. The same holds for “It is true that a is F”. Indeed, in its transparent use, “I judge __” is not distinguished from “It is true that __”. Asking “Do I judge p?” I ask “Is it true that p?”; I determine whether I judge p by determining whether p is true. This shows that this use of “I judge __” is the one in which it does in the language of life what the vertical stroke does in the concept‐script. Now, Evans hastens to remind us that my understanding of the statement “I judge p” must involve my understanding it to use the same predicate as is used in the statement “Smith judges p”.15 However, Evans's description of how “I judge p” is used transparently not only does not show it to manifest this understanding. It settles it that “judge”, in this use of it, is no predicate. Being no predicate, it is not, because it cannot be, understood to be the same predicate as any predicate. “I judge __” has two uses, we try saying. One is its use as a sign of force. In this use, it signifies no content. The other is a use in which it refers to an object and predicates something of it. Here, “I judge __” signifies a certain content. These two uses of “I judge __” have nothing to do with each other. Nothing travels across the chasm separating force from content, being first force, then content. It is a freak accident that the same word is used in these two ways. This is what she who follows Frege and the conception of judgment shown in the structure of the concept‐script must say. But it cannot be right.