The first suggestion of a connection between it and...

The first suggestion of a connection between it and antipsychologism comes near the beginning of the Grundlagen , where Frege lays out the “fundamental principles” of his investigation: In this investigation I have adhered to the following fundamental principles: There must be a sharp separation of the psychological from the logical, the subjective from the objective; The meaning of a word must be asked for in the context of a proposition, not in isolation; The distinction between concept and object must be kept in mind.

To comply with the first, I have used the word ‘idea’ [‘Vorstellung’] always in the psychological sense, and have distinguished ideas from both concepts and objects.

If the second principle is not observed, then one is almost forced to take as the meaning of words mental images or acts of an individual mind, and thereby to offend against the first as well.[^70] At this point, the suggestion of a connection between the observance of the context principle and the avoidance of psychologism is only programmatic.

Frege does not say, here, how the two are connected, or why we must think that seeking the meaning of words in isolation will “almost” force us into subjectivist psychologism. Frege’s second mention of the context principle in the Grundlagen provides more detail. It comes in the course of his attempt to define the concept of number, after he has already argued that numbers are independent, self-standing objects, and that each judgment about a number contains an assertion about a concept.

Frege considers an objector who challenges the mind-independence and objecthood of numbers on psychological grounds. Such an objector may hold that the conception of numbers as objects cannot be sustained, since we have no idea or image of many numbers; numbers expressing very small or large quantities or magnitudes, for instance, routinely outstrip our ability to provide intuitive images in thought or imagination to represent them.

Frege’s response does not dispute the truth of the psychological claim, but instead suggests the replacement of the psychologistic procedure with a logical one: We are quite often led by our thought beyond the imaginable, without thereby losing the support for our inferences. Even if, as it seems to be, it is impossible for us as human beings to think without ideas, it may still be that their connection with thought is entirely inessential, arbitrary and conventional.