"FREGEAN PROPOSITIONS AND THEIR GRASPABILITY"

According to Frege, a thought is an abstract structured entity constituted by senses which satisfi es, at least, the three following properties: it can be semantically assessed as true or as false, it is the object of so called propositional attitudes and it can be grasped. What Frege meant by ‘grasping’ is the peculiar way in which cognitive subjects such as we are can have access to thoughts. Th e possibility for thoughts to be grasped is put by Frege as a requirement for their existence in such a way that challenging their graspability would amount to jeopardise their ontological reality. But is it true, as Frege maintained, that the “graspability requirement” is satisfi ed? Moreover, do Frege’s texts contain any clear indications as to how a theory of grasping should be devised? Th is is the topic of the paper. In addressing this topic we shall claim (1) that the model of grasping which is most compatible with Frege’s overall assumptions, in particular with the peculiar mixture of Cartesianism about the mind and Platonism about thoughts which Frege adopts, is some version of “Representationalism” — i. e. of the hypothesis that they are the mental representations that which mediate our access to thoughts/contents; but (2) this very model does not fi t well neither with the role which the notion of Sinn plays within Frege’s theory nor with the thesis of the non-mental character of thoughts which Frege and the Fregeans in general defend.