PRESUPPOSITION

The term was firstly introduced by Frege in the 19th c

who argued that if anything is asserted, there is
always an obvious presupposition that the simple or
compound proper names used have a referenceEx:
Kepler died in misery >> Kepler designates
something.
Frege sustained that utterance presupposed from the
statement is not part of the meaning of st 1. If 2 were
part of the meaning of 1 then the statement would have
the logical form 1 & 2.Frege sketches the theory of
presupposition in 3 phases: 1.Referring phrases like
proper names or definite NPs. Referring phrases and
temporal clauses carry presupposition to the extend to
which they have a referent.2.A sentence and its
negative counterpart share the same set of
presuppositions.3.In order for a sentence to be either
true or false, its presupposition must be true
.According to Strawson, who distinguished between
sentences and uses of sentences to make statements,
only statements can be true or false.
Ex: The king of France is wise. the statement could
have been true in the 18th c but nowadays we cannot
assume that the statement is either true or false
because the king of France does not exist. Strawson
argues that there is a special relationship between state
1 and 2: There is a present king of France. This
relationship is called presupposition. Following Frege,
Strawson stated that a negative sentence when uttered
will preserve its presuppositions.