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| 4975 | A thought can be split in many ways, so that different parts appear as subject or predicate |
| Full Idea: A thought can be split up in many ways, so that now one thing, now another, appears as subject or predicate | |||
| From: Gottlob Frege (On Concept and Object [1892], p.199) | |||
| A reaction: Thus 'the mouse is in the box', and 'the box contains the mouse'. A simple point, but important when we are trying to distinguish thought from language. |
| 9949 | There is the concept, the object falling under it, and the extension (a set, which is also an object) |
| Full Idea: For Frege, the extension of the concept F is an object, as revealed by the fact that we use a name to refer to it. ..We must distinguish the concept, the object that falls under it, and the extension of the concept, which is the set containing the object. | |||
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (On Concept and Object [1892]) by A.George / D.J.Velleman - Philosophies of Mathematics Ch.2 | |||
| A reaction: This I take to be the key distinction needed if one is to grasp Frege's account of what a number is. When we say that Frege is a platonist about numbers, it is because he is committed to the notion that the extension is an object. |
| 18995 | Frege mistakenly takes existence to be a property of concepts, instead of being about things |
| Full Idea: Frege's theory treats existence as a property, not of things we call existent, but of concepts instantiated by those things. 'Biden exists' says our Biden-concept has instances. That is certainly not how it feels! We speak of the thing, not of concepts. | |||
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (On Concept and Object [1892]) by Stephen Yablo - Aboutness 01.4 | |||
| A reaction: Yablo's point is that you must ask what the sentence is 'about', and then the truth will refer to those things. Frege gets into a tangle because he thinks remarks using concepts are about the concepts. |
| 10317 | It is unclear whether Frege included qualities among his abstract objects |
| Full Idea: Expositors of Frege's views have disagreed over whether abstract qualities are to be reckoned among his objects. | |||
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (On Concept and Object [1892]) by Bob Hale - Abstract Objects Ch.2.II | |||
| A reaction: [he cites Dummett 1973:70-80, and Wright 1983:25-8] There seems to be a danger here of a collision between Fregean verbal approaches to ontological commitment and the traditional views about universals. No wonder they can't decide. |
| 10535 | Frege's 'objects' are both the referents of proper names, and what predicates are true or false of |
| Full Idea: Frege's notion of an object plays two roles in his semantics. Objects are the referents of proper names, and they are equally what predicates are true and false of. | |||
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (On Concept and Object [1892]) by Michael Dummett - Frege Philosophy of Language (2nd ed) Ch.4 | |||
| A reaction: Frege is the source of a desperate desire to turn everything into an object (see Idea 8858!), and he has the irritating authority of the man who invented quantificational logic. Nothing but trouble, that man. |
| 9839 | Frege equated the concepts under which an object falls with its properties |
| Full Idea: Frege equated the concepts under which an object falls with its properties. | |||
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (On Concept and Object [1892], p.201) by Michael Dummett - Frege philosophy of mathematics Ch.8 | |||
| A reaction: I take this to be false, as objects can fall under far more concepts than they have properties. I don't even think 'being a pencil' is a property of pencils, never mind 'being my favourite pencil', or 'not being Alexander the Great'. |
| 4973 | As I understand it, a concept is the meaning of a grammatical predicate |
| Full Idea: As I understand it, a concept is the meaning of a grammatical predicate. | |||
| From: Gottlob Frege (On Concept and Object [1892], p.193) | |||
| A reaction: All the ills of twentieth century philosophy reside here, because it makes a concept an entirely linguistic thing, so that animals can't have concepts, and language is cut off from reality, leading to relativism, pragmatism, and other nonsense. |
| 9167 | Frege felt that meanings must be public, so they are abstractions rather than mental entities |
| Full Idea: Frege felt that meanings are public property, and identified concepts (and hence 'intensions' or meanings) with abstract entities rather than mental entities. | |||
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (On Concept and Object [1892]) by Hilary Putnam - Meaning and Reference p.150 | |||
| A reaction: This is the germ of Wittgenstein's private language argument. I am inclined to feel that Frege approached language strictly as a logician, and didn't really care that he got himself into implausible platonist ontological commitments. |
| 4974 | For all the multiplicity of languages, mankind has a common stock of thoughts |
| Full Idea: For all the multiplicity of languages, mankind has a common stock of thoughts. | |||
| From: Gottlob Frege (On Concept and Object [1892], p.196n) | |||
| A reaction: Given the acknowledgement here that two very different sentences in different languages can express the same thought, he should recognise that at least some aspects of a thought are non-linguistic. |