Combining Philosophers

Ideas for Hermarchus, Gottlob Frege and E Reck / M Price

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4 ideas

7. Existence / C. Structure of Existence / 4. Ontological Dependence
Many of us find Frege's claim that truths depend on one another an obscure idea [Heck on Frege]
     Full Idea: Frege sometimes speaks of 'the dependence of truths upon one another' (1884:§2), but I find such ideas obscure, and suspect I'm not the only one who does.
     From: comment on Gottlob Frege (Grundlagen der Arithmetik (Foundations) [1884], §02) by Richard G. Heck - Cardinality, Counting and Equinumerosity 1
     A reaction: He refers to Burge 'struggling mightily' with this aspect of Frege's thought. I intend to defend Frege. See his 1914 lectures. I thought this dependence was basic to the whole modern project of doing metaphysics through logic?
Parallelism is intuitive, so it is more fundamental than sameness of direction [Frege, by Heck]
     Full Idea: Frege says that parallelism is more fundamental than sameness of direction because all geometrical notions must originally be given in intuition.
     From: report of Gottlob Frege (Grundlagen der Arithmetik (Foundations) [1884], §64) by Richard G. Heck - Cardinality, Counting and Equinumerosity 3
     A reaction: If Frege thinks some truths are more fundamental, this gives an indication of his reasons. But intuition is not a very strong base.
7. Existence / C. Structure of Existence / 7. Abstract/Concrete / a. Abstract/concrete
Frege refers to 'concrete' objects, but they are no different in principle from abstract ones [Frege, by Dummett]
     Full Idea: Frege employs the notion of 'concrete' (wirklich, literally 'actual') objects, in arguing that not every object is concrete, but it does not work; abstract objects are just as much objects as concrete ones.
     From: report of Gottlob Frege (Grundlagen der Arithmetik (Foundations) [1884], §26,85) by Michael Dummett - Frege Philosophy of Language (2nd ed) Ch.14
     A reaction: See Idea 10516 for why Dummett is keen on the distinction. Frege strikes me as being wildly irresponsible about ontology.
7. Existence / C. Structure of Existence / 7. Abstract/Concrete / b. Levels of abstraction
If objects are just presentation, we get increasing abstraction by ignoring their properties [Frege]
     Full Idea: If an object is just presentation, we can pay less attention to a property and it disappears. By letting one characteristic after another disappear, we obtain concepts that are increasingly more abstract.
     From: Gottlob Frege (Review of Husserl's 'Phil of Arithmetic' [1894], p.324)
     A reaction: Frege despises this view. Note there is scope in the despised view for degrees or levels of abstraction, defined in terms of number of properties ignored. Part of Frege's criticism is realist. He retains the object, while Husserl imagines it different.