Single Idea 13876

[catalogued under 1. Philosophy / E. Nature of Metaphysics / 6. Metaphysics as Conceptual]

Full Idea

For Frege it is the syntactic category which is primary, the ontological one derivative.

Gist of Idea

The syntactic category is primary, and the ontological category is derivative

Source

report of Gottlob Frege (Grundlagen der Arithmetik (Foundations) [1884]) by Crispin Wright - Frege's Concept of Numbers as Objects 1.iii

Book Reference

Wright,Crispin: 'Frege's Conception of Numbers' [Scots Philosophical Monographs 1983], p.13


A Reaction

I take the recent revival of metaphysics to be a rebellion against precisely this thought. Ontology disappeared for a hundred years into a hopeless miasma of linguistic complexity. Language is cludge, but the world isn't.

Related Idea

Idea 13877 Singular terms in true sentences must refer to objects; there is no further question about their existence [Wright,C]