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Full Idea
Frege had a notorious difficulty over the concept 'horse', when he suggests that if we wish to assert something about a concept, we are obliged to proceed indirectly by speaking of an object that represents it.
Gist of Idea
An assertion about the concept 'horse' must indirectly speak of an object
Source
report of Gottlob Frege (Function and Concept [1891], Ch.2.II) by Bob Hale - Abstract Objects
Book Ref
Hale,Bob: 'Abstract Objects' [Blackwell 1987], p.35
A Reaction
This sounds like the thin end of a wedge. The great champion of objects is forced to accept them here as a façon de parler, when elsewhere they have ontological status.
| 18806 | Frege thought traditional categories had psychological and linguistic impurities [Frege, by Rumfitt] |
| 18899 | Frege takes the existence of horses to be part of their concept [Frege, by Sommers] |
| 4028 | Frege allows either too few properties (as extensions) or too many (as predicates) [Mellor/Oliver on Frege] |
| 9947 | Concepts are the ontological counterparts of predicative expressions [Frege, by George/Velleman] |
| 9948 | Unlike objects, concepts are inherently incomplete [Frege, by George/Velleman] |
| 10319 | An assertion about the concept 'horse' must indirectly speak of an object [Frege, by Hale] |
| 4972 | I may regard a thought about Phosphorus as true, and the same thought about Hesperus as false [Frege] |
| 8488 | A concept is a function whose value is always a truth-value [Frege] |
| 8487 | Arithmetic is a development of logic, so arithmetical symbolism must expand into logical symbolism [Frege] |
| 8489 | The concept 'object' is too simple for analysis; unlike a function, it is an expression with no empty place [Frege] |
| 8490 | First-level functions have objects as arguments; second-level functions take functions as arguments [Frege] |
| 8491 | The Ontological Argument fallaciously treats existence as a first-level concept [Frege] |
| 8492 | Relations are functions with two arguments [Frege] |