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Single Idea 10607

[filed under theme 6. Mathematics / C. Sources of Mathematics / 6. Logicism / b. Type theory ]

Full Idea

Frege's general logical system involves a type hierarchy, distinguishing objects from properties from properties-of-properties etc., with every item belonging to a determinate level.

Gist of Idea

Frege's logic has a hierarchy of object, property, property-of-property etc.

Source

report of Gottlob Frege (Begriffsschrift [1879]) by Peter Smith - Intro to Gödel's Theorems 14.1

Book Ref

Smith,Peter: 'An Introduction to Gödel's Theorems' [CUP 2007], p.118


A Reaction

The Theory of Types went on to apply this hierarchy to classes, where Frege's disastrous Basic Law V flattens the hierarchy of classes, putting them on the same level (Smith p.119)


The 20 ideas from 'Begriffsschrift'

It may be possible to define induction in terms of the ancestral relation [Frege, by Wright,C]
Frege's logic has a hierarchy of object, property, property-of-property etc. [Frege, by Smith,P]
Existence is not a first-order property, but the instantiation of a property [Frege, by Read]
Frege's account was top-down and decompositional, not bottom-up and compositional [Frege, by Potter]
The predicate 'exists' is actually a natural language expression for a quantifier [Frege, by Weiner]
Frege changed philosophy by extending logic's ability to check the grounds of thinking [Potter on Frege]
We should not describe human laws of thought, but how to correctly track truth [Frege, by Fisher]
In 1879 Frege developed second order logic [Frege, by Putnam]
Frege replaced Aristotle's subject/predicate form with function/argument form [Frege, by Weiner]
A quantifier is a second-level predicate (which explains how it contributes to truth-conditions) [Frege, by George/Velleman]
For Frege the variable ranges over all objects [Frege, by Tait]
Frege's domain for variables is all objects, but modern interpretations first fix the domain [Dummett on Frege]
Frege introduced quantifiers for generality [Frege, by Weiner]
Frege reduced most quantifiers to 'everything' combined with 'not' [Frege, by McCullogh]
Proof theory began with Frege's definition of derivability [Frege, by Prawitz]
Frege produced axioms for logic, though that does not now seem the natural basis for logic [Frege, by Kaplan]
For Frege, 'All A's are B's' means that the concept A implies the concept B [Frege, by Walicki]
Frege has a judgement stroke (vertical, asserting or judging) and a content stroke (horizontal, expressing) [Frege, by Weiner]
I don't use 'subject' and 'predicate' in my way of representing a judgement [Frege]
The laws of logic are boundless, so we want the few whose power contains the others [Frege]