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Full Idea
Frege (1893) considered a definite description to be a genuine singular term (as we do), so that a sentence like 'The present King of France is bald' would have the same logical form as 'Harry Truman is bald'.
Gist of Idea
Frege considered definite descriptions to be genuine singular terms
Source
report of Gottlob Frege (Grundgesetze der Arithmetik 1 (Basic Laws) [1893]) by M Fitting/R Mendelsohn - First-Order Modal Logic
Book Ref
Fitting,M/Mendelsohn,R: 'First-Order Modal Logic' [Synthese 1998], p.250
A Reaction
The difficulty is what the term refers to, and they embrace a degree of Meinongianism - that is that non-existent objects can still have properties attributed to them, and so can be allowed some sort of 'existence'.
| 13733 | Frege considered definite descriptions to be genuine singular terms [Frege, by Fitting/Mendelsohn] |
| 10623 | Frege defined number in terms of extensions of concepts, but needed Basic Law V to explain extensions [Frege, by Hale/Wright] |
| 9975 | Frege ignored Cantor's warning that a cardinal set is not just a concept-extension [Tait on Frege] |
| 9190 | A concept is a function mapping objects onto truth-values, if they fall under the concept [Frege, by Dummett] |
| 13665 | Frege took the study of concepts to be part of logic [Frege, by Shapiro] |
| 9874 | Contradiction arises from Frege's substitutional account of second-order quantification [Dummett on Frege] |
| 18252 | Real numbers are ratios of quantities, such as lengths or masses [Frege] |
| 18271 | We can't prove everything, but we can spell out the unproved, so that foundations are clear [Frege] |
| 18165 | My Basic Law V is a law of pure logic [Frege] |