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Single Idea 18995

[filed under theme 7. Existence / A. Nature of Existence / 6. Criterion for Existence ]

Full Idea

Frege's theory treats existence as a property, not of things we call existent, but of concepts instantiated by those things. 'Biden exists' says our Biden-concept has instances. That is certainly not how it feels! We speak of the thing, not of concepts.

Clarification

'Biden' is an American politician

Gist of Idea

Frege mistakenly takes existence to be a property of concepts, instead of being about things

Source

report of Gottlob Frege (On Concept and Object [1892]) by Stephen Yablo - Aboutness 01.4

Book Ref

Yablo,Stephen: 'Aboutness' [Princeton 2014], p.16

A Reaction

Yablo's point is that you must ask what the sentence is 'about', and then the truth will refer to those things. Frege gets into a tangle because he thinks remarks using concepts are about the concepts.

Related Ideas

Idea 18752 'The concept "horse"' denotes a concept, yet seems also to denote an object [Frege, by McGee]

Idea 18899 Frege takes the existence of horses to be part of their concept [Frege, by Sommers]

The 9 ideas from 'On Concept and Object'

9949 There is the concept, the object falling under it, and the extension (a set, which is also an object) [Frege, by George/Velleman]
18995 Frege mistakenly takes existence to be a property of concepts, instead of being about things [Frege, by Yablo]
10317 It is unclear whether Frege included qualities among his abstract objects [Frege, by Hale]
10535 Frege's 'objects' are both the referents of proper names, and what predicates are true or false of [Frege, by Dummett]
9167 Frege felt that meanings must be public, so they are abstractions rather than mental entities [Frege, by Putnam]
4973 As I understand it, a concept is the meaning of a grammatical predicate [Frege]
4974 For all the multiplicity of languages, mankind has a common stock of thoughts [Frege]
4975 A thought can be split in many ways, so that different parts appear as subject or predicate [Frege]
9839 Frege equated the concepts under which an object falls with its properties [Frege, by Dummett]