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Single Idea 4973

[filed under theme 18. Thought / D. Concepts / 5. Concepts and Language / b. Concepts are linguistic ]

Full Idea

As I understand it, a concept is the meaning of a grammatical predicate.

Gist of Idea

As I understand it, a concept is the meaning of a grammatical predicate

Source

Gottlob Frege (On Concept and Object [1892], p.193)

Book Ref

Frege,Gottlob: 'Translations from the Writings of Gottlob Frege', ed/tr. Geach,P/Black,M [Blackwell 1980], p.43

A Reaction

All the ills of twentieth century philosophy reside here, because it makes a concept an entirely linguistic thing, so that animals can't have concepts, and language is cut off from reality, leading to relativism, pragmatism, and other nonsense.

The 5 ideas with the same theme [claim that without language there are no concepts]:

4973 As I understand it, a concept is the meaning of a grammatical predicate [Frege]
8651 A concept is a possible predicate of a singular judgement [Frege]
11104 Concepts are language [Quine]
4882 Concepts are things we (unlike dogs) can think about, because we have language [Dennett]
18589 For behaviourists concepts are dispositions to link category members to names [Machery]