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Single Idea 8651

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

Full Idea

A concept is for me that which can be predicate of a singular judgement-content.

Gist of Idea

A concept is a possible predicate of a singular judgement

Source

Gottlob Frege (Grundlagen der Arithmetik (Foundations) [1884], §66 n)

Book Ref

Frege,Gottlob: 'The Foundations of Arithmetic (Austin)', ed/tr. Austin,J.L. [Blackwell 1980], p.77

A Reaction

This seems intuitively odd, given that a predicate could (in principle) be of almost infinite complexity, whereas I would be reluctant to call anything a 'concept' if it couldn't be grasped by a single action of a normal conscious mind.

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]