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Full Idea
Inattention is a very strong lye which must not be too concentrated, or it dissolves everything (such as the connection between the objects), but must not be too weak, to produce sufficient change. Personally I cannot find the proper dilution.
Clarification
A 'lye' is a strong alkaline chemical cleanser
Gist of Idea
How do you find the right level of inattention; you eliminate too many or too few characteristics
Source
Gottlob Frege (Review of Husserl's 'Phil of Arithmetic' [1894], p.330)
Book Ref
-: 'Mind July 1972' [-], p.330
A Reaction
We may sympathise with the lack of precision here (frustrating for a logician), but it is not difficult to say of a baseball defence 'just concentrate on the relations, and ignore the individuals who implement it'. You retain basic baseball skills.
| 9821 | A definition need not capture the sense of an expression - just get the reference right [Frege, by Dummett] |
| 17446 | Counting rests on one-one correspondence, of numerals to objects [Frege] |
| 9577 | The naïve view of number is that it is like a heap of things, or maybe a property of a heap [Frege] |
| 9578 | If objects are just presentation, we get increasing abstraction by ignoring their properties [Frege] |
| 9580 | Our concepts recognise existing relations, they don't change them [Frege] |
| 9579 | Disregarding properties of two cats still leaves different objects, but what is now the difference? [Frege] |
| 9581 | Many people have the same thought, which is the component, not the private presentation [Frege] |
| 9582 | Husserl rests sameness of number on one-one correlation, forgetting the correlation with numbers themselves [Frege] |
| 9583 | Psychological logicians are concerned with sense of words, but mathematicians study the reference [Frege] |
| 9584 | Identity baffles psychologists, since A and B must be presented differently to identify them [Frege] |
| 9585 | Since every definition is an equation, one cannot define equality itself [Frege] |
| 9586 | In a number-statement, something is predicated of a concept [Frege] |
| 9587 | How do you find the right level of inattention; you eliminate too many or too few characteristics [Frege] |
| 9588 | Number-abstraction somehow makes things identical without changing them! [Frege] |
| 9589 | Numbers are not real like the sea, but (crucially) they are still objective [Frege] |