more on this theme     |     more from this thinker

Single Idea 9818

[filed under theme 18. Thought / A. Modes of Thought / 1. Thought ]

Full Idea

On Frege's view, what distinguishes thoughts from everything else is that they may meaningfully be called 'true' and 'false'.

Gist of Idea

A thought is distinguished from other things by a capacity to be true or false

Source

report of Gottlob Frege (The Thought: a Logical Enquiry [1918]) by Michael Dummett - Frege philosophy of mathematics Ch.2

Book Ref

Dummett,Michael: 'Frege: philosophy of mathematics' [Duckworth 1991], p.15

A Reaction

A lot of thinking is imagistic, and while the image may or may not truly picture the world, we tend to think that the truth or otherwise of daydreaming is simply irrelevant. Does Frege take all thought to be propositional?

The 13 ideas from 'The Thought: a Logical Enquiry'

7740 There exists a realm, beyond objects and ideas, of non-spatio-temporal thoughts [Frege, by Weiner]
8162 Thoughts have their own realm of reality - 'sense' (as opposed to the realm of 'reference') [Frege, by Dummett]
9818 A thought is distinguished from other things by a capacity to be true or false [Frege, by Dummett]
16379 Thoughts about myself are understood one way to me, and another when communicated [Frege]
9877 Late Frege saw his non-actual objective objects as exclusively thoughts and senses [Frege, by Dummett]
19466 The word 'true' seems to be unique and indefinable [Frege]
19465 There cannot be complete correspondence, because ideas and reality are quite different [Frege]
19467 A 'thought' is something for which the question of truth can arise; thoughts are senses of sentences [Frege]
19468 The property of truth in 'It is true that I smell violets' adds nothing to 'I smell violets' [Frege]
19469 We grasp thoughts (thinking), decide they are true (judgement), and manifest the judgement (assertion) [Frege]
19470 Thoughts in the 'third realm' cannot be sensed, and do not need an owner to exist [Frege]
19471 A fact is a thought that is true [Frege]
19472 A sentence is only a thought if it is complete, and has a time-specification [Frege]