Combining Texts

Ideas for 'The Fixation of Belief', 'The Ethics' and 'Abstract Objects'

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2 ideas

1. Philosophy / F. Analytic Philosophy / 5. Linguistic Analysis
We must be careful to keep words distinct from ideas and images [Spinoza]
     Full Idea: It is necessary that we should distinguish between ideas and the words by which things are signified. ...Images, words, and ideas are by many people altogether confounded.
     From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 49)
Questions about objects are questions about certain non-vacuous singular terms [Hale]
     Full Idea: I understand questions about the Fregean notion of an object to be inseparable from questions in the philosophy of language - questions of the existence of objects are tantamount to questions about non-vacuous singular terms of a certain kind.
     From: Bob Hale (Abstract Objects [1987], Ch.1)
     A reaction: This view hovers somewhere between Quine and J.L. Austin, and Dummett is its originator. I am instinctively deeply opposed to the identification of metaphysics with semantics.