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Ideas for 'works', ''Ostrich Nominalism' or 'Mirage Realism'?' and 'On Concept and Object'

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3 ideas

18. Thought / A. Modes of Thought / 5. Rationality / c. Animal rationality
Aristotle and the Stoics denied rationality to animals, while Platonists affirmed it [Aristotle, by Sorabji]
     Full Idea: Aristotle, and also the Stoics, denied rationality to animals. …The Platonists, the Pythagoreans, and some more independent Aristotelians, did grant reason and intellect to animals.
     From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Richard Sorabji - Rationality 'Denial'
     A reaction: This is not the same as affirming or denying their consciousness. The debate depends on how rationality is conceived.
18. Thought / D. Concepts / 3. Ontology of Concepts / c. Fregean concepts
Frege equated the concepts under which an object falls with its properties [Frege, by Dummett]
     Full Idea: Frege equated the concepts under which an object falls with its properties.
     From: report of Gottlob Frege (On Concept and Object [1892], p.201) by Michael Dummett - Frege philosophy of mathematics Ch.8
     A reaction: I take this to be false, as objects can fall under far more concepts than they have properties. I don't even think 'being a pencil' is a property of pencils, never mind 'being my favourite pencil', or 'not being Alexander the Great'.
18. Thought / D. Concepts / 5. Concepts and Language / b. Concepts are linguistic
As I understand it, a concept is the meaning of a grammatical predicate [Frege]
     Full Idea: As I understand it, a concept is the meaning of a grammatical predicate.
     From: Gottlob Frege (On Concept and Object [1892], p.193)
     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.