Combining Texts

Ideas for 'works', 'Letters to Hegel' and 'The Thought: a Logical Enquiry'

unexpand these ideas     |    start again     |     choose another area for these texts

display all the ideas for this combination of texts


3 ideas

19. Language / D. Propositions / 2. Abstract Propositions / a. Propositions as sense
A 'thought' is something for which the question of truth can arise; thoughts are senses of sentences [Frege]
     Full Idea: I call a 'thought' something for which the question of truth can arise at all. ...So I can say: thoughts are senses of sentences, without wishing to assert that the sense of every sentence is a thought.
     From: Gottlob Frege (The Thought: a Logical Enquiry [1918], p.327-8 (61))
     A reaction: This builds on his distinction between sense and reference. The reference of every truth sentence is just 'the true', and the sense is the proposition. The concept of a proposition seems indispensable to logic, I would say.
19. Language / D. Propositions / 5. Unity of Propositions
A sentence is only a thought if it is complete, and has a time-specification [Frege]
     Full Idea: Only a sentence with the time-specification filled out, a sentence complete in every respect, expresses a thought.
     From: Gottlob Frege (The Thought: a Logical Enquiry [1918], p.343(76))
     A reaction: I take the 'every respect' to include the avoidance of ambiguity, and some sort of perspicacious reference for the terms. I wish philosophers would focus on the thoughts in their subject, and not nit-pick about the sentences. Does he mean 'utterances'?
19. Language / E. Analyticity / 2. Analytic Truths
The notion of analytic truth is absent in Aristotle [Aristotle, by Politis]
     Full Idea: The notion of analytic truth is conspicuously absent in Aristotle.
     From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 1.5
     A reaction: Cf. Idea 11239.