display all the ideas for this combination of texts
3 ideas
| 20787 | A proposition is what can be asserted or denied on its own [Chrysippus] |
| Full Idea: A proposition is what can be asserted or denied on its own, for example, 'It is day' or 'Dion is walking'. | |
| From: Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]), quoted by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.65 | |
| A reaction: Note the phrase 'on its own'. If you say 'it is day and Dion is walking', that can't be denied on its own, because first the two halves must each be evaluated, so presumably that doesn't count as a stoic proposition. |
| 19467 | 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. |
| 19472 | 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'? |