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Ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'On Sense and Reference' and 'comedies (frags)'

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3 ideas

19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 4. Meaning as Truth-Conditions
Frege failed to show when two sets of truth-conditions are equivalent [Frege, by Potter]
     Full Idea: Frege's account suffered from a lack of precision about when two sets of truth-conditions should count as equivalent. (Wittgenstein aimed to rectify this defect).
     From: report of Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892]) by Michael Potter - The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 50 Intro
The meaning (reference) of a sentence is its truth value - the circumstance of it being true or false [Frege]
     Full Idea: We are driven into accepting the truth-value of a sentence as constituting what it means (refers to). By the truth-value I understand the circumstance that it is true or false.
     From: Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892], p.34)
     A reaction: Sounds bizarre, but Black's translation doesn't help. The notion of what the whole sentence refers to (rather than its sense) is a very theoretical notion. 'All true sentences refer to the truth' sounds harmless enough.
19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 7. Meaning Holism / b. Language holism
Holism says all language use is also a change in the rules of language [Frege, by Dummett]
     Full Idea: Frege thought of a language as a game played with fixed rules, there being all the difference in the world between a move in the game and an alteration of the rules; but, if holism is correct, every move in the game changes the rules.
     From: report of Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892]) by Michael Dummett - Frege's Distinction of Sense and Reference p.248
     A reaction: Rules do shift over time, so there must be some mechanism for that - the rules can't sit in sacrosanct isolation. People play games with the language itself, as well as using it to play other games.