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Ideas for '', 'The Art of Rhetoric' and 'Frege philosophy of mathematics'

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2 ideas

19. Language / F. Communication / 1. Rhetoric
Rhetoric is a political offshoot of dialectic and ethics [Aristotle]
     Full Idea: Rhetoric is a kind of offshoot of dialectic and of the study of ethics, and is quite properly categorized as political.
     From: Aristotle (The Art of Rhetoric [c.350 BCE], 1356a25)
     A reaction: Aristotle gives a higher status to rhetoric than Socrates and Plato did - and rightly, in my view. We have lost sight of it as a vital part of politics, and philosophers must fight for virtue in rhetoric, which requires right reason and fine principles.
19. Language / F. Communication / 3. Denial
We learn 'not' along with affirmation, by learning to either affirm or deny a sentence [Rumfitt]
     Full Idea: The standard view is that affirming not-A is more complex than affirming the atomic sentence A itself, with the latter determining its sense. But we could learn 'not' directly, by learning at once how to either affirm A or reject A.
     From: Ian Rumfitt ("Yes" and "No" [2000], IV)
     A reaction: [compressed] This seems fairly anti-Fregean in spirit, because it looks at the psychology of how we learn 'not' as a way of clarifying what we mean by it, rather than just looking at its logical behaviour (and thus giving it a secondary role).