17 ideas
| 3067 | A philosopher should have principles ready for understanding, like a surgeon with instruments [Aurelius] |
| Full Idea: As physicians have always their instruments and knives ready for cases which suddenly require their skill, so should you have principles ready for the understanding of things divine and human. | |
| From: Marcus Aurelius (The Meditations (To Himself) [c.170], 3.13) | |
| A reaction: Nice. Philosophy is the training ground where wisdom and good living are made possible, but it cannot be a substitute for living. |
| 4975 | A thought can be split in many ways, so that different parts appear as subject or predicate [Frege] |
| Full Idea: A thought can be split up in many ways, so that now one thing, now another, appears as subject or predicate | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (On Concept and Object [1892], p.199) | |
| A reaction: Thus 'the mouse is in the box', and 'the box contains the mouse'. A simple point, but important when we are trying to distinguish thought from language. |
| 9949 | There is the concept, the object falling under it, and the extension (a set, which is also an object) [Frege, by George/Velleman] |
| Full Idea: For Frege, the extension of the concept F is an object, as revealed by the fact that we use a name to refer to it. ..We must distinguish the concept, the object that falls under it, and the extension of the concept, which is the set containing the object. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (On Concept and Object [1892]) by A.George / D.J.Velleman - Philosophies of Mathematics Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: This I take to be the key distinction needed if one is to grasp Frege's account of what a number is. When we say that Frege is a platonist about numbers, it is because he is committed to the notion that the extension is an object. |
| 18995 | Frege mistakenly takes existence to be a property of concepts, instead of being about things [Frege, by Yablo] |
| Full Idea: Frege's theory treats existence as a property, not of things we call existent, but of concepts instantiated by those things. 'Biden exists' says our Biden-concept has instances. That is certainly not how it feels! We speak of the thing, not of concepts. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (On Concept and Object [1892]) by Stephen Yablo - Aboutness 01.4 | |
| A reaction: Yablo's point is that you must ask what the sentence is 'about', and then the truth will refer to those things. Frege gets into a tangle because he thinks remarks using concepts are about the concepts. |
| 3072 | Everything is changing, including yourself and the whole universe [Aurelius] |
| Full Idea: All things are changing; and you yourself are in continuous mutation and in a manner in continuous destruction, and the whole universe too. | |
| From: Marcus Aurelius (The Meditations (To Himself) [c.170], 9.19) |
| 10317 | It is unclear whether Frege included qualities among his abstract objects [Frege, by Hale] |
| Full Idea: Expositors of Frege's views have disagreed over whether abstract qualities are to be reckoned among his objects. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (On Concept and Object [1892]) by Bob Hale - Abstract Objects Ch.2.II | |
| A reaction: [he cites Dummett 1973:70-80, and Wright 1983:25-8] There seems to be a danger here of a collision between Fregean verbal approaches to ontological commitment and the traditional views about universals. No wonder they can't decide. |
| 10535 | Frege's 'objects' are both the referents of proper names, and what predicates are true or false of [Frege, by Dummett] |
| Full Idea: Frege's notion of an object plays two roles in his semantics. Objects are the referents of proper names, and they are equally what predicates are true and false of. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (On Concept and Object [1892]) by Michael Dummett - Frege Philosophy of Language (2nd ed) Ch.4 | |
| A reaction: Frege is the source of a desperate desire to turn everything into an object (see Idea 8858!), and he has the irritating authority of the man who invented quantificational logic. Nothing but trouble, that man. |
| 9839 | 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'. |
| 4973 | 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. |
| 9167 | Frege felt that meanings must be public, so they are abstractions rather than mental entities [Frege, by Putnam] |
| Full Idea: Frege felt that meanings are public property, and identified concepts (and hence 'intensions' or meanings) with abstract entities rather than mental entities. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (On Concept and Object [1892]) by Hilary Putnam - Meaning and Reference p.150 | |
| A reaction: This is the germ of Wittgenstein's private language argument. I am inclined to feel that Frege approached language strictly as a logician, and didn't really care that he got himself into implausible platonist ontological commitments. |
| 4974 | For all the multiplicity of languages, mankind has a common stock of thoughts [Frege] |
| Full Idea: For all the multiplicity of languages, mankind has a common stock of thoughts. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (On Concept and Object [1892], p.196n) | |
| A reaction: Given the acknowledgement here that two very different sentences in different languages can express the same thought, he should recognise that at least some aspects of a thought are non-linguistic. |
| 3066 | Nothing is evil which is according to nature [Aurelius] |
| Full Idea: Nothing is evil which is according to nature. | |
| From: Marcus Aurelius (The Meditations (To Himself) [c.170], 2.17) | |
| A reaction: A bit hopeful. Sounds tautological. I.e. anything which is agreed to be evil is probably immediately labelled as 'unnatural'. What would he agree was evil? |
| 3071 | Justice has no virtue opposed to it, but pleasure has temperance opposed to it [Aurelius] |
| Full Idea: In the constitution of the rational animal I see no virtue which is opposed to justice; but I see a virtue which is opposed to pleasure, and that is temperance. | |
| From: Marcus Aurelius (The Meditations (To Himself) [c.170], 8.39) | |
| A reaction: There are plenty of hideous things opposed to justice, but presumably that immediately disqualifies them from being virtues. |
| 3069 | The art of life is more like the wrestler's than the dancer's [Aurelius] |
| Full Idea: The art of life is more like the wrestler's than the dancer's. | |
| From: Marcus Aurelius (The Meditations (To Himself) [c.170], 7.61) |
| 3065 | Humans are naturally made for co-operation [Aurelius] |
| Full Idea: We are made for cooperation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of upper and lower teeth. To act against one another, then, is contrary to nature. | |
| From: Marcus Aurelius (The Meditations (To Himself) [c.170], 2.1) |
| 1748 | Archelaus was the first person to say that the universe is boundless [Archelaus, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Archelaus was the first person to say that the universe is boundless. | |
| From: report of Archelaus (fragments/reports [c.450 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 02.Ar.3 |
| 5989 | Archelaus said life began in a primeval slime [Archelaus, by Schofield] |
| Full Idea: Archelaus wrote that life on Earth began in a primeval slime. | |
| From: report of Archelaus (fragments/reports [c.450 BCE]) by Malcolm Schofield - Archelaus | |
| A reaction: This sounds like a fairly clearcut assertion of the production of life by evolution. Darwin's contribution was to propose the mechanism for achieving it. We should honour the name of Archelaus for this idea. |