12 ideas
| 23367 | Even pointing a finger should only be done for a reason [Epictetus] |
| Full Idea: Philosophy says it is not right even to stretch out a finger without some reason. | |
| From: Epictetus (fragments/reports [c.57], 15) | |
| A reaction: The key point here is that philosophy concerns action, an idea on which Epictetus is very keen. He rather despise theory. This idea perfectly sums up the concept of the wholly rational life (which no rational person would actually want to live!). |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 22040 | Freedom is produced by the activity of the mind, and is not intrinsically given [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: Actual freedom is not something immediately existent in mindedness, but is something to be produced by the mind's own activity. It is thus as the producer of its freedom that we have to consider mindedness in philosophy. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Philosophy of Mind (Encylopedia III) [1817], §382, Zusatz), quoted by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 11 | |
| A reaction: Pinkard glosses this as an agent being free by being the centre of a group of social responsibilities. Hence I presume small children have no freedom. Presumably we could deprive citizens of all responsibility, and hence of metaphysical freedom. |
| 22039 | Geist is distinct from nature, not as a substance, but because of its normativity [Hegel, by Pinkard] |
| Full Idea: Hegel argued that it was the impossibility of a naturalistic account of normativity that distinguished Geist from nature, not Geist's being any kind of metaphysical substance. | |
| From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Philosophy of Mind (Encylopedia III) [1817]) by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 11 | |
| A reaction: Hegel always seems to want to have his cake and eat it. Without a mental substance, how can Geist not be part of nature? What is Geist made of? Is his view functionalist? But that is usually naturalistic. Is normativity magic? |
| 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. |