77 ideas
| 6052 | Definitions identify two concepts, so they presuppose identity [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: Any definition must presuppose the notion of identity precisely because a definition affirms the identity of two concepts. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: McGinn is arguing that identity is fundamental to thought, and this seems persuasive. It may be, though, that while identities are inescapable, definitions are impossible. |
| 6064 | Regresses are only vicious in the context of an explanation [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: Regresses are only vicious in the context of some explanatory aim, not in themselves. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.2 n11) | |
| A reaction: A nice point. It is not quite clear how 'pure' reason could ever be vicious, or charming, or sycophantic. The problem about a vicious regress is precisely that it fails to explain anything. Now benign regresses are something else… (see Idea 2523) |
| 6088 | Truth is a method of deducing facts from propositions [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: Truth is essentially a method of deducing facts from propositions. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: Very persuasive. McGinn is offering a disquotational account of truth, but in a robust form. Of course, deduction normally takes the form of moving infallibly from one truth to another, but that model of deduction won't fit this particular proposal. |
| 8187 | Frege was strongly in favour of taking truth to attach to propositions [Frege, by Dummett] |
| Full Idea: Frege was strongly in favour of taking truth to attach to propositions, which he called 'thoughts' and regarded as being expressed by sentences. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892]) by Michael Dummett - Truth and the Past 1 | |
| A reaction: Sometimes it is necessary to know the time, the place, and the speaker before one can evaluate the truth of a proposition. Not just indexical words, but the indexical aspect of, say, "the team played badly". |
| 6084 | 'Snow does not fall' corresponds to snow does fall [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: We can say that the proposition that snow does not fall from the sky corresponds to the fact that snow does fall from the sky - in the sense that there is a mapping from fact to proposition. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: A very nice difficulty for the correspondence theory. It becomes essential to say how the two things correspond before it can offer any sort of account of the truth-relation. |
| 6085 | The idea of truth is built into the idea of correspondence [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: The correspondence theory has an air of triviality, and hence undeniability, but this is because it implicitly builds the idea of truth into the notion of correspondence. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: If this is accepted, it is a really fatal objection to the theory. Russell tried to use the idea of 'congruency' between beliefs and reality, but that may be open to the same objection. McGinn is claiming that truth is essentially indefinable. |
| 6083 | The coherence theory of truth implies idealism, because facts are just coherent beliefs [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: If 'snow falls from the sky' is true iff it coheres with other beliefs, this is a form of idealism; snow could surely fall from sky even if there were no beliefs in the world to cohere with each other. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: The coherence theory of truth strikes me as yet another blunder involving a confusion of ontology and epistemology. Of course, idealism may be true, but I have yet to hear a good reason why I should abandon commonsense realism. |
| 6086 | Truth is the property of propositions that makes it possible to deduce facts [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: Truth is a property of a proposition from which one can deduce the fact stated by the proposition. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: This is McGinn's explanation of the disquotational account of truth ('p' is true iff p). The redundancy theorist would reply that you can deduce p from 'p' without mentioning truth, but it remains to ask why this deduction is possible. |
| 6087 | Without the disquotation device for truth, you could never form beliefs from others' testimony [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: Imagine being in a community which had no concept of truth; ..you cannot disquote on p and hence form beliefs about the world as a result of testimony, since you lack the device of disquotation that is the essence of truth. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: Whether his theory is right or not, the observation that testimony is the really crucial area where we must have a notion of truth is very good. How about 'truth is what turns propositions into beliefs'? |
| 6051 | In 'x is F and x is G' we must assume the identity of x in the two statements [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: If we say 'for some x, x is F and x is G' we are making tacit appeal to the idea of identity in using 'x' twice here: it has to be the same object that is both F and G. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: This may well be broadened to any utterances whatsoever. The only remaining question is to speculate about whether it is possible to think without identities. The Hopi presumably gave identity to processes rather objects. How does God think? |
| 6055 | Both non-contradiction and excluded middle need identity in their formulation [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: To formulate the law of non-contradiction ('nothing can be both F and non-F') and the law of excluded middle ('everything is either F or it is not-F'), we need the concept of identity (in 'nothing' and 'everything'). | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: Two good examples in McGinn's argument that identity is basic to all thinking. But the argument also works to say that necessity is basic (since both laws claim it) and properties are basic. Let's just declare everything 'basic', and we can all go home. |
| 6059 | Identity is unitary, indefinable, fundamental and a genuine relation [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: I have endorsed four main theses about identity: it is unitary, it is indefinable, it is fundamental, and it is a genuine relation | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: That it is fundamental to our thinking seems certain (but to all possible thought?). That it is a relation looks worth questioning. One might challenge unitary by comparing the identity of numbers, values, electrons and continents. I can't define it. |
| 18772 | We can treat designation by a few words as a proper name [Frege] |
| Full Idea: The designation of a single object can also consist of several words or other signs. For brevity, let every such designation be called a proper name. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892]), quoted by Bernard Linsky - Quantification and Descriptions 1 | |
| A reaction: Frege regards names and descriptions as in the same class. Russell, and then Kripke, had things to say about that. |
| 14075 | Proper name in modal contexts refer obliquely, to their usual sense [Frege, by Gibbard] |
| Full Idea: According to Frege, a proper name in a modal context refers obliquely; its reference there is its usual sense. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892]) by Allan Gibbard - Contingent Identity V | |
| A reaction: [he cites the fourth page of Frege's 'Sense and Reference'] One can foresee problems with the word 'usual' here. Frege might be offering something better than Kripke does here. |
| 10424 | A Fregean proper name has a sense determining an object, instead of a concept [Frege, by Sainsbury] |
| Full Idea: We could think of a referring expression in Fregean terms as what he calls a proper name (Eigenname): its Sinn (sense) is supposed to determine an object as opposed to a concept as its Bedeutung (referent). | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892]) by Mark Sainsbury - The Essence of Reference 18.1 | |
| A reaction: The problem would be that the same expression could precisely indicate an object on one occasion, nearly do so on another, and totally fail on a third. |
| 18773 | People may have different senses for 'Aristotle', like 'pupil of Plato' or 'teacher of Alexander' [Frege] |
| Full Idea: In the case of an actual proper name such as 'Aristotle' opinions as to the sense may differ. It might, for instance, be taken to be the following: the pupil of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892], note), quoted by Bernard Linsky - Quantification and Descriptions 1 | |
| A reaction: This note is 'notorious', and was a central target for Kripke's critique. Frege says people's senses may vary on this, and thinks the sense of 'Aristotle' can be accurately expressed. |
| 4978 | The meaning of a proper name is the designated object [Frege] |
| Full Idea: The meaning of a proper name is the object itself which we designate by using it. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892], p.30) | |
| A reaction: I can't actually make sense of this. How can a physical object be identical with a meaning? What sort of thing is a 'meaning'? Meanings are just 'in the head', I suspect. |
| 10510 | Frege ascribes reference to incomplete expressions, as well as to singular terms [Frege, by Hale] |
| Full Idea: Frege ascribes reference not only to singular terms, but equally to expressions of other kinds (the various kinds of incomplete expressions). | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892]) by Bob Hale - Abstract Objects Ch.3 Intro | |
| A reaction: The incomplete expressions presumably make reference to concepts. Frege may not seem, therefore, to have a notion of reference as what plugs language into reality - except that he is presumably a platonist about concepts. |
| 18937 | If sentences have a 'sense', empty name sentences can be understood that way [Frege, by Sawyer] |
| Full Idea: Frege's theory of 'sense' showed how sentences with empty names can have meaning and be understood. One just has to grasp the sense of the sentence (the thought expressed), and this is available even in the absence of a referent for the name. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892]) by Sarah Sawyer - Empty Names 2 | |
| A reaction: My immediate reaction is that this provides a promising solution to the empty names problem, which certainly never bothered me before I started reading philosophy. Sawyer says co-reference and truth problems remain. |
| 18940 | It is a weakness of natural languages to contain non-denoting names [Frege] |
| Full Idea: Languages have the fault of containing expressions which fail to designate an object. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892], p.40) | |
| A reaction: Wrong, Frege! This is a strength of natural languages! Names are tools. It isn't a failure of your hammer if you can't find any nails. |
| 18939 | In a logically perfect language every well-formed proper name designates an object [Frege] |
| Full Idea: A logically perfect language should satisfy the conditions that every expression grammatically well constructed as a proper name out of signs already introduced shall in fact designate an object. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892], p.41) | |
| A reaction: This seems to cramp your powers of reasoning, if you must know the object to use the name ('Jack the Ripper'), and reasoning halts once you deny the object's existence ('Pegasus'), or you don't know if names co-refer ('Hesperus/Phosphorus'). |
| 6067 | Existential quantifiers just express the quantity of things, leaving existence to the predicate 'exists' [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: What the existential quantifier does is indicate the quantity of things in question - it says that some are; it is left up to the predicate 'exists' to express existence. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: This seems right. The whole quantification business seems like a conjuring trick to conceal the embarrassingly indefinable and 'metaphysical' notion of 'existence'. Cf Idea 7697. |
| 6042 | The quantifier is overrated as an analytical tool [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: The quantifier has been overrated as a tool of logical and linguistic analysis. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Pref) | |
| A reaction: I find this proposal quite thrilling. Twentieth century analytical philosophy has been in thrall to logic, giving the upper hand in philosophical discussion to the logicians, who are often not very good at philosophy. |
| 6069 | 'Partial quantifier' would be a better name than 'existential quantifier', as no existence would be implied [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: We would do much better to call 'some' the 'partial quantifier' (rather than the 'existential quantifier'), on analogy with the universal quantifier - as neither of them logically implies existence. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: Like McGinn's other suggestions in this chapter, this strikes me as a potentially huge clarification in linguistic analysis. I wait with interest to see whether the philosophical logicians take it up. I bet they don't. |
| 6068 | We need an Intentional Quantifier ("some of the things we talk about.."), so existence goes into the proposition [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: We could introduce an 'intentional quantifier' (Ix) which means 'some of the things we talk about..'; we could then say 'some of the things we talk about are F and exist' (Ix, x is F and x exists). | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: This immediately strikes me as a promising contribution to the analytical toolkit. McGinn is supporting his view that existence is a predicate, and so belongs inside the proposition, not outside. |
| 9462 | Frege is intensionalist about reference, as it is determined by sense; identity of objects comes first [Frege, by Jacquette] |
| Full Idea: Intensionalism of reference is owing to Frege (in his otherwise extensionalist philosophy of language). Sense determines reference, so intension determines extension. An object must first satisfy identity requirements, and is thus in a set. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892]) by Dale Jacquette - Intro to 'Philosophy of Logic' §4 | |
| A reaction: The notion that identity of objects comes first sounds right - you can't just take objects as basic - they have to be individuated in order to be discussed. |
| 18936 | Frege moved from extensional to intensional semantics when he added the idea of 'sense' [Frege, by Sawyer] |
| Full Idea: Frege moved from an extensional semantic theory (that countenances only linguistic expressions and their referents) to an intensional theory that invokes in addition a notion of sense. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892]) by Sarah Sawyer - Empty Names 2 | |
| A reaction: This was because of Frege's famous 'puzzles', such as the morning/evening star. Quine loudly proclaimed himself an 'extensionalist', implying that he had extensional solutions for Frege's Puzzles. |
| 6070 | Existence is a primary quality, non-existence a secondary quality [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: Existence is like a primary quality; non-existence is like a secondary quality. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.2 n29) | |
| A reaction: Since McGinn thinks existence really is a property, and hence, presumably, a predicate, I don't quite see why he uses the word "like". A nicely pithy and thought-provoking remark. |
| 6062 | Existence can't be analysed as instantiating a property, as instantiation requires existence [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: Paraphrasing existence statements into statements about the instantiation of a property does not establish that existence is not a predicate, since the notion of instantiation must be taken to have existence built into it. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: Thank you, Colin McGinn! This now strikes me as so obvious that it is astonishing that for the whole of the twentieth century no one seems to have said it. For a century philosophers had swept the ontological dirt under the mat. |
| 6065 | We can't analyse the sentence 'something exists' in terms of instantiated properties [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: The problems of the orthodox view are made vivid by analysis of the sentence 'something exists'; this is meaningful and true, but what property are we saying is instantiated here? | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: A very nice point. McGinn claims that existence is a property, a very generalised one. Personally I don't think anyone is even remotely clear what a property is, so the whole discussion is a bit premature. Must properties have causal powers? |
| 6082 | If causal power is the test for reality, that will exclude necessities and possibilities [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: Whether my body weight is necessary or contingent makes no difference at all to my causal powers, so modality is epiphenomenal; if you took causal potential as a test of reality you would have to declare modes unreal. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: We could try analysing modality into causal terms, as Lewis proposes with quantification across worlds, or as Quine proposes by reduction to natural regularities. I am not sure what it would mean to declare that modes are 'real'. |
| 6075 | Facts are object-plus-extension, or property-plus-set-of-properties, or object-plus-property [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: A fact may be an object and an extension (Quine's view), or a property and a set of properties, or an object and a property; the view I favour is the third one, which seems the most natural. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: Personally I tend to use the word 'fact' in a realist and non-linguistic way. There must be innumerable inexpressible facts, such as the single pattern made by all the particles of the universe. McGinn seems to be talking of 'atomic facts'. See Idea 6111. |
| 10533 | We can't get a semantics from nouns and predicates referring to the same thing [Frege, by Dummett] |
| Full Idea: Frege is denying that on a traditional basis we can construct a workable semantics for a language; we can't regard terms like 'wisdom' as standing for the very same thing as the predicate 'x is wise' stands for. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892]) by Michael Dummett - Frege Philosophy of Language (2nd ed) Ch.14 | |
| A reaction: This follows from Idea 10532, indicating how to deal with the problem of universals. So predicates refer to concepts, and singular terms to objects. But I see no authoritative way of deciding which is which, given that paraphrases are possible. |
| 4893 | Frege was asking how identities could be informative [Frege, by Perry] |
| Full Idea: A problem which Frege called to our attention is: how can identities be informative? | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892]) by John Perry - Knowledge, Possibility and Consciousness §5.2 | |
| A reaction: E.g. (in Russell's example) how is "Scott is the author of 'Waverley'" more informative than "Scott is Scott"? A simple answer might just be that informative identities also tell you of a thing's properties. "The red ball is the heavy ball". |
| 6058 | Identity propositions are not always tautological, and have a key epistemic role [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: Identity propositions are not always analytic or a priori (as Frege long ago taught us) so there is nothing trivial about such propositions; the claim of redundancy ignores the epistemic role that the concept of identity plays. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: He is referring to Frege's Morning Star/Evening Star distinction (Idea 4972). Wittgenstein wanted to eliminate our basic metaphysics by relabelling it as analytic or tautological, but his project failed. Long live metaphysics! |
| 6053 | Identity is as basic as any concept could ever be [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: Identity has a universality and basicness that is hard to overstate; concepts don't get more basic than this - or more indispensable. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: I agree with this. It seems to me to follow that the natural numbers are just as basic, because they are entailed by the separateness of the identities of things. And the whole of mathematics is the science of the patterns within these numbers. |
| 6043 | Type-identity is close similarity in qualities [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: Two things are said to be type-identical when they are similar enough to be declared qualitatively identical. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: A simple point which brings out the fact that type-identity is unlikely to be any sort of true identity (unless there is absolutely no different at all between two electrons, say). |
| 6044 | Qualitative identity is really numerical identity of properties [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: A statement of so-called qualitative identity is really a statement of numerical identity (that is, identity tout court) about the properties of the objects in question - assuming that there are genuine universals. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: We might agree that two cars are type-identical, even though (under the microscope) we decided that none of their properties were absolutely identical. |
| 6046 | Qualitative identity can be analysed into numerical identity of the type involved [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: We can analyse qualitative identity in terms of numerical identity, by saying that x and y are type-identical if there is a single type T that x and y both are, i.e. they both exemplify the same type. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: This just seems to shift the problem onto the words 'are' and 'exemplify'. This takes us back to the problem of things 'partaking' of Plato's Forms. Better to say that qualitative identity isn't identity - it is resemblance (see Idea 6045). |
| 6045 | It is best to drop types of identity, and speak of 'identity' or 'resemblance' [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: It would be better to drop talk of 'numerical' and 'qualitative' identity altogether, speaking instead simply of identity and resemblance. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.1 n4) | |
| A reaction: This is the kind of beautifully simple proposal I pay analytical philosophers to come up with. I will attempt in future to talk either of 'identity' (which is strict), or 'resemblance' (which comes in degrees). |
| 6066 | Existence is a property of all objects, but less universal than self-identity, which covers even conceivable objects [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: Existence is a property universal to all objects that exist, somewhat like self-identity, but less universal, because self-identity holds of all conceivable objects, not merely those that happen to exist. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: This is a splendidly defiant response to the Kantian slogan that 'existence is not a predicate', and I find McGinn persuasive. I can still not find anyone to explain to me exactly what a property is, so I will reserve judgement. |
| 6054 | Sherlock Holmes does not exist, but he is self-identical [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: Sherlock Holmes does not exist, but he is self-identical (he is certainly not indentical to Dr Watson). | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: Most significant. Identity does not entail existence; identity is necessary for existence (I think) but not sufficient. But the notion of existence might be prior to the notion of identity, and the creation of Holmes be parasitic on real existence. |
| 6047 | All identity is necessary, though identity statements can be contingently true [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: All identity is necessary, although there can be contingently true identity statements - those that contain non-rigid designators. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.1 n5) | |
| A reaction: A nice case of the need to keep epistemology and ontology separate. An example might be 'The Prime Minister wears a wig', where 'Prime Minister' may not be a rigid designator. 'Winston wears a wig' will be necessary, if true (which it wasn't). |
| 6049 | Leibniz's Law says 'x = y iff for all P, Px iff Py' [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: Leibniz's Law says 'x = y iff for all P, Px iff Py'. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: That is, two things are the same if when we say that one thing (x) has a property (P), then we are saying that the other thing (y) also has the property. A usefully concise statement of the Law. |
| 6048 | Leibniz's Law is so fundamental that it almost defines the concept of identity [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: Leibniz's Law, which a defender of relative identity might opt to reject, is so fundamental to the notion of identity that rejecting it amounts to changing the subject. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.1 n8) | |
| A reaction: The Law here is the 'indiscernibility of identicals'. I agree with McGinn, and anyone who loses their grip on this notion of identity strikes me as losing all grip on reality, and threatening their own sanity (well, call it their 'philosophical sanity'). |
| 6050 | Leibniz's Law presupposes the notion of property identity [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: Leibniz's Law presupposes the notion of property identity. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: A very important observation, because it leads to recognition of the way in which basic concepts and categories of thought interconnect. Which is more metaphysically basic, identity or properties? It is not easy to say… |
| 6080 | Modality is not objects or properties, but the type of binding of objects to properties [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: Modality has a special ontological category: it consists neither in objects (possible worlds theory) nor in properties (predicate modifier view), but items I have called 'modes', ..which can be hard/soft/rigid/pliable binding of objects to properties. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: As so often, McGinn is very persuasive. Essentially he is proposing that modality is adverbial. He associates the middle view with David Wiggins. |
| 6079 | If 'possible' is explained as quantification across worlds, there must be possible worlds [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: If we replace modal words like 'possible' with quantification across worlds, clearly the notion of 'world' must exclude impossible worlds, otherwise 'possibly p' will be true if 'p' holds in an impossible world. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: The point here, of course, is that the question is being begged of what 'possible' and 'impossible' actually mean. |
| 6081 | Necessity and possibility are big threats to the empiricist view of knowledge [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: It is clear that modality is a prima-facie threat to the usual kind of naturalistic-causal-empiricist theory of knowledge. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: This is why modern empiricists spend of a lot of energy on trying to analyse counterfactuals and laws of nature. Rationalists are much happier to assert necessities a priori, but then they often don't have much basis for their claims. |
| 6071 | Scepticism about reality is possible because existence isn't part of appearances [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: Scepticism about the external world is possible because you can never build existence into the appearances, so it must always be inferred or assumed. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: When McGinn's claim that existence is a very universal property begins to produce interesting observations like this, I think we should take it very seriously. |
| 18752 | 'The concept "horse"' denotes a concept, yet seems also to denote an object [Frege, by McGee] |
| Full Idea: The phrase 'the concept "horse"' can be the subject of a sentence, and ought to denote an object. But it clearly denotes the concept "horse". Yet Fregean concepts are said to be 'incomplete' objects, which led to confusion. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892]) by Vann McGee - Logical Consequence 4 | |
| A reaction: This is the notorious 'concept "horse"' problem, which was bad news for Frege's idea of a concept. |
| 22318 | 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 |
| 4980 | 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. |
| 9180 | 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. |
| 4981 | The reference of a word should be understood as part of the reference of the sentence [Frege] |
| Full Idea: I have transferred the relation between the parts and the whole of the sentence to its reference, by calling the reference of the word part of the reference of the sentence, if the word itself is part of the sentence. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892], p.35) | |
| A reaction: Since Frege says the reference of a true sentence is simply to truth, words have reference insofar as they make contributions to attempts at stating truths. |
| 15597 | Frege's Puzzle: from different semantics we infer different reference for two names with the same reference [Frege, by Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: Frege's Puzzle: If two sentences convey different information, they have different semantic roles, so the names 'Cicero' and 'Tully' are semantically different, in which case they are referentially different - but they are not referentially different. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892]) by Kit Fine - Semantic Relationism 2.A | |
| A reaction: [this is my summary of Fine's summary] Given the paradox, the question is which of these premisses should be challenged. Fregeans reject their being referentially different. Referentialists reject the different semantic roles. |
| 17002 | Frege's 'sense' is ambiguous, between the meaning of a designator, and how it fixes reference [Kripke on Frege] |
| Full Idea: Frege should be criticised for using the term 'sense' in two senses. He takes the sense of a designator to be its meaning; and he also takes it to be the way its reference is determined. …They correspond to two ordinary uses of 'definition'. | |
| From: comment on Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892]) by Saul A. Kripke - Naming and Necessity lectures Lecture 1 | |
| A reaction: Stalnaker quotes this, but seems unconvinced that Frege is guilty. If the 'meaning' largely consists of a way of determining a reference, Frege would be in the clear. |
| 18778 | Every descriptive name has a sense, but may not have a reference [Frege] |
| Full Idea: It may perhaps be granted that every grammatically well-formed expression representing a proper name always has a sense. But this is not to say that to this sense there also corresponds a reference. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892]), quoted by Bernard Linsky - Quantification and Descriptions 3.1 | |
| A reaction: Presumably this concerns fictional names such as 'Pegasus'. It seems to be good simple evidence for the distinction between sense and reference. |
| 7805 | Frege started as anti-realist, but the sense/reference distinction led him to realism [Frege, by Benardete,JA] |
| Full Idea: In the Grundlagen of 1884 Frege was an anti-realist, but in Grundgesetze of 1893 he is a realist, who has profited by his interim discovery of the sense/reference distinction. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892]) by José A. Benardete - Logic and Ontology | |
| A reaction: This is the germ of the new realist philosophy which seems to be growing out of Kripke and co's causal theory of reference. The very notion of reference is realist (hence Russell's realism). |
| 4976 | The meaning (reference) of 'evening star' is the same as that of 'morning star', but not the sense [Frege] |
| Full Idea: The meaning (reference) of 'evening star' is the same as that of 'morning star', but not the sense. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892], p.27) | |
| A reaction: Max Black translates 'bedeutung' as 'meaning', but nowadays everyone calls it 'reference'. This is Frege's crucial distinction, which greatly clarified analytical philosophy. Nevertheless, is it a sharp distinction? E.g. referring to a fictional name? |
| 4977 | In maths, there are phrases with a clear sense, but no actual reference [Frege] |
| Full Idea: The expression 'the least rapidly convergent series' has a sense but demonstrably there is no reference, since a less rapidly convergent series (for any given series) can always be found. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892], p.28) | |
| A reaction: A nice example. 'The second Kennedy assassin' has a clear meaning, but does it have a reference? The meaning 'points at' a possible reference. We yet discover an identity. |
| 4979 | We are driven from sense to reference by our desire for truth [Frege] |
| Full Idea: The striving for truth drives us always to advance from the sense to the thing meant (the reference). | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892], p.33) | |
| A reaction: As in, we want to know the reference of 'the person who shot Kennedy'. I always perk up if truth is mentioned in a discussion of language, because it reminds us of the point of the whole thing. In 'Is he the best man?' I have the reference, not the truth. |
| 15155 | Expressions always give ways of thinking of referents, rather than the referents themselves [Frege, by Soames] |
| Full Idea: For Frege, expressions always contribute ways of thinking of their referents, rather than the referents themselves, to the thoughts expressed by sentences. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892]) by Scott Soames - Philosophy of Language 1.16 | |
| A reaction: I have some sympathy for Frege. It always strikes me as daft to think that if I say 'my dustbin is empty', the dustbin becomes 'part' of my sentence. Sentences don't contain large plastic objects. |
| 11126 | 'Sense' gives meaning to non-referring names, and to two expressions for one referent [Frege, by Margolis/Laurence] |
| Full Idea: Frege notes that an expression without a referent ('Pegasus') needn't lack a meaning, since it still has a sense, and the same referent (Eric Blair) can be associated with different expressions (George Orwell) because they convey different senses. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892]) by E Margolis/S Laurence - Concepts 1.3 | |
| A reaction: A nice neat summary of the value of Frege's introduction of the sense/reference distinction, which seems to me to be virtually undeniable (a rare event in modern philosophy). |
| 8164 | Frege was the first to construct a plausible theory of meaning [Frege, by Dummett] |
| Full Idea: Frege was the first to construct a plausible theory of meaning, that is, a theory of how a human language functions. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892]) by Michael Dummett - Thought and Reality 1 | |
| A reaction: Presumably Frege had an advantage because he was the first to distinguish sense from reference, and hence to identify the subject-matter of the theory. Essentially Frege's theory is that of truth-conditions. |
| 9817 | Earlier Frege focuses on content itself; later he became interested in understanding content [Frege, by Dummett] |
| Full Idea: Earlier Frege was interested solely in the content of our statements, not in our grasp of that content. His notion of 'sense' from 1891 onwards, has to do with understanding; the sense of an expression is something we grasp. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892]) by Michael Dummett - Frege philosophy of mathematics Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: The important point must be that the later theory depends on the earlier, so we can hardly give theories of understanding, if we don't have a view about what it is that is understood. |
| 8171 | Frege divided the meaning of a sentence into sense, force and tone [Frege, by Dummett] |
| Full Idea: Frege distinguished three components of the meaning of a sentence: sense, force and tone; he used no single term for 'linguistic meaning' in general. ...The sense is only what bears on the truth or falsity of what the sentence expresses. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892]) by Michael Dummett - Thought and Reality 3 | |
| A reaction: Modern theories of meaning seem to assume that there is one item called 'meaning' which needs to be explained, but presumably this is 'strict and literal meaning', leaving the rest to pragmatics. |
| 4954 | Frege uses 'sense' to mean both a designator's meaning, and the way its reference is determined [Kripke on Frege] |
| Full Idea: Frege should be criticised for using the term 'sense' in two senses. For he takes the sense of a designator to be its meaning; and he also takes it to be the way its reference is determined. | |
| From: comment on Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892]) by Saul A. Kripke - Naming and Necessity lectures Lecture 1 | |
| A reaction: This criticism doesn't surprise me, as heroic pioneers like Frege seem to have been extremely unclear about what they were claiming. Kripke has helped, but we still need some great mind to step in and sort out the mess. |
| 7304 | Frege explained meaning as sense, semantic value, reference, force and tone [Frege, by Miller,A] |
| Full Idea: Frege analysed the intuitive notion of meaning in terms of the notions of sense, semantic value, reference, force and tone. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (On Sense and Reference [1892], Pref) by Alexander Miller - Philosophy of Language Pref | |
| A reaction: This suggests that there are two approaches to the explanation of meaning: either a simple identity with some other mental fact, or an analysis (as here) into a range of components. I remain open-minded on that. |
| 6077 | Semantics should not be based on set-membership, but on instantiation of properties in objects [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: Semantics should not employ the relationship of set-membership between objects and extensions, but rather the relation of instantiation between objects and properties. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: At least this means that philosophers won't be required to read fat books on set theory, but they will have to think very carefully about 'instantiation'. A good start is the ideas on 'Partaking' of Platonic Forms in this database (in 'Universals'). |
| 6074 | Clearly predicates have extensions (applicable objects), but are the extensions part of their meaning? [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: We are taught that predicates have extensions - the class of objects of which the predicate is true - which seems hard to deny; but a stronger claim is also made - that extensions are semantically relevant features of predicates. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: He cites Quine as a spokesman for this view. McGinn is going on to challenge it, by defending universals. It seems to fit in with other externalist theories of concepts and meanings, none of which seems very appealing to me. |
| 20416 | By 1790 aestheticians were mainly trying to explain individual artistic genius [Kemp] |
| Full Idea: By 1790 the idea that a central task for the aesthetician was to explain or at least adequately to describe the phenomenon of the individual artistic genius had definitely taken hold. | |
| From: Gary Kemp (Croce and Collingwood [2012], Intro) | |
| A reaction: Hence when Kant and Hegel write about art, though are only really thinking of the greatest art (which might be in touch with the sublime or Spirit etc.). Nowadays I think we expect accounts of art to cover modest amateur efforts as well. |
| 20417 | Expression can be either necessary for art, or sufficient for art (or even both) [Kemp] |
| Full Idea: Seeing art as expression has two components: 1) if something is a work of art, then it is expressive, 2) if something is expressive, then it is a work of art. So expression can be necessary or sufficient for art. (or both, for Croce and Collingwood). | |
| From: Gary Kemp (Croce and Collingwood [2012], 1) | |
| A reaction: I take the idea that art 'expresses' the feelings of an artist to be false. Artists are more like actors. Nearly all art has some emotional impact, which is of major importance, but I don't think 'expression' is a very good word for that. |
| 20419 | We don't already know what to express, and then seek means of expressing it [Kemp] |
| Full Idea: One cannot really know, or be conscious of, what it is that one is going to express, and then set about expressing it; indeed if one is genuinely conscious of it then one has already expressed it. | |
| From: Gary Kemp (Croce and Collingwood [2012], 1) | |
| A reaction: That pretty conclusively demolishes the idea that art is expression. I picture Schubert composing at the piano: he doesn't feel an emotion, and then hunt for its expression on the keyboard; he seeks out expressive phrases by playing. |
| 20418 | The horror expressed in some works of art could equallly be expressed by other means [Kemp] |
| Full Idea: The horror or terror of Edvard Much's 'The Scream' could in principle be expressed by different paintings, or even by works of music. | |
| From: Gary Kemp (Croce and Collingwood [2012], 1) | |
| A reaction: A very good simple point against the idea that the point of art is expression. It leaves out the very specific nature of each work of art! |
| 6072 | If Satan is the most imperfect conceivable being, he must have non-existence [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: Satan cannot exist because he is the most imperfect conceivable being, and existence is one of the perfections. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: The logic of this seems right to me. Presumably the theologians would hastily deny this as a definition of Satan; he must have some positive qualities (like power) in order to enact his supreme moral imperfections. NIce, though. |
| 6073 | I think the fault of the Ontological Argument is taking the original idea to be well-defined [McGinn] |
| Full Idea: My own suspicion about the Ontological Argument is that the fault lies in taking notions like 'the most perfect, impressive and powerful being conceivable' to be well-defined. | |
| From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: I'm tempted to put it more strongly: the single greatest challenge for the theist with intellectual integrity is to give a clear and coherent definition of God. There must be no internal contradictions, and it must be within the bounds of possibility. |