19 ideas
| 18806 | Frege thought traditional categories had psychological and linguistic impurities [Frege, by Rumfitt] |
| Full Idea: Frege rejected the traditional categories as importing psychological and linguistic impurities into logic. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (Function and Concept [1891]) by Ian Rumfitt - The Boundary Stones of Thought 1.2 | |
| A reaction: Resisting such impurities is the main motivation for making logic entirely symbolic, but it doesn't follow that the traditional categories have to be dropped. |
| 8490 | First-level functions have objects as arguments; second-level functions take functions as arguments [Frege] |
| Full Idea: Just as functions are fundamentally different from objects, so also functions whose arguments are and must be functions are fundamentally different from functions whose arguments are objects. The latter are first-level, the former second-level, functions. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (Function and Concept [1891], p.38) | |
| A reaction: In 1884 he called it 'second-order'. This is the standard distinction between first- and second-order logic. The first quantifies over objects, the second over intensional entities such as properties and propositions. |
| 8492 | Relations are functions with two arguments [Frege] |
| Full Idea: Functions of one argument are concepts; functions of two arguments are relations. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (Function and Concept [1891], p.39) | |
| A reaction: Nowadays we would say 'two or more'. Another interesting move in the aim of analytic philosophy to reduce the puzzling features of the world to mathematical logic. There is, of course, rather more to some relations than being two-argument functions. |
| 8487 | Arithmetic is a development of logic, so arithmetical symbolism must expand into logical symbolism [Frege] |
| Full Idea: I am of the opinion that arithmetic is a further development of logic, which leads to the requirement that the symbolic language of arithmetic must be expanded into a logical symbolism. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (Function and Concept [1891], p.30) | |
| A reaction: This may the the one key idea at the heart of modern analytic philosophy (even though logicism may be a total mistake!). Logic and arithmetical foundations become the master of ontology, instead of the servant. The jury is out on the whole enterprise. |
| 18899 | Frege takes the existence of horses to be part of their concept [Frege, by Sommers] |
| Full Idea: Frege regarded the existence of horses as a property of the concept 'horse'. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (Function and Concept [1891]) by Fred Sommers - Intellectual Autobiography 'Realism' |
| 4028 | Frege allows either too few properties (as extensions) or too many (as predicates) [Mellor/Oliver on Frege] |
| Full Idea: Frege's theory of properties (which he calls 'concepts') yields too few properties, by identifying coextensive properties, and also too many, by letting every predicate express a property. | |
| From: comment on Gottlob Frege (Function and Concept [1891]) by DH Mellor / A Oliver - Introduction to 'Properties' §2 | |
| A reaction: Seems right; one extension may have two properties (have heart/kidneys), two predicates might express the same property. 'Cutting nature at the joints' covers properties as well as objects. |
| 8489 | The concept 'object' is too simple for analysis; unlike a function, it is an expression with no empty place [Frege] |
| Full Idea: I regard a regular definition of 'object' as impossible, since it is too simple to admit of logical analysis. Briefly: an object is anything that is not a function, so that an expression for it does not contain any empty place. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (Function and Concept [1891], p.32) | |
| A reaction: Here is the core of the programme for deriving our ontology from our logic and language, followed through by Russell and Quine. Once we extend objects beyond the physical, it becomes incredibly hard to individuate them. |
| 19520 | Evidentialism is not axiomatic; the evidence itself inclines us towards evidentialism [Conee] |
| Full Idea: Evidentialism does not support beginning epistemology by taking for granted that evidentialism is true. ...Rather, what potentially justifies belief in intial epistemic data and initial procedures of inquiry is the evidence itself. | |
| From: Earl Conee (First Things First [2004], 'Getting') | |
| A reaction: This sounds good. I much prefer talk of 'evidence' to talk of 'perceptions', because evidence has been licked into shape, and its significance has been clarified. That is the first step towards the coherence we seek. |
| 19521 | If pure guesses were reliable, reliabilists would have to endorse them [Conee] |
| Full Idea: Reliabilism would count pure guesses as good reasons if guessing were properly reliable. | |
| From: Earl Conee (First Things First [2004], 'Getting') | |
| A reaction: See D.H. Lawrence's short story 'The Rocking Horse Winner'. This objection strikes me as being so devastating that it is almost conclusive. Except that pure guesses are never ever reliable, over a decent period of time. |
| 19522 | More than actual reliability is needed, since I may mistakenly doubt what is reliable [Conee] |
| Full Idea: Sheer reliability does not justify belief. ...It may be, for instance, that we have strong though misleading reason to deny the method's reliability. | |
| From: Earl Conee (First Things First [2004], 'Circles') | |
| A reaction: That is, we accept a justification if we judge the method to be reliable, not if it IS reliable. I can disbelieve all the reliable information that arrives in my mind. People do that all the time! Hatred of experts! Support for internalism? |
| 19523 | Reliabilism is poor on reflective judgements about hypothetical cases [Conee] |
| Full Idea: An unrefined reliability theory does a poor job at capturing reflective judgements about hypothetical cases | |
| From: Earl Conee (First Things First [2004], 'Stroud's') | |
| A reaction: Reliability can only be a test for tried and tested ways. No one can say whether imagining a range of possibilities is reliable or not. Is prediction a reliable route to knowledge? |
| 16236 | Maybe our persistence conditions concern bodies, rather than persons [Olson, by Hawley] |
| Full Idea: Instead of attributing person-like persistence conditions to bodies, we could attribute body-like persistence conditions to persons, …so human persons are identical with human organisms. | |
| From: report of Eric T. Olson (The Human Animal [1997]) by Katherine Hawley - How Things Persist 5.10 | |
| A reaction: In the case of pre-birth and advanced senility, Olson thinks we could have the body without the person, so person is a 'phase sortal' of bodies. A good theory, which seems to answer a lot of questions. 'Person' may be an abstraction. |
| 6669 | For 'animalism', I exist before I became a person, and can continue after it, so I am not a person [Olson, by Lowe] |
| Full Idea: According to 'animalism', I existed before I was a person and I may well go one existing for some time after I cease to be a person; hence, I am not essentially a person, but a human organism. | |
| From: report of Eric T. Olson (The Human Animal [1997]) by E.J. Lowe - Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind Ch.10 | |
| A reaction: There is a very real sense in which an extremely senile person has 'ceased to exist' (e.g. as the person I used to love). On the whole, though, I think that Olson is right, and yet 'person' is an important concept. Neither concept is all-or-nothing. |
| 9947 | Concepts are the ontological counterparts of predicative expressions [Frege, by George/Velleman] |
| Full Idea: Concepts, for Frege, are the ontological counterparts of predicative expressions. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (Function and Concept [1891]) by A.George / D.J.Velleman - Philosophies of Mathematics Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: That sounds awfully like what many philosophers call 'universals'. Frege, as a platonist (at least about numbers), I would take to be in sympathy with that. At least we can say that concepts seem to be properties. |
| 10319 | An assertion about the concept 'horse' must indirectly speak of an object [Frege, by Hale] |
| Full Idea: Frege had a notorious difficulty over the concept 'horse', when he suggests that if we wish to assert something about a concept, we are obliged to proceed indirectly by speaking of an object that represents it. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (Function and Concept [1891], Ch.2.II) by Bob Hale - Abstract Objects | |
| A reaction: This sounds like the thin end of a wedge. The great champion of objects is forced to accept them here as a façon de parler, when elsewhere they have ontological status. |
| 8488 | A concept is a function whose value is always a truth-value [Frege] |
| Full Idea: A concept in logic is closely connected with what we call a function. Indeed, we may say at once: a concept is a function whose value is always a truth-value. ..I give the name 'function' to what is meant by the 'unsaturated' part. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (Function and Concept [1891], p.30) | |
| A reaction: So a function becomes a concept when the variable takes a value. Problems arise when the value is vague, or the truth-value is indeterminable. |
| 9948 | Unlike objects, concepts are inherently incomplete [Frege, by George/Velleman] |
| Full Idea: For Frege, concepts differ from objects in being inherently incomplete in nature. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (Function and Concept [1891]) by A.George / D.J.Velleman - Philosophies of Mathematics Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: This is because they are 'unsaturated', needing a quantified variable to complete the sentence. This could be a pointer towards Quine's view of properties, as simply an intrinsic feature of predication about objects, with no separate identity. |
| 4972 | I may regard a thought about Phosphorus as true, and the same thought about Hesperus as false [Frege] |
| Full Idea: From sameness of meaning there does not follow sameness of thought expressed. A fact about the Morning Star may express something different from a fact about the Evening Star, as someone may regard one as true and the other false. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (Function and Concept [1891], p.14) | |
| A reaction: This all gets clearer if we distinguish internalist and externalist theories of content. Why take sides on this? Why not just ask 'what is in the speaker's head?', 'what does the sentence mean in the community?', and 'what is the corresponding situation?' |
| 8491 | The Ontological Argument fallaciously treats existence as a first-level concept [Frege] |
| Full Idea: The ontological proof of God's existence suffers from the fallacy of treating existence as a first-level concept. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (Function and Concept [1891], p.38 n) | |
| A reaction: [See Idea 8490 for first- and second-order functions] This is usually summarised as the idea that existence is a quantifier rather than a predicate. |