55 ideas
| 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". |
| 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'). |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 4938 | Prior to language, concepts are universals created by self-mapping of brain activity [Edelman/Tononi] |
| Full Idea: Before language is present, concepts depend on the brain's ability to construct 'universals' through higher-order mapping of the activity of the brain's own perceptual and motor maps. | |
| From: G Edelman / G Tononi (Consciousness: matter becomes imagination [2000], Ch.15) | |
| A reaction: It should be of great interest to philosophers that one can begin to give a neuro-physiological account of universals. A physical system can be ordered as a database, and universals are the higher branches of a tree-structure of information. |
| 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". |
| 4934 | Cultures have a common core of colour naming, based on three axes of colour pairs [Edelman/Tononi] |
| Full Idea: We seem to have a set of colour axes (red-green, blue-yellow, and light-dark). Color naming in different cultures tend to have universal categories based on these axes, with a few derived or composite categories (e.g. orange, purple, pink, brown, grey). | |
| From: G Edelman / G Tononi (Consciousness: matter becomes imagination [2000], Ch.13) | |
| A reaction: This confirms my view of all supposed relativism: that there are degrees of cultural and individual relativism possible, but it is daft to think this goes all the way down, as nature has 'joints', and our minds are part of nature. |
| 4924 | A conscious human being rapidly reunifies its mind after any damage to the brain [Edelman/Tononi] |
| Full Idea: It seems that after a massive stroke or surgical resection, a conscious human being is rapidly "resynthesised" or reunified within the limits of a solipsistic universe that, to outside appearances, is warped and restricted. | |
| From: G Edelman / G Tononi (Consciousness: matter becomes imagination [2000], Ch. 3) | |
| A reaction: Note that there are two types of 'unity of mind'. This comment refers to the unity of seeing oneself as a single person, rather than the smooth unbroken quality of conscious experience. I presume that there is no point in a mind without the first unity. |
| 4932 | A conscious state endures for about 100 milliseconds, known as the 'specious present' [Edelman/Tononi] |
| Full Idea: The 'specious present' (William James), a rough estimate of the duration of a single conscious state, is of the order of 100 milliseconds, meaning that conscious states can change very rapidly. | |
| From: G Edelman / G Tononi (Consciousness: matter becomes imagination [2000], Ch.12) | |
| A reaction: A vital feature of our subjective experience of time. I wonder what the figure is for a fly? It suggests that conscious experience really is like a movie film, composed of tiny independent 'frames' of very short duration. |
| 4931 | Consciousness is a process (of neural interactions), not a location, thing, property, connectivity, or activity [Edelman/Tononi] |
| Full Idea: Consciousness is neither a thing, nor a simple property. ..The conscious 'dynamic core' of the brain is a process, not a thing or a place, and is defined in terms of neural interactions, not in terms of neural locations, connectivity or activity. | |
| From: G Edelman / G Tononi (Consciousness: matter becomes imagination [2000], Ch.12) | |
| A reaction: This must be of great interest to philosophers. Edelman is adamant that it is not any specific neurons. The nice question is: what would it be like to have your brain slowed down? Presumably we would experience steps in the process. Is he a functionalist? |
| 4923 | The three essentials of conscious experience are privateness, unity and informativeness [Edelman/Tononi] |
| Full Idea: The fundamental aspects of conscious experience that are common to all its phenomenological manifestations are: privateness, unity, and informativeness. | |
| From: G Edelman / G Tononi (Consciousness: matter becomes imagination [2000], Ch. 3) | |
| A reaction: Interesting, coming from neuroscientists. The list strikes me as rather passive. It is no use having good radar if you can't make decisions. Privacy and unity are overrated. Who gets 'informed'? Personal identity must be basic. |
| 4941 | Consciousness can create new axioms, but computers can't do that [Edelman/Tononi] |
| Full Idea: Conscious human thought can create new axioms, which a computer cannot do. | |
| From: G Edelman / G Tononi (Consciousness: matter becomes imagination [2000], Ch.17) | |
| A reaction: A nice challenge for the artificial intelligence community! I don't understand their confidence in making this assertion. Nothing in Gödel's Theorem seems to prevent the reassignment of axioms, and Quine implies that it is an easy and trivial game. |
| 4930 | Consciousness arises from high speed interactions between clusters of neurons [Edelman/Tononi] |
| Full Idea: Our hypothesis is that the activity of a group of neurons can contribute directly to conscious experience if it is part of a functional cluster, characterized by strong interactions among a set of neuronal groups over a period of hundreds of milliseconds. | |
| From: G Edelman / G Tononi (Consciousness: matter becomes imagination [2000], Ch.12) | |
| A reaction: This is their 'dynamic core' hypothesis. It doesn't get at the Hard Questions about consciousness, but this is a Nobel prize winner hot on the trail of the location of the action. It gives support to functionalism, because the neurons vary. |
| 4929 | Dreams and imagery show the brain can generate awareness and meaning without input [Edelman/Tononi] |
| Full Idea: Dreaming and imagery are striking phenomenological demonstrations that the adult brain can spontaneously and intrinsically produce consciousness and meaning without any direct input from the periphery. | |
| From: G Edelman / G Tononi (Consciousness: matter becomes imagination [2000], Ch.11) | |
| A reaction: This offers some support for Searle's claim that brain's produce 'intrinsic' (rather than 'derived') intentionality. Of course, one can have a Humean impressions/ideas theory about how the raw material got there. We SEE meaning in our experiences. |
| 4940 | Physicists see information as a measure of order, but for biologists it is symbolic exchange between animals [Edelman/Tononi] |
| Full Idea: Physicists may define information as a measure of order in a far-from-equilibrium state, but it is best seen as a biological concept which emerged in evolution with animals that were capable of mutual symbolic exchange. | |
| From: G Edelman / G Tononi (Consciousness: matter becomes imagination [2000], Ch.17) | |
| A reaction: The physicists' definition seems to open the road to the possibility of non-conscious intentionality (Dennett), where the biological view seems to require consciousness of symbolic meanings (Searle). Tree-rings contain potential information? |
| 4935 | The sensation of red is a point in neural space created by dimensions of neuronal activity [Edelman/Tononi] |
| Full Idea: The pure sensation of red is a particular neural state identified by a point within the N-dimensional neural space defined by the integrated activity of all the group of neurons that constitute the dynamic core. | |
| From: G Edelman / G Tononi (Consciousness: matter becomes imagination [2000], Ch.13) | |
| A reaction: This hardly answers the Hard Question (why experience it? why that experience?), but it is interesting to see a neuroscientist fishing for an account of qualia. He says three types of neuron firing generate the dimensions of the 'space'. |
| 4936 | The self is founded on bodily awareness centred in the brain stem [Edelman/Tononi] |
| Full Idea: Structures in the brain stem map the state of the body and its relation to the environment, on the basis of signals with proprioceptive, kinesthetic, somatosensory and autonomic components. We may call these the dimensions of the proto-self. | |
| From: G Edelman / G Tononi (Consciousness: matter becomes imagination [2000], Ch.13) | |
| A reaction: It seems to me that there is no free will, but moral responsibility depends on the existence of a Self, and philosophers had better fight for it (are you listening, Hume?). Fortunately neuroscientists seem to endorse it fairly unanimously. |
| 4939 | A sense of self begins either internally, or externally through language and society [Edelman/Tononi] |
| Full Idea: Two extreme views on the development of the self are 'internalist' and 'externalist'. The first starts with a baby's subjective experience, and increasing differentiation as self-consciousness develops. The externalist view requires language and society. | |
| From: G Edelman / G Tononi (Consciousness: matter becomes imagination [2000], Ch.15) | |
| A reaction: Edelman rightly warns against this simple dichotomy, but if I have to vote, it is for internalism. I take a sense of self as basic to any mind, even a slug's. What is a mind for, if not to look after the creature? Self makes sensation into mind. |
| 4925 | Brains can initiate free actions before the person is aware of their own decision [Edelman/Tononi] |
| Full Idea: Libet concluded that the cerebral initiation of a spontaneous, freely voluntary act can begin unconsciously, that is, before there is any recallable awareness that a decision to act has already been initiated cerebrally. | |
| From: G Edelman / G Tononi (Consciousness: matter becomes imagination [2000], Ch. 6) | |
| A reaction: We should accept this result. 'Free will' was always a bogus metaphysical concept (invented, I think, because God had to be above natural laws). A person is the source of responsibility, and is the controller of the brain, but not entirely conscious. |
| 4933 | Consciousness is a process, not a thing, as it maintains unity as its composition changes [Edelman/Tononi] |
| Full Idea: The conscious 'dynamic core' of the brain can maintain its unity over time even if its composition may be constantly changing, which is the signature of a process as opposed to a thing. | |
| From: G Edelman / G Tononi (Consciousness: matter becomes imagination [2000], Ch.12) | |
| A reaction: This is the functionalists' claim that the mind is 'multiply realisable', since different neurons can maintain the same process. 'Process' strikes me as a much better word than 'function'. These theories capture passive mental life better than active. |
| 4928 | Brain complexity balances segregation and integration, like a good team of specialists [Edelman/Tononi] |
| Full Idea: A theoretical analysis of complexity suggests that neuronal complexity strikes an optimum balance between segregation and integration, which fits the view of the brain as a collection of specialists who talk to each other a lot. | |
| From: G Edelman / G Tononi (Consciousness: matter becomes imagination [2000], Ch.11) | |
| A reaction: This is a theoretical point, but comes from a leading neuroscientist, and seems to endorse Fodor's modularity proposal. For a philosopher, one of the issues here is how to reconcile the segregation with the Cartesian unity and personal identity of a mind. |
| 4927 | Information-processing views of the brain assume the existence of 'information', and dubious brain codes [Edelman/Tononi] |
| Full Idea: So-called information-processing views of the brain have been criticized because they typically assume the existence in the world of previously defined information, and often assume the existence of precise neural codes for which there is no evidence. | |
| From: G Edelman / G Tononi (Consciousness: matter becomes imagination [2000], Ch.11) | |
| A reaction: Fodor is the target here. Searle is keen that 'intrinsic intentionality' is required to see something as 'information'. It is hard to see how anything acquires significance as it flows through a mechanical process. |
| 4922 | Consciousness involves interaction with persons and the world, as well as brain functions [Edelman/Tononi] |
| Full Idea: We emphatically do not identify consciousness in its full range as arising solely in the brain, since we believe that higher brain functions require interactions both with the world and with other persons. | |
| From: G Edelman / G Tononi (Consciousness: matter becomes imagination [2000], Pref) | |
| A reaction: Would you gradually lose higher brain functions if you lived entirely alone? Intriguingly, this sounds like a neuroscientist asserting the necessity for broad content in order to understand the brain. |
| 5793 | Concepts and generalisations result from brain 'global mapping' by 'reentry' [Edelman/Tononi, by Searle] |
| Full Idea: When you get maps all over the brain signalling to each other by reentry you have what Edelman calls 'global mapping', and this allows the system not only to have perceptual categories and generalisation, but also to coordinate perception and action. | |
| From: report of G Edelman / G Tononi (Consciousness: matter becomes imagination [2000]) by John Searle - The Mystery of Consciousness Ch.3 | |
| A reaction: This is the nearest we have got to a proper scientific account of thought (as opposed to untested speculation about Turing machines). Something like this account must be right. A concept is a sustained process, not a static item. |
| 4926 | Concepts arise when the brain maps its own activities [Edelman/Tononi] |
| Full Idea: We propose that concepts arise from the mapping by the brain itself of the activity of the brain's own areas and regions. | |
| From: G Edelman / G Tononi (Consciousness: matter becomes imagination [2000], Ch. 9) | |
| A reaction: Yes. One should add that the brain appears to be physically constructed with the logic of a filing system, which would mean that our concepts were labels for files within the system. Nature generates some of the files, and thinking creates the others. |
| 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. |
| 4937 | Systems that generate a sense of value are basic to the primitive brain [Edelman/Tononi] |
| Full Idea: Early and central in the development of the brain are the dimensions provided by value systems indicating salience for the entire organism. | |
| From: G Edelman / G Tononi (Consciousness: matter becomes imagination [2000], Ch.13) | |
| A reaction: This doesn't quite meet Hume's challenge to find values in the whole of nature, but it matches Charles Taylor's claim that for humans values are knowable a priori. Conditional values can be facts of the whole of nature. "If there is life, x has value..". |
| 7903 | The six perfections are giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom [Nagarjuna] |
| Full Idea: The six perfections are of giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom. | |
| From: Nagarjuna (Mahaprajnaparamitashastra [c.120], 88) | |
| A reaction: What is 'morality', if giving is not part of it? I like patience and vigour being two of the virtues, which immediately implies an Aristotelian mean (which is always what is 'appropriate'). |