30 ideas
| 18806 | Frege thought traditional categories had psychological and linguistic impurities [Frege, by Rumfitt] |
| 8729 | Intuitionists deny excluded middle, because it is committed to transcendent truth or objects [Shapiro] |
| 8490 | First-level functions have objects as arguments; second-level functions take functions as arguments [Frege] |
| 8492 | Relations are functions with two arguments [Frege] |
| 8763 | The number 3 is presumably identical as a natural, an integer, a rational, a real, and complex [Shapiro] |
| 18249 | Cauchy gave a formal definition of a converging sequence. [Shapiro] |
| 8764 | Categories are the best foundation for mathematics [Shapiro] |
| 8762 | Two definitions of 3 in terms of sets disagree over whether 1 is a member of 3 [Shapiro] |
| 8760 | Numbers do not exist independently; the essence of a number is its relations to other numbers [Shapiro] |
| 8761 | A 'system' is related objects; a 'pattern' or 'structure' abstracts the pure relations from them [Shapiro] |
| 8487 | Arithmetic is a development of logic, so arithmetical symbolism must expand into logical symbolism [Frege] |
| 8744 | Logicism seems to be a non-starter if (as is widely held) logic has no ontology of its own [Shapiro] |
| 8749 | Term Formalism says mathematics is just about symbols - but real numbers have no names [Shapiro] |
| 8750 | Game Formalism is just a matter of rules, like chess - but then why is it useful in science? [Shapiro] |
| 8752 | Deductivism says mathematics is logical consequences of uninterpreted axioms [Shapiro] |
| 8753 | Critics resent the way intuitionism cripples mathematics, but it allows new important distinctions [Shapiro] |
| 8731 | Conceptualist are just realists or idealist or nominalists, depending on their view of concepts [Shapiro] |
| 8730 | 'Impredicative' definitions refer to the thing being described [Shapiro] |
| 18899 | Frege takes the existence of horses to be part of their concept [Frege, by Sommers] |
| 4028 | Frege allows either too few properties (as extensions) or too many (as predicates) [Mellor/Oliver on Frege] |
| 8489 | The concept 'object' is too simple for analysis; unlike a function, it is an expression with no empty place [Frege] |
| 8725 | Rationalism tries to apply mathematical methodology to all of knowledge [Shapiro] |
| 2799 | Bayes' theorem explains why very surprising predictions have a higher value as evidence [Horwich] |
| 2798 | Probability of H, given evidence E, is prob(H) x prob(E given H) / prob(E) [Horwich] |
| 9947 | Concepts are the ontological counterparts of predicative expressions [Frege, by George/Velleman] |
| 10319 | An assertion about the concept 'horse' must indirectly speak of an object [Frege, by Hale] |
| 8488 | A concept is a function whose value is always a truth-value [Frege] |
| 9948 | Unlike objects, concepts are inherently incomplete [Frege, by George/Velleman] |
| 4972 | I may regard a thought about Phosphorus as true, and the same thought about Hesperus as false [Frege] |
| 8491 | The Ontological Argument fallaciously treats existence as a first-level concept [Frege] |