Single Idea 22280

[catalogued under 19. Language / C. Assigning Meanings / 4. Compositionality]

Full Idea

Frege's account was top-down, not bottom-up: he aimed to decompose and discern function-argument structure in already existing sentences, not to explain how those sentences acquired their meanings in the first place.

Gist of Idea

Frege's account was top-down and decompositional, not bottom-up and compositional

Source

report of Gottlob Frege (Begriffsschrift [1879]) by Michael Potter - The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 03 'Func'

Book Reference

Potter,Michael: 'The Rise of Anaytic Philosophy 1879-1930' [Routledge 2020], p.29


A Reaction

This goes with the holistic account of meaning, which leads to Quine's gavagai and Kuhn's obfuscation of science. I recommend compositionality for everthing.