What does Frege mean by concept?
He defined a concept (Begriff) as a function that has a truth-value, either of the abstract objects the True or the False, as its value for any object as argument. See below for more on Frege’s understanding of concepts, functions and objects.
What is a thought for Frege?
To fix the terms, for Frege the term ‘thought’ [Gedanke] is reserved for a sense of a declarative sentence that has as its referent a truth value (Frege, 1918, p. 292). This is to say that ‘thoughts’ (and only ‘thoughts’, thus defined) are what partake of truth and falsity.
Is Frege an idealist?
Michael Dummett argued that Frege was a realist while Hans Sluga countered that he was an objective idealist in the rationalist tradition of Kant and Lotze. We can learn much about Frege’s philosophical presuppositions from his criticism of his contemporaries and predecessors.
Why is Frege important?
In the early 21st century, Frege was widely considered to be the greatest logician since Aristotle, and one of the most profound philosophers of mathematics ever. His contributions include the development of modern logic in the Begriffsschrift and work in the foundations of mathematics.
What is a function Frege?
Frege draws an important distinction between concepts on the basis of their level. Frege tells us that a first-level concept is a one-place function that correlates objects with truth-values (147). First level concepts have the value of true or false depending on whether the object falls under the concept.
What is Frege’s third realm?
Frege distinguished between thoughts and our grasping of thoughts. Thoughts for him belong to the “third realm”, an ideal Platonic realm where thoughts exist by themselves, independently of us, and to which we have access only through language.
Was Gottlob Frege religious?
Though Frege was married, his wife died during World War I, leaving him no children of his own. There was an adopted son, Alfred, however, who became an engineer. Frege was, in religion, a liberal Lutheran and, in politics, a reactionary.
Who influenced Frege?
Immanuel Kant
Gottfried Wilhelm LeibnizKuno Fischer
Gottlob Frege/Influenced by
Is arithmetic reducible to logic?
This and related ideas convinced him that arithmetic, algebra and analysis were reducible to the natural numbers plus a “logic” of classes. Furthermore by 1872 he had concluded that the naturals themselves were reducible to sets and mappings. Note that naive set theory also suffers from this difficulty.
How do you pronounce Frege?
Frege is pronounced as in “frayguh”.
Is Frege a Platonist?
Gottlob Frege is often called a “platonist”. In connection with his philosophy we can talk about platonism concerning three kinds of entities: numbers, or logical objects more generally; concepts, or functions more generally; thoughts, or senses more generally.
What does third realm mean?
The “third realm,” is the space between life and death and art and life. It is the realm of the invisible, subconscious, intuitive, non-rational, and uncanny.
What did Gottlob Frege contribute to the philosophy of language?
Gottlob Frege (1848-1925) is most celebrated today for his contributions to mathematical logic and the philosophy of language. The first section below considers why a philosophical investigation of language mattered at all for Frege, the mathematician, and why it should have mattered to him.
How is the philosophy of logic made true?
On Frege’s “philosophy of logic”, logic is made true by a realm of logical entities. Logical functions, value-ranges, and the truth-values the True and the False, are thought to be objectively real entities, existing apart from the material and mental worlds.
Why was the study of language important to Frege?
For Frege, too, it was the very insight that human thought depends in certain ways on language, or on symbols in general, that compelled him to analyze the workings of language in order to investigate the logical structure of thought. Indeed, it seems that language itself was never the primary object of his philosophical interest.
What did Michael Dummett say about Frege and philosophy?
Michael Dummett ‘s claim that Frege had brought the modern tradition to an end by replacing epistemology with the theory of meaning as the foundation of philosophy in general has been an influential interpretation, but has increasingly been challenged in the past decades.