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The Thought
"Thought: A Logical Inquiry" is an essay by Gottlob Frege. It was published as "Der Gedanke. Eine logische Untersuchung" in the philosophy journal ''Beiträge zur Philosophie des deutschen Idealismus'' (English: Contributions to the philosophy of German idealism) in 1918. It was republished in ''Mind'' in English in 1956. In it, Frege argues against idealism and for platonism about thoughts, or propositions. Frege says ideas are private, but thoughts are public. Frege said that such abstract objects were members of a third realm.Gottlob Frege, "Der Gedanke. Eine logische Untersuchung", in: ''Beiträge zur Philosophie des deutschen Idealismus'' 1 (1918/19), pp. 58–77; esp. p. 69. Frege also argued for a redundancy theory of truth According to the redundancy theory of truth (also known as the disquotational theory of truth), asserting that a statement is true is completely equivalent to asserting the statement itself. For example, asserting the sentence Snow is white' is tru .... Qu ...
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Gottlob Frege
Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege (; ; 8 November 1848 – 26 July 1925) was a German philosopher, logician, and mathematician. He was a mathematics professor at the University of Jena, and is understood by many to be the father of analytic philosophy, concentrating on the philosophy of language, philosophy of logic, logic, and Philosophy of mathematics, mathematics. Though he was largely ignored during his lifetime, Giuseppe Peano (1858–1932), Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), and, to some extent, Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) introduced his work to later generations of philosophers. Frege is widely considered to be the greatest logician since Aristotle, and one of the most profound philosophers of mathematics ever. His contributions include the History of logic#Rise of modern logic, development of modern logic in the ''Begriffsschrift'' and work in the foundations of mathematics. His book the ''Foundations of Arithmetic'' is the seminal text of the logicist project, and is ci ...
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German Idealism
German idealism is a philosophical movement that emerged in Germany in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It developed out of the work of Immanuel Kant in the 1780s and 1790s, and was closely linked both with Romanticism and the revolutionary politics of the Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment. The period of German idealism after Kant is also known as post-Kantian idealism or simply post-Kantianism. One scheme divides German idealists into transcendental idealists, associated with Kant and Fichte, and absolute idealists, associated with Schelling and Hegel. Meaning of idealism As a philosophical position, idealism claims that the true objects of knowledge are "ideal," meaning mind-dependent, as opposed to material. The term stems from Plato's view that the "Theory of forms, Ideas," the categories or concepts which our mind abstracts from our empirical experience of particular things, are more real than the particulars themselves, which depend on the Ideas rather than the Id ...
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Mind (journal)
''Mind'' (stylized as ''MIND'') is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Mind Association. Having previously published exclusively philosophy in the analytic tradition, it now "aims to take quality to be the sole criterion of publication, with no area of philosophy, no style of philosophy, and no school of philosophy excluded." Its institutional home is shared between the University of Oxford and University College London. It is considered an important resource for studying philosophy. History and profile The journal was established in 1876 by the Scottish philosopher Alexander Bain (University of Aberdeen) with his colleague and former student George Croom Robertson (University College London) as editor-in-chief. With the death of Robertson in 1891, George Stout took over the editorship and began a 'New Series'. Early on, the journal was dedicated to the question of whether psychology could be a legitimate natural s ...
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Platonism
Platonism is the philosophy of Plato and philosophical systems closely derived from it, though contemporary Platonists do not necessarily accept all doctrines of Plato. Platonism has had a profound effect on Western thought. At the most fundamental level, Platonism affirms the existence of abstract objects, which are asserted to exist in a third realm distinct from both the sensible external world and from the internal world of consciousness, and is the opposite of nominalism." Philosophers who affirm the existence of abstract objects are sometimes called platonists; those who deny their existence are sometimes called nominalists. The terms "platonism" and "nominalism" have established senses in the history of philosophy, where they denote positions that have little to do with the modern notion of an abstract object. In this connection, it is essential to bear in mind that modern platonists (with a small 'p') need not accept any of the doctrines of Plato, just as modern nomina ...
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Proposition
A proposition is a statement that can be either true or false. It is a central concept in the philosophy of language, semantics, logic, and related fields. Propositions are the object s denoted by declarative sentences; for example, "The sky is blue" expresses the proposition that the sky is blue. Unlike sentences, propositions are not linguistic expressions, so the English sentence "Snow is white" and the German "Schnee ist weiß" denote the same proposition. Propositions also serve as the objects of belief and other propositional attitudes, such as when someone believes that the sky is blue. Formally, propositions are often modeled as functions which map a possible world to a truth value. For instance, the proposition that the sky is blue can be modeled as a function which would return the truth value T if given the actual world as input, but would return F if given some alternate world where the sky is green. However, a number of alternative formalizations have be ...
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Abstract And Concrete
In philosophy and the arts, a fundamental distinction exists between abstract and concrete entities. While there is no universally accepted definition, common examples illustrate the difference: numbers, sets, and ideas are typically classified as abstract objects, whereas plants, dogs, and planets are considered concrete objects. Philosophers have proposed several criteria to define this distinction: # ''Spatiotemporal existence'' – Abstract objects exist outside space-time, while concrete objects exist within space-time. # ''Causal influence'' – Concrete objects can cause and be affected by other entities (e.g., a rock breaking a window), whereas abstract objects (e.g., the number 2) lack causal powers and do not cause anything to happen in the physical world. # ''Metaphysical relation'' – In metaphysics, concrete objects are specific, individual things ( particulars), while abstract objects represent general concepts or categories ( universals). # ''Ontological domain ...
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Redundancy Theory Of Truth
According to the redundancy theory of truth (also known as the disquotational theory of truth), asserting that a statement is true is completely equivalent to asserting the statement itself. For example, asserting the sentence Snow is white' is true" is equivalent to asserting the sentence "Snow is white". The philosophical redundancy theory of truth is a deflationary theory of truth. Overview Redundancy theorists infer from this premise that truth is a redundant concept—in other words, that "truth" is merely a word that it is conventional to use in certain contexts but not one that points to anything in reality. The theory is commonly attributed to Frank P. Ramsey, who argued that the use of words like ''fact'' and ''truth'' was nothing but a roundabout way of asserting a proposition, and that treating these words as separate problems in isolation from judgment was merely a "linguistic muddle", though there remains some debate as to the correct interpretation of his position (Le ...
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Analytic Philosophy
Analytic philosophy is a broad movement within Western philosophy, especially English-speaking world, anglophone philosophy, focused on analysis as a philosophical method; clarity of prose; rigor in arguments; and making use of formal logic, mathematics, and to a lesser degree the natural sciences.Mautner, Thomas (editor) (2005) ''The Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy'', entry for "Analytic philosophy", pp. 22–23 It is further characterized by an interest in language, semantics and Meaning (philosophy), meaning, known as the linguistic turn. It has developed several new branches of philosophy and logic, notably philosophy of language, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of science, modern predicate logic and mathematical logic. The proliferation of analysis in philosophy began around the turn of the 20th century and has been dominant since the latter half of the 20th century. Central figures in its historical development are Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, G. E. Moore, and L ...
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Philosophy Essays
Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, value, mind, and language. It is a rational and critical inquiry that reflects on its methods and assumptions. Historically, many of the individual sciences, such as physics and psychology, formed part of philosophy. However, they are considered separate academic disciplines in the modern sense of the term. Influential traditions in the history of philosophy include Western, Arabic–Persian, Indian, and Chinese philosophy. Western philosophy originated in Ancient Greece and covers a wide area of philosophical subfields. A central topic in Arabic–Persian philosophy is the relation between reason and revelation. Indian philosophy combines the spiritual problem of how to reach enlightenment with the exploration of the nature of reality and the ways of arriving at knowledge. Chinese philosophy focuses principally on ...
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1918 Essays
The ceasefire that effectively ended the World War I, First World War took place on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of this year. Also in this year, the Spanish flu pandemic killed 50–100 million people worldwide. In Russia, this year runs with only 352 days. As the result of Julian to Gregorian calendar switch, 13 days needed to be skipped. Wednesday, January 31 ''(Julian Calendar)'' was immediately followed by Thursday, February 14 ''(Gregorian Calendar)''. Events World War I will be abbreviated as "WWI" January * January – 1918 flu pandemic: The "Spanish flu" (influenza) is first observed in Haskell County, Kansas. * January 4 – The Finnish Declaration of Independence is recognized by Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Soviet Russia, Sweden, German Empire, Germany and France. * January 8 – American president Woodrow Wilson presents the Fourteen Points as a basis for peace negotiations to end the war. * January 9 ...
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Linguistic Turn
The linguistic turn was a major development in Western philosophy during the early 20th century, the most important characteristic of which is the focusing of philosophy primarily on the relations between language, language users, and the world. Very different intellectual movements were associated with the "linguistic turn", although the term itself is commonly thought to have been popularised by Richard Rorty's 1967 anthology ''The Linguistic Turn'', in which he discusses the turn towards linguistic philosophy. According to Rorty, who later dissociated himself from linguistic philosophy and analytic philosophy generally, the phrase "the linguistic turn" originated with philosopher Gustav Bergmann. Analytic philosophy Traditionally, the linguistic turn is taken to also mean the birth of analytic philosophy. One of the results of the linguistic turn was an increasing focus on logic and philosophy of language, and the cleavage between ideal language philosophy and ordinary lan ...
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