Concept and object

About concept and object is an epistemological philosophy of language and brief writing of the philosopher Gottlob Frege (1848-1925), one of the classical texts of both disciplines.

Context of origin

The font was created in 1892 in dealing with an essay by Benno Kerry: " About perception and their mental processing ", which was then reviewed by Alois Höfler. Frege's essay " On Sense and Reference " ( Sens et denotation / Sense and Reference ) takes the train of thought again.

Content

Theme of Scripture is, inter alia, the semantic difference that often exists between sentences when, after exchanging a word as before the set has the same truth- value, and speaks on the same subject. To this end, Frege distinguishes between "meaning" and " significance " - today people speak of intension and extension - and clarifies the semantics of the terms 'concept' and 'object'. Particularly well known following excerpt on the object-related conceptual distinction of Morgenstern and Venus on the one hand and planet on the other hand:

" In the proposition, the morning star is Venus ' we have two proper names Morning Star ' and ' Venus ' for the same object. In the sentence, the morning star is a planet ' we have a proper name ,' the morning star 'and a concept-word :' a planet '. Linguistically, though nothing has happened, as that which ' is replaced by' a planet ' Venus; but objectively the relationship has become very different. An equation is reversible; that an object falling under a concept is a non-reversible relationship. That is, ' in the sentence, the morning star is Venus ' is apparently not a mere copula, but also in substance a substantial part of the predicate, so that in the words. , The ' not the whole predicate is contained Venus You could say this: the morning star is none other than Venus ', and here we have what is in the simple, is just now ' was necessary, disassembled into four words, and is nothing more than ' is now, is ' really only the copula. What is said here, that is not Venus, but nothing more than the Venus. These words mean a concept under which admittedly falls only a single object. But such a concept still needs to be distinguished from the subject. " "