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A CRITIQUE OF FREGE ON COMMON NOUNS
Author(s) -
BenYami Hanoch
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
ratio
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.475
H-Index - 29
eISSN - 1467-9329
pISSN - 0034-0006
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9329.2006.00316.x
Subject(s) - predicative expression , plural , principle of compositionality , subject (documents) , predicate (mathematical logic) , linguistics , proper noun , philosophy , noun , predicate logic , logical consequence , noun phrase , natural deduction , term (time) , computer science , mathematics , epistemology , artificial intelligence , discrete mathematics , programming language , description logic , physics , quantum mechanics , library science
Frege analyzed the grammatical subject‐term ‘ S ’ in quantified subject‐predicate sentences, ‘ q S are P ’, as being logically predicative . This is in contrast to Aristotelian Logic, according to which it is a logical subject ‐term, like the proper name ‘ a ’ in ‘ a is P ’– albeit a plural one, designating many particulars. I show that Frege’s arguments for his analysis are unsound, and explain how he was misled to his position by the mathematical concept of function. If common nouns in this grammatical subject position are indeed logical subject‐terms, this should require a thorough reevaluation of the adequacy of Frege’s predicate calculus as a tool for the analysis of the logic and semantics of natural language.