Frege on compositionality

A proposition has a sense, and the sense of the proposition has a corresponding thought.  This is is how we communicate.  But we don't attach a simple sign to each thought, otherwise we could only communicate as many thoughts as there were simple signs.  So a proposition is composed of simple signs, each of which has a sense.  We can put these simple signs together in as many ways as we like, so we can communicate new thoughts.

I do not believe that we can dispense with the sense of a name in logic; for a proposition must have a sense if it is to be useful. But a proposition consists of parts which must somehow contribute to the expression of the sense of the proposition: so they themselves must somehow have a sense. Take the proposition 'Etna is higher than Vesuvius'. This contains the name 'Etna', which occurs also in other propositions, e.g., in the proposition 'Etna is in Sicily'. The possibility of our understanding propositions which we have never heard before rests evidently on this, that we construct the sense of a proposition out of parts that correspond to the words. If we find the same word in two propositions, e.g., 'Etna', then we also recognize something common to the corresponding thoughts, something corresponding to this word. Without this, language in the proper sense would be impossible. We could indeed adopt the convention that certain signs were to express certain thoughts, like railway signals ('The track is clear'); but in this way we would always be restricted to a very narrow area, and we could not form a completely new proposition, one which would be understood by another person even though no special convention had been adopted beforehand for this case.

Indexical facts and materialism

The Maverick as ever has come out with a characteristically challenging post here asking whether 'indexical facts' are a threat to materialism.  He concludes that they are.  More later, but I have a brief prologemena here. 

Meanwhile, some preliminary ideas from Buridan, in his fifth question on the first book of his Questions on the Prior Analytics.  What is signified by the expression 'for a man to drink wine'?  He lists out some opinions. According to some it signifies the the sentence (propositio) 'a man drinks wine'.  According to others, it is a sort of signifiable complex entity on the side of reality (a parte rei), corresponding to the proposition 'a man drinks wine'.  Others say that for a man to drink wine is simply the man as he is related in that way to wine.  Yet others say that it is a sort of accident inhering in the man as he is related in that way to wine. More later.

Ockham himself is not drinking wine, as he has an attack of the gout, due to his habit of slouching comfortably in the corner like an eighteenth century gentleman, squinting at the assembled company through a glass of red wine or port, passing trollish and mischievous comments.  This behaviour needs to stop, according to his wife.  Or he could obtain a gout stool, but unfortunately there is no Wikipedia article about it.

Whitehead on thinking

Alfred Whitehead: "It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy-books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them."

Ockham and the golden mountain

Reading Valicella’s discussion of Twardowski’s ‘solution’ to the paradox of intentionality brought to mind my old translation of Ockham’s commentary on Aristotle’s Perihermenias. The whole thing is worth a read, but section 9 is particularly relevant.

Replying for those who say that an intentional object is a real being, Ockham argues that 'a chimaera exists in reality' has distinct meanings according to whether 'chimaera' denotes personally, or materially or simply. If it denotes personally (i.e. if it is meant to denote a chimaera itself) it is false. But if it denotes ‘materially’ (i.e. if it stands for the word 'chimaera') or ‘simply’ (it stands for the concept of a chimera), it is true, for the word 'chimaera', and the concept chimaera both exist in reality. Similarly the proposition 'a chimaera is understood' is false, if 'chimaera' is meant to stand for a chimaera, but true, if it stands either for the word itself, or for the concept of a chimaera. (An argument he repeats in Summa Logicae II.72). This solution seems close to the one that Twardowski criticises. When I think about the round square or the golden mountain (in whatever psychological mode) the object of my thought is neither a mental content nor an abstract object. And ‘the golden mountain’ refers to the golden mountain, not, as Ockham’s comment suggests, to the concept of a golden mountain.

Note Ockham’s use of the example ‘golden mountain’ (mons aureus). I can find only one earlier example, in Scotus’ questions on the Metaphysics (q.6), written in the late 1290s, but it must surely be older than that.