Skip to main content
Kent Academic Repository

Frege's Definition of Number: No Ontological Agenda?

Kanterian, Edward (2010) Frege's Definition of Number: No Ontological Agenda? Hungarian Philosophical Review, 54 (4). pp. 76-92. ISSN 1588-1024. (The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided) (KAR id:42337)

The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided.

Abstract

Joan Weiner (2007) has argued that Frege’s definitions of numbers

constitute linguistic stipulations that carry no ontological commitment: they

don’t present numbers as pre-existing objects. This paper offers a critical

discussion of this view, showing that it is vitiated by serious exegetical

errors and that it saddles Frege’s project with insuperable substantive

difficulties. It is first demonstrated that Weiner misrepresents the Fregean

notions of so-called Foundations-content, and of sense, reference, and truth.

The discussion then focuses on the role of definitions in Frege’s work,

demonstrating that they cannot be understood as mere linguistic stipulations,

since they have an ontological aim. The paper concludes with stressing both

the epistemological and the ontological aspects of Frege’s project, and their

crucial interdependence.

Item Type: Article
Subjects: B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > B Philosophy (General)
Divisions: Divisions > Division of Arts and Humanities > School of Culture and Languages
Depositing User: Edward Kanterian
Date Deposited: 15 Aug 2014 14:10 UTC
Last Modified: 16 Nov 2021 10:16 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/42337 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

University of Kent Author Information

  • Depositors only (login required):

Total unique views for this document in KAR since July 2020. For more details click on the image.