A critique of Frege on common nouns

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract (may include machine translation)

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.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)148-155
Number of pages8
JournalRatio
Volume19
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - Jun 2006

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