Re: "Friendly Premises"

H. J. Sander Bruggink wrote:
> George Dance wrote:
>
> >>The problem in your argument is the referring to; what is being referred
> >>to by what it not important. I changed "concept" into "word" because
> >>concepts do not refer to anything, but words do.
> >
> > More precisely, (a) concepts "refer to" objects, (b) words "symbolize"
> > concepts, and ergo (c) words "stand for" objects:
>
> Ok, I see, your "concept" is similar to Frege's "Sinn", but I
> thought "Sinn" is usually translated as "Sense" in English.

'Sense' is used in that way; eg, if we were talking about happiness,
say, and disagreeing on virtually everything, one of us might ask the
other, "Just what sense of 'happiness' do you mean?" (IOW, just what
concept are you talking about and calling 'happiness'?).

I suppose that's a matter of what Acme was calling "levels of
description" (LOD): If we were epistemologists engaged in a technical
discussion, I suppose, we'd stick with the word 'concept'; but for
laymen not primarily interested in epistemology, 'sense' works just
fine. (And in general: as long as it's clear what concepts are being
discussed, the words used for them aren't all that important.)

> Doesn't matter though, the problem is, as I said, the
> "referring to", not what refers to what. Just because two
> concepts refer to the same thing, doesn't meen they are both
> concepts from logic.

This seems to be the nub of our disagreement, which (I think) comes
down to the same matter of LOD's.

An epistemologist might object to my use of the word 'sense' in a
conversation with him about his subject, by telling me that there's no
such concept in epistemology - meaning that 'sense' simply doesn't
have a technical meaning, that it's not a defined term, that there's
nothing to which epistemologists attach the label 'sense'. Or he might
question me, learn what I meant by 'sense' in that case, and tell me
that there is indeed such a concept, but that the correct label for it
is 'concept.'

Similarly, a logician might tell me that there's no concept of
'self-proving procedure in logic, meaning roughly the same: that the
words have no technical meaning, nothing to which they're attached as a
label. Or again, he might discover what I meant by a 'self-proving
procedure', and inform me that there is such a concept, but that the
correct label for it is 'deductive proof'.

In both cases, I'd say that the second expert was correct, while the
first was conflating words (labels) with concepts (ideas).





>
> [snip]
>
>
> >
> >>groente
> >
> > G'day to you (as we say in Canada).
>
> I think you say "vegetables" in Canada. ;-)
>
> groente
> -- Sander

.

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