Austrian philosopher and logician (1889–1951)
Showing quotes in randomized order to avoid selection bias. Click Popular for most popular quotes.
Frege ridiculed the formalist conception of mathematics by saying that the formalists confused the unimportant thing, the sign, with the important, the meaning. Surely, one wishes to say, mathematics does not treat of dashes on a bit of paper. Frege’s idea could be expressed thus: the propositions of mathematics, if they were just complexes of dashes, would be dead and utterly uninteresting, whereas they obviously have a kind of life. And the same, of course, could be said of any proposition: Without a sense, or without the thought, a proposition would be an utterly dead and trivial thing. And further it seems clear that no adding of inorganic signs can make the proposition live. And the conclusion which one draws from this is that what must be added to the dead signs in order to make a live proposition is something immaterial, with properties different from all mere signs.
But if we had to name anything which is the life of the sign, we should have to say that it was its use.
"303. "I can only believe that someone else is in pain, but I know it if I am." — Yes: one can make the decision to say "I believe he is in pain" instead of "He is in pain". But that is all. — — What looks like an explanation here, or like a statement about a mental process, is in truth an exchange of one expression for another which, while we are doing philosophy, seems the more appropriate one.
Just try — in a real case — to doubt someone else's fear or pain."
"476. Children do not learn that books exist, that armchairs exist, etc.,etc. - they learn to fetch books, sit in armchairs, etc.,etc.
Later, questions about the existence of things do of course arise, "Is there such a thing as a unicorn?" and so on. But such a question is possible only because as a rule no corresponding question presents itself. For how does one know how to set about satisfying oneself of the existence of unicorns? How did one learn the method for determining whether something exists or not?
477. "So one must know that the objects whose names one teaches a child by an ostensive definition exist." - Why must one know they do? Isn't it enough that experience doesn't later show the opposite?
For why should the language-game rest on some kind of knowledge?
478. Does a child believe that milk exists? Or does it know that milk exists? Does a cat know that a mouse exists?
479. Are we to say that the knowledge that there are physical objects comes very early or very late?"
Try QuoteGPT
Chat naturally about what you need. Each answer links back to real quotes with citations.