Being true is different from being taken as true, whether by one or by many or everybody, and in no case is it to be reduced to it. There is no contr… - Gottlob Frege

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Being true is different from being taken as true, whether by one or by many or everybody, and in no case is it to be reduced to it. There is no contradiction in something's being true which everybody takes to be false. I understand by 'laws of logic' not psychological laws of takings-to-be-true, but laws of truth. ...If being true is thus independent of being acknowledged by somebody or other, then the laws of truth are not psychological laws: they are boundary stones set in an eternal foundation, which our thought can overflow, but never displace. It is because of this that they have authority for our thought if it would attain truth. They do not bear the relation to thought that the laws of grammar bear to language; they do not make explicit the nature of our human thinking and change as it changes.

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About Gottlob Frege

Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege (8 November 1848 – 26 July 1925) was a German mathematician, logician and philosopher considered to be one of the founders of modern logic. He made major contributions to the foundations of mathematics.

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Native Name: Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege

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Additional quotes by Gottlob Frege

This ideography is a "formula language", that is, a lingua characterica, a language written with special symbols, "for pure thought", that is, free from rhetorical embellishments, "modeled upon that of arithmetic", that is, constructed from specific symbols that are manipulated according to definite rules.

It really is worth the trouble to invent a new symbol if we can thus remove not a few logical difficulties and ensure the rigour of the proofs. But many mathematicians seem to have so little feeling for logical purity and accuracy that they will use a word to mean three or four different things, sooner than make the frightful decision to invent a new word.

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