The concept of horse does not neigh

by JLS
for the GC

J, in comment to "Process and conversation":

"Or as Spicnoza once supposedly said, "the concept of dog does not bark""

---- Just to see if we can work on the Gricean overlap of this, somme comments by Brian Rabern from

http://armchair7.blogspot.com/2007/03/concept-horse-is-not-concept.html

"This leads Frege to endorse the strange
sentence

------ 'The concept horse is not a concept'.

The first three words in the strange sentence
compose a saturated expression and thus
must designate an object; and so since
'the concept horse' designates an object, the
concept horse is not a concept."

"'x is a horse' designates an unsaturated entity, an entity that we are compelled to call “the concept horse”, but of course the expression is inappropriate, since it designates an object not a concept. Yet, since 'x is a horse' designates an unsaturated entity, there must be a unique entity it designates. The problem is that language does not allow us to say which entity. We cannot even say that 'x is a horse' designates the entity designated by 'x is a horse', without committing ourselves to 'x is a horse' designating an object, since any expression of the form 'the entity designated by A' must designate an object. Hence, in addition to denying that the concept horse is a concept he must deny the apparently analytic principle that for any expression A, A designates the entity designated by A."

"Object-Sameness: a = b iff AF(Fa iff Fb)"

"Concept-Sameness: Fx ~ Gx iff Ax(Fx iff Gx)"

"Frege [says] that
-----“the only recourse we really have is to say 'the concept F is the same as the concept G' and in saying this we have of course named objects, where what is intended is a relation between concepts.”
What we want to say is (lambda x)[Fx] = (lambda x)[Gx], but Frege would insist that these lambda expressions must designate objects since they are saturated expressions (or perhaps we could regard functions as sets of ordered pairs of an element of the domain coupled with an element of the co-domain, but for Frege a set is an object, and thus cannot be a function."

"Frege would insist that we cannot just stipulate that an expression like

----'(lambda x)[Gx]'

designates that thing of which we cannot usually speak (i.e. that thing we would like to designate by the inappropriate expression 'the concept G')."


---- In general, this is viewed as a slip of the pen in Frege. Grice mentions a "Fregean sense" only once, as I recall -- I mean: explicitly. It is in his later "Reply to Richards". Discussing construction routines which he sees as basic in his metaphysical programme, he notes that some routines generate 'concepts' (things like Fregean senses) -- others generate 'objects'. Oddly, he notes that one such routine, which he labels Subjectification (apres "nominalision" versus 'verbalisation"), could just as well be labelled 'objectification'. Should provide the exact quote but that's the idea.

So, no: the concept of a dog does not bark, and, with Frege, the concept dog may even be allowed NOT to a concept. A non-barking non-concept. Or something.