FOM: Philosophy and platonism

[Robert Black]

>Stephen G Simpson wrote:
>>
>> Michael Zeleny writes:
>>  > As Gottlob Frege has taught us, logic is a branch of ethics.
>>
>> Could you supply a reference to where Frege says this?
>>
>> -- Steve
>
>How about Grundgesetze, Introduction:
>
>	...and here what is fatal is the double meaning of hte word "law".  In
>one sense a law asserts what is; in the other it prescribes what ought
>to be.  Only in the latter sense can the laws of logic be called 'laws
>of thought': so far as they stipulate the way in which one ought to
>think.
>
>Mark Steiner

If that makes logic a branch of ethics, it makes *every* science a branch
of ethics, since Frege's very next sentence reads: 'Every law which asserts
what is can be understood as prescribing that one should think in
accordance with it, and is therefore in that sense a law of thought'.

Robert Black

Robert Black
Dept of Philosophy
University of Nottingham
Nottingham NG7 2RD

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