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Moore's "Concepts."

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Moore's "Concepts."

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Posted 10/24/09 - 11:41 PM: Subject: Moore's "Concepts."	#1
[EDIT: What I mean is: how can I relate Moore's concepts to Frege's senses, and how might they differ? They seem to be of a different nature, but both are talking about propositions and the constituents of propositions.] I've been looking at Moore and propositions recently. I am having a hard time, however, understanding his notion of a "concept." In "Some Main Problems of Philosophy," it is clear that a proposition can be defined provisionally as "the meaning of any set of equivalent statements," which appears to make of the proposition a "complex of senses" independent of their mode of expression (thus, pointing at a rock can express the same proposition as saying "this is a rock"). In "The Nature of Judgment," however, Moore defines the proposition as a "complex of related concepts." And it is the nature of the "concept" that I am having a hard time understanding. Here are some passages: It will be our endeavour to show...that the "idea used in judgment" is not part of the content of our ideas, nor produced by any action of our minds, and that hence truth and falsehood are not dependent on the relation of our ideas to reality. Problematic is "the content of our ideas." Now the distinction is being made between the "idea" and the "concept," presumably of which we have an idea. Everything here also seems to accord with "A Defense of Common Sense" (esp., the mind-independence of physical or otherwise non-mental facts). I shall...use the term "concept" for what Mr. Bradley calls a "universal meaning"; since the term "idea" is plainly full of ambiguities, whereas "concept" and its German equivalent "Begriff" have more nearly appropriated to the use in question. Now to Frege, the meaning of a statement is its sense(s). Can we call this "concept" a Fregean "sense"? It seems as though we can, since Frege writes: [The] sense of 'b' may differ from that of 'a', and thereby the thought expressed in 'a=b' differs from that of 'a=a.' In that case the two sentences do not ahve the same cognitive value. If we understand by 'judgment' the advance from the thought to its truth value...we can also saw that the judgments are different. This seems to accord with Moore. If the concept is a sense, then it is also a "meaning." But, Moore then writes: A proposition is composed not of words, nor yet of thoughts, but of concepts. Concepts are possible objects of thought; but that is no definition of them. It merely states that they may come intor elation with a thinker; and in order that they may do anything, they must already be something. It is indifferent to their nature whether anyone thinks them or not. All that exists is thus composed of concepts necessarily related to one another in specific manners... I am having a hard time formulating some type of workable definition of "concept," especially in regards the last two quotes, and especially in reference to Frege. Any help would be appreciated. Edited by quickly on 10/24/09 - 11:49 PM
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