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Context Principle




The context principle also figures prominently in the work of other Analytic Philosophers who saw themselves as continuing Frege's work, such as Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein .


FORMULATIONS OF THE CONTEXT PRINCIPLE



Gottlob Frege, Introduction to ''The Foundations of Arithmetic'' (1884/1980)


: In the enquiry that follows, I have kept to three fundamental principles:
:: always to separate sharply the psychological from the logical, the subjective from the objective;
:: never to ask for the meaning of a word in isolation, but only in the context of a proposition
:: never to lose sight of the distinction between concept and object.


Ludwig Wittgenstein, ''Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus'' (1921/1922)


: 3.3 Only the proposition has sense; only in the context of a proposition has a name meaning. ...
: 3.314 An expression has meaning only in a proposition. Every variable can be conceived as a propositional variable.
: (Including the variable name.)


REFERENCES


  • Frege, Gottlob (1884/1980). ''The Foundations of Arithmetic''. Trans. J. L. Austin. Second Revised Edition. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press. ISBN 0-8101-0605-1.

  • Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1921/1922). ''Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus''. Trans. C. K. Ogden. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd. ISBN 0-415-05186-X.