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Concept and object
The distinction between concept and object is due to the German philosopher Gottlob Frege.
According to Frege, any sentence that expresses a singular proposition consists of an expression (a proper name or a general term plus the definite article) that signifies an Object together with a predicate (the copula "is", plus a general term accompanied by the indefinite article or an adjective) that signifies (bedeuten) a Concept. Thus "Socrates is a philosopher" consists of "Socrates", which signifies the Object Socrates, and "is a philosopher", which signifies the Concept of being a philosopher.
This was a considerable departure from the traditional term logic, in which every proposition (i.e. sentence) consisted of two general terms joined by the copula "is".
The distinction was of fundamental importance to the development of logic and mathematics, leading to the ideas of an element, of a set, of the membership relation between element and set, and of empty and infinite sets.
Frege's definition leads to the famous difficulty or "awkwardness of language" that some expressions which purport to signify a concept - Frege's example is "the concept horse" - is grammatically an expression that by his criterion signifies an Object. Thus "the concept horse is not a concept, whereas the city of Berlin is a city".
Anthony Kenny sought to justify the distinction, other philosophers such as Hartley Slater and Crispin Wright have argued that the distinguished category of entity cannot be associated with predication in the way that individual objects are associated with the use of singular terms.
 Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Concept and object", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki |
