By Frege, there's a reference, sense and idea. I understand about reference and sense, but not about idea. Is it something like a quale?
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@Eros Please name a corresponding passage, thanks. "Reference", "sense", "idea" are quite general words. I assume that Frege connects a precise meaning with these words. Presumably he uses them as technical terms.– Jo WehlerCommented Mar 16 at 11:33
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Does this answer your question? What is the difference between Frege's and Descartes' theory of ideas?– Mauro ALLEGRANZACommented Mar 16 at 12:18
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For Frege, thought is objective, while idea is mental. A thought is the sense of a statement, while a truth value is the corresponding reference– Mauro ALLEGRANZACommented Mar 16 at 14:11
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Ideas are more like sense data with propositional content than phenomenal qualia, but they are subjective and private, see Brady, Why Thoughts Are Not In The Head:"These ‘thoughts’, the senses of propositions, are necessarily non-subjective. Frege contrasts them to ‘ideas’, which he seems to mean in the empiricist’s sense, as a cluster of past or present sensory data. These, owing to the subjective and private position from which they are engendered, can never be shared."– ConifoldCommented Mar 16 at 15:18
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Ideas are often about its cause or led to another idea of its cause thus they're more like emotional forces, not just qualia...– Double KnotCommented Mar 17 at 6:21
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Generally qualia are viewed as experiences, subjective events available only to the mind and only to one mind. An idea (in Frege's terminology) is a subjective event that represents a proposition or contains propositional content. Not all qualia contain propositional content. The feel of a cool breeze on a hot day doesn't have propositional content. It may inspire propositional content such as "that feels good", but the qual itself, in general, isn't characterized by any propositional content. By contrast, an idea is identified in part with its propositional content. That is, the propositional content is an essential part of what makes the idea what it is.
So, given that all subjective experiences are qualia and that an idea is a subjective event, there are two different tacks one could take:
An idea is a type of qual.
An experience of an idea is a qual.
The difference is that in the first case, one is treating the idea as an experience all on its own. In the second case, one is treating an idea as a thing distinct from the experience of the thing, much as the breeze is distinct from the experience of breeze. There are various reasons to prefer one or the other account, but I don't believe the brief things Frege said about ideas is sufficient to say which one he would have chosen. Frege wasn't particularly interested in ideas; he only discussed them to distinguish them from thoughts, where ideas are subjective mental events present in a single mind, and thoughts are objective things that can be shared between minds.
answered Mar 16 at 18:53
