FREGE'S CATEGORIZATION OF COUNT NOUNS

In previous chapters, I have confined myself either to making explicit ideas which, in my view, are implicit in Frege's ideography, or to extending them. Rather little attention, accordingly, has been paid to determining the basic categories of everyday language. At first I simply went along with Frege in providing only one basic category, that of proper name, but subsequently divided it, following Ajdukiewicz, into a category of propositions and another of proper names. But even that can be regarded as primarily a matter of expository convenience, for the question of the number and kinds of basic category is independent of the structural system. That is to say, a commitment to Frege's ideography to the extent of acknowledging a schema/operand structure in everyday language, organized by scope and incorporating differences of poly-adicity and level between schemas, does not of itself tie us to any particular choice of basic categories. To that choice we must now turn; it will lead to a substantial disagreement with Frege.

I shall take it as established that we require a distinct basic category of propositions, the expressions whose meanings we wish, in the first instance, to represent. That leaves for our immediate consideration the remaining expressions which Frege called ‘proper names’. Although a few philosophers and logicians have offered alternative characterizations of these expressions or included further expressions in the same category, most have fallen into line behind Frege.