A morada do pensamento: um encontro com Platão na busca da natureza do sentido em Frege

Abstract

The ontological investigation of sense, from German philosopher Gottlob Frege s point of view, has, as its foundation, the understanding of reference, representation, thought and sense s categories. According to Frege s writings, On Sense and Reference, and Thoughts Logical Investigations, sense carries itself the solution for the problem of identity s relation. Sense gives us the knowledge s increment that identity doesn t give. But still there is a problem: the definition of sense's nature. Sense couldn t have its nature strictly defined because, in this case, it would be reduced to reference s category and thus, sense would be identified with the own extra-linguistic object, and this is a misconception. But Frege said that thought must be considered as the sense of the sentence. So, with this close relationship between sense and thought, a new goal in this investigation is putt in focus: thought. To Frege, thought is not a simple subjective performance of thinking, it is not a subjective representation, but it is an objective content that is real, eternal, and that exists by itself in a third realm . Thought exists in a realm beyond the world of subjective representations and beyond the world of sensible perception. From this point, the present investigation went back to Plato s World of Ideas. So, the platonic thinking was included in this debate about the metaphysic of the third realm in Frege, trying to clarify the original concepts of knowledge, reality and truth. To achieve this objective, the following dialogues had been included in our research: Theaetetus, Republic and Phaedo. And the following fregean questions had been brought to Plato's scope: how happens the new knowledge? What is the third realm s reality? What is the relation between truth and thought? Doing that we could see as much some of the platonic origins of Frege's approach, as some differences between this two philosophers