Editing Gottlob Frege (section)

== Philosopher ==
[[File:Gottlob Frege (Emil Tesch).png|thumb|Frege, {{c.|1905}}]]
Frege is one of the founders of [[analytic philosophy]], whose work on logic and language gave rise to the [[linguistic turn]] in philosophy. His contributions to the [[philosophy of language]] include:
* [[Function (mathematics)|Function]] and argument analysis of the [[proposition]];
* Distinction between [[concept and object]] (''Begriff und Gegenstand'');
* Principle of [[compositionality]];
* [[Context principle]]; and
* Distinction between the [[sense and reference]] (''Sinn und Bedeutung'') of names and other expressions, sometimes said to involve a [[mediated reference theory]].

As a philosopher of mathematics, Frege attacked the [[psychologism|psychologistic]] appeal to mental explanations of the content of judgment of the meaning of sentences. His original purpose was very far from answering general questions about meaning; instead, he devised his logic to explore the foundations of arithmetic, undertaking to answer questions such as "What is a number?" or "What objects do number-words ('one', 'two', etc.) refer to?" But in pursuing these matters, he eventually found himself analysing and explaining what meaning is, and thus came to several conclusions that proved highly consequential for the subsequent course of analytic philosophy and the philosophy of language.