[...]... truth of the thought, by contrast, is not to be listed alongside the fact about China It just is the fact—facts are true thoughts; the thought that it is true that China is a Communist state is the very same thought as the thought that China is a Communist state Thinking or saying that a thought is true does not make it true; it is merely to entertain or express that very thought The truth of a thought. .. philosophers of thought, accordingly, a theory of linguistic meaning may legitimately presuppose a grasp, on the part of the speakers of the language, of the thoughts and concepts expressible in it, and, as an assumption of the theory, a philosophical understanding of what it is to grasp those thoughts and concepts: the construction of a theory of meaning is thus for them at once an easier and a less important...This page intentionally left blank Contents  Facts and Propositions   Semantics and Metaphysics   Truth and Meaning   Truth-Conditional Semantics   Justificationist Theories of Meaning   Tense and Time   Reality As It Is In Itself   God and the World  Index  This page intentionally left blank  Facts and Propositions The fundamental question that metaphysics strives... external physical world that we all inhabit; the second comprised the inner worlds of sensations and mental images that each of us has and can only imperfectly communicate to others; and the third was the third realm of thoughts and their component  ∼ Facts and Propositions senses that we can all grasp and communicate to one another by means of language (In an earlier phase Frege would probably have... grasp thoughts could be acquired by learning to express those thoughts without previously having been able to entertain them, and holds that the only feasible means of achieving an account of the structure of our thoughts and of our grasp of them lies in an analysis of the structure of the sentences of our language and of their power of expression without presupposing what it is to grasp the thoughts... which comprises what may be called ‘philosophers of thought , maintains that it is in principle possible for those devoid of language to entertain the thoughts that we have and to grasp the concepts that we grasp, and that it is likewise in  ∼ Semantics and Metaphysics principle possible to give a philosophical account of the structure of those thoughts and of what constitutes a grasp of them without... images For Frege, thoughts belong to a special realm of reality, which he called the ‘realm of sense’ and distinguished from the ‘realm of reference’ The realm of reference contains what our thoughts relate to and what renders them true or false: everything we can talk or think about Between the senses of the words composing an utterance, which combine to form the thought it expresses, and the references... may call the linguistic school, our attainment of the capacity to grasp and entertain thoughts, at least of thoughts of any but a quite low level of complexity, runs in parallel with our attainment of the ability to express those thoughts in language: it is by learning to express and communicate them that we come to apprehend the thoughts we so express A more moderate version of the ‘linguistic’ view... understanding of our words that goes to determine their reference is a component of their sense The sense is not a station along the route: it is the route This is not to deny that we can refer to thoughts and their component senses as well as express them, and that they are therefore objects in the sense of being possible objects of reference Their being is, however, to be grasped and expressed and thereby... the existence and orbits of Mercury, Venus, and the Earth, and there being no other planet with an orbit closer to the Sun than that of Mars The Fregean conception does not create the dilemma on which we were impaled under the Russellian or Wittgensteinian conception But are propositions (Fregean thoughts) constituents of reality at all? Do they inhabit a special immaterial sector of reality, independently . alt="" THOUGHT AND REALITY Lines of Thought Short philosophical books General editors: Peter Ludlow and Scott Sturgeon Published in association with the Aristotelian Society Thought and Reality Michael. Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other. Metaphysics  . Truth and Meaning  . Truth-Conditional Semantics  . Justificationist Theories of Meaning  .TenseandTime  . RealityAsItIsInItself  . God and the World  Index  This