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[l] In the preceding chapter, I have tried to sketch Frege's metaphysics of functions. However, like functions themselves, so this account cannot stand on its own. It requires completion. What is needed is an exposition and analysis of Frege's metaphysics of objects, for it is only together with the latter that the full metaphysical significance of the former can emerge. Therefore I shall now address myself to the task of providing such an account. My methodology will be as before: I shall make full use of the fact that Frege's ideal language is supposedly ontologically perspicuous, and that therefore considerations of the one find an analogue in considerations of the other, and vice versa. In other words, I shall once again move freely from considerations of ideal language to considerations of metaphysics as the occasion permits and the situation warrants. In the course of this discussion I hope to show three things: First, that Frege's metaphysics of objects treats the latter as completed functions; second, that it construes them as nothing but completed functions — or, to be more precise, that it construes them as nothing but coinstantiations of properties in a quasi-Leibnizian but at any rate universalistic fashion; and third, that in certain crucial respects the account as presented by Frege is incomplete.

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-017-3387-8_4

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