In the philosophy of language, the context principle is a form of semantic holism holding that a philosopher should "never ... ask for the meaning of a word in isolation, but only in the context of a proposition" (Frege x). It is one of Gottlob Frege's "three fundamental principles" for philosophical analysis, first discussed in his Introduction to the Foundations of Arithmetic (Grundlagen der Arithmetik, 1884). Frege argued that many philosophical errors, especially those related to psychologism in the philosophy of logic and philosophy of mathematics, could be avoided by adhering carefully to the context principle. The view of meaning expressed by the context principle is sometimes called contextualism, but should not be confused with the common contemporary use of the term contextualism in epistemology or ethics. The contrasting view, that the meanings of words or expressions can be (or must be) determined prior to, and independently of, the meanings of the propositions in which they occur, is often referred to as compositionalism.
The context principle also figures prominently in the work of other Analytic philosophers who saw themselves as continuing Frege's work, such as Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein.
Famous quotes containing the words context and/or principle:
“Parents are led to believe that they must be consistent, that is, always respond to the same issue the same way. Consistency is good up to a point but your child also needs to understand context and subtlety . . . much of adult life is governed by context: what is appropriate in one setting is not appropriate in another; the way something is said may be more important than what is said. . . .”
—Stanley I. Greenspan (20th century)
“Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir!”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)