HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

In the
philosophy of language In analytic philosophy, philosophy of language investigates the nature of language and the relations between language, language users, and the world. Investigations may include inquiry into the nature of Meaning (philosophy of language), meanin ...
, the distinction between sense and reference was an idea of the German philosopher and mathematician
Gottlob Frege Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege (; ; 8 November 1848 – 26 July 1925) was a German philosopher, logician, and mathematician. He was a mathematics professor at the University of Jena, and is understood by many to be the father of analytic p ...
in 1892 (in his paper "On Sense and Reference"; German: "Über Sinn und Bedeutung"), reflecting the two ways he believed a singular term may have meaning. The
reference Reference is a relationship between objects in which one object designates, or acts as a means by which to connect to or link to, another object. The first object in this relation is said to ''refer to'' the second object. It is called a '' name'' ...
(or "referent"; ''Bedeutung'') of a ''proper name'' is the object it means or indicates (''bedeuten''), whereas its sense (''Sinn'') is what the name expresses. The reference of a ''sentence'' is its
truth value In logic and mathematics, a truth value, sometimes called a logical value, is a value indicating the relation of a proposition to truth, which in classical logic has only two possible values ('' true'' or '' false''). Computing In some pro ...
, whereas its sense is the thought that it expresses."On Sense and Reference" Über Sinn und Bedeutung" ''
Zeitschrift für Philosophie und philosophische Kritik The ''Zeitschrift für Philosophie und philosophische Kritik'' was an academic journal. It was established in 1837 by editor-in-chief Immanuel Hermann Fichte as ''Zeitschrift für Philosophie und spekulative Theologie'' and renamed in 1847. Notabl ...
'', vol. 100 (1892), pp. 25–50, esp. p. 31.
Frege justified the distinction in a number of ways. #Sense is something possessed by a name, whether or not it has a reference. For example, the name "
Odysseus Odysseus ( ; grc-gre, Ὀδυσσεύς, Ὀδυσεύς, OdysseúsOdyseús, ), also known by the Latin variant Ulysses ( , ; lat, UlyssesUlixes), is a legendary Greek king of Ithaca and the hero of Homer's epic poem the ''Odyssey''. Odys ...
" is intelligible, and therefore has a sense, even though there is no individual object (its reference) to which the name corresponds. #The sense of different names is different, even when their reference is the same. Frege argued that if an identity statement such as "
Hesperus In Greek mythology, Hesperus (; grc, Ἕσπερος, Hésperos) is the Evening Star, the planet Venus in the evening. He is one of the ''Astra Planeta''. A son of the dawn goddess Eos (Roman Aurora), he is the half-brother of her other son, ...
is the same planet as
Phosphorus Phosphorus is a chemical element with the symbol P and atomic number 15. Elemental phosphorus exists in two major forms, white phosphorus and red phosphorus, but because it is highly reactive, phosphorus is never found as a free element on Ea ...
" is to be informative, the proper names flanking the identity sign must have a different meaning or sense. But clearly, if the statement is true, they must have the same reference. The sense is a 'mode of presentation', which serves to illuminate only a single aspect of the referent. Much of
analytic philosophy Analytic philosophy is a branch and tradition of philosophy using analysis, popular in the Western world and particularly the Anglosphere, which began around the turn of the 20th century in the contemporary era in the United Kingdom, United ...
is traceable to Frege's philosophy of language.Jeff Speaks
"Frege's theory of reference"
(2011)
Frege's views on logic (i.e., his idea that some parts of speech are complete by themselves, and are analogous to the arguments of a mathematical function) led to his views on a theory of reference.


Background

Frege developed his original theory of meaning in early works like ''
Begriffsschrift ''Begriffsschrift'' (German for, roughly, "concept-script") is a book on logic by Gottlob Frege, published in 1879, and the formal system set out in that book. ''Begriffsschrift'' is usually translated as ''concept writing'' or ''concept nota ...
'' (concept script) of 1879 and '' Grundlagen'' (foundations of arithmetic) of 1884. On this theory, the meaning of a complete sentence consists in its being true or false, and the meaning of each significant expression in the sentence is an extralinguistic entity which Frege called its ''Bedeutung'', literally meaning or significance, but rendered by Frege's translators as reference, referent, 'Meaning', nominatum, etc. Frege supposed that some parts of speech are complete by themselves, and are analogous to the arguments of a mathematical function, but that other parts are incomplete, and contain an empty place, by analogy with the function itself. Thus "Caesar conquered Gaul" divides into the complete term "Caesar", whose reference is Caesar himself, and the incomplete term "—conquered Gaul", whose reference is a concept. Only when the empty place is filled by a proper name does the reference of the completed sentence – its truth value – appear. This early theory of meaning explains how the significance or reference of a sentence (its truth value) depends on the significance or reference of its parts.


Sense

Frege introduced the notion of "sense" (German: ''Sinn'') to accommodate difficulties in his early theory of meaning. First, if the entire significance of a sentence consists of its truth value, it follows that the sentence will have the same significance if we replace a word of the sentence with one having an identical reference, as this will not change its truth value."On Sense and Reference", p. 32. The reference of the whole is determined by the reference of the parts. If ''the evening star'' has the same reference as ''the morning star'', it follows that ''the evening star is a body illuminated by the Sun'' has the same truth value as ''the morning star is a body illuminated by the Sun''. But it is possible for someone to think that the first sentence is true while also thinking that the second is false. Therefore, the thought corresponding to each sentence cannot be its reference, but something else, which Frege called its ''sense''. Second, sentences that contain proper names with no reference cannot have a truth value at all. Yet the sentence 'Odysseus was set ashore at
Ithaca Ithaca most commonly refers to: *Homer's Ithaca, an island featured in Homer's ''Odyssey'' *Ithaca (island), an island in Greece, possibly Homer's Ithaca *Ithaca, New York, a city, and home of Cornell University and Ithaca College Ithaca, Ithaka ...
while sound asleep' obviously has a sense, even though 'Odysseus' has no reference. The thought remains the same whether or not 'Odysseus' has a reference. Furthermore, a thought cannot contain the objects that it is about. For example,
Mont Blanc Mont Blanc (french: Mont Blanc ; it, Monte Bianco , both meaning "white mountain") is the highest mountain in the Alps and Western Europe, rising above sea level. It is the second-most prominent mountain in Europe, after Mount Elbrus, and ...
, 'with its snowfields', cannot be a component of the thought that Mont Blanc is more than 4,000 metres high. Nor can a thought about Etna contain lumps of solidified lava. Frege's notion of sense is somewhat obscure, and neo-Fregeans have come up with different candidates for its role. Accounts based on the work of Carnap and
Church Church may refer to: Religion * Church (building), a building for Christian religious activities * Church (congregation), a local congregation of a Christian denomination * Church service, a formalized period of Christian communal worship * Chri ...
treat sense as an
intension In any of several fields of study that treat the use of signs — for example, in linguistics, logic, mathematics, semantics, semiotics, and philosophy of language — an intension is any property or quality connoted by a word, phrase, or ano ...
, or a function from possible worlds to
extensions Extension, extend or extended may refer to: Mathematics Logic or set theory * Axiom of extensionality * Extensible cardinal * Extension (model theory) * Extension (predicate logic), the set of tuples of values that satisfy the predicate * Ex ...
. For example, the intension of ‘number of planets’ is a function that maps any possible world to the number of planets in that world.
John McDowell John Henry McDowell, FBA (born 7 March 1942) is a South African philosopher, formerly a fellow of University College, Oxford, and now university professor at the University of Pittsburgh. Although he has written on metaphysics, epistemolo ...
supplies cognitive and reference-determining roles.
Michael Devitt Michael Devitt (born 1938) is an Australian philosopher currently teaching at the City University of New York in New York City. His primary interests include philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, metaphysics and epistemology. His curren ...
treats senses as causal-historical chains connecting names to referents, allowing that repeated "groundings" in an object account for reference change.


Sense and description

In his
theory of descriptions The theory of descriptions is the philosopher Bertrand Russell's most significant contribution to the philosophy of language. It is also known as Russell's theory of descriptions (commonly abbreviated as RTD). In short, Russell argued that the ...
,
Bertrand Russell Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British mathematician, philosopher, logician, and public intellectual. He had a considerable influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, linguistics, a ...
held the view that most proper names in ordinary language are in fact disguised definite descriptions. For example, 'Aristotle' can be understood as "The pupil of Plato and teacher of Alexander", or by some other uniquely applying description. This is known as the descriptivist theory of names. Because Frege used definite descriptions in many of his examples, he is often taken to have endorsed the descriptivist theory. Thus Russell's theory of descriptions was conflated with Frege's theory of sense, and for most of the twentieth century this "Frege–Russell" view was the orthodox view of proper name semantics. However,
Saul Kripke Saul Aaron Kripke (; November 13, 1940 – September 15, 2022) was an American philosopher and logician in the analytic tradition. He was a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and e ...
argued compellingly against the descriptivist theory. According to Kripke, proper names are
rigid designator In modal logic and the philosophy of language, a term is said to be a rigid designator or absolute substantial term when it designates (picks out, denotes, refers to) the same thing in ''all possible worlds'' in which that thing exists. A designat ...
s which designate the same object in every possible world. Descriptions such as "the President of the U.S. in 1969" do not designate the same in every possible world. For example, someone other than
Richard Nixon Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as a representative and senator from California and was ...
, e.g. Lyndon B. Johnson, might have been the President in 1969. Hence a description (or cluster of descriptions) cannot be a rigid designator, and thus a proper name cannot ''mean'' the same as a description. However, the Russellian descriptivist reading of Frege has been rejected by many scholars, in particular by Gareth Evans in ''The Varieties of Reference'' and by
John McDowell John Henry McDowell, FBA (born 7 March 1942) is a South African philosopher, formerly a fellow of University College, Oxford, and now university professor at the University of Pittsburgh. Although he has written on metaphysics, epistemolo ...
in "The Sense and Reference of a Proper Name", following
Michael Dummett Sir Michael Anthony Eardley Dummett (27 June 1925 – 27 December 2011) was an English academic described as "among the most significant British philosophers of the last century and a leading campaigner for racial tolerance and equality." He ...
, who argued that Frege's notion of sense should not be equated with a description. Evans further developed this line, arguing that a sense without a referent was not possible. He and McDowell both take the line that Frege's discussion of empty names, and of the idea of sense without reference, are inconsistent, and that his apparent endorsement of descriptivism rests only on a small number of imprecise and perhaps offhand remarks. And both point to the power that the sense-reference distinction ''does'' have (i.e., to solve at least the first two problems), even if it is not given a descriptivist reading.


Translation of ''Bedeutung''

As noted above, translators of Frege have rendered the German ''Bedeutung'' in various ways. The term 'reference' has been the most widely adopted, but this fails to capture the meaning of the original German ('meaning' or 'significance'), and does not reflect the decision to standardise key terms across different editions of Frege's works published by Blackwell. The decision was based on the principle of
exegetical neutrality In translation, the principle of exegetical neutrality is that "if at any point in a text there is a passage that raises for the native speaker legitimate questions of exegesis, then, if at all possible, a translator should strive to confront the ...
: that "if at any point in a text there is a passage that raises for the native speaker legitimate questions of
exegesis Exegesis ( ; from the Greek , from , "to lead out") is a critical explanation or interpretation of a text. The term is traditionally applied to the interpretation of Biblical works. In modern usage, exegesis can involve critical interpretation ...
, then, if at all possible, a translator should strive to confront the reader of his version with the same questions of exegesis and not produce a version which in his mind resolves those questions". The term 'meaning' best captures the standard German meaning of ''Bedeutung''. However, while Frege's own use of the term can sound as odd in German for modern readers as when translated into English, the related term ''deuten'' does mean 'to point towards'. Though ''Bedeutung'' is not usually used with this etymological proximity in mind in German, German speakers can well make sense of ''Bedeutung'' as signifying 'reference', in the sense of it being what ''Bedeutung'' points, i.e. refers to. Moreover, 'meaning' captures Frege's early use of ''Bedeutung'' well, and it would be problematic to translate Frege's early use as 'meaning' and his later use as 'reference', suggesting a change in terminology not evident in the original German.


Precursors


Antisthenes

The Greek philosopher
Antisthenes Antisthenes (; el, Ἀντισθένης; 446 366 BCE) was a Greek philosopher and a pupil of Socrates. Antisthenes first learned rhetoric under Gorgias before becoming an ardent disciple of Socrates. He adopted and developed the ethical side ...
, a pupil of
Socrates Socrates (; ; –399 BC) was a Greek philosopher from Athens who is credited as the founder of Western philosophy and among the first moral philosophers of the ethical tradition of thought. An enigmatic figure, Socrates authored no t ...
, apparently distinguished "a general object that can be aligned with the meaning of the utterance” from “a particular object of extensional reference". According to Susan Prince, this "suggests that he makes a distinction between sense and reference". The principal basis of Prince's claim is a passage in
Alexander of Aphrodisias Alexander of Aphrodisias ( grc-gre, Ἀλέξανδρος ὁ Ἀφροδισιεύς, translit=Alexandros ho Aphrodisieus; AD) was a Peripatetic philosopher and the most celebrated of the Ancient Greek commentators on the writings of Aristotle ...
' “Comments on
Aristotle Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of ...
's 'Topics'” with a three-way distinction: # the semantic medium, δι' ὧν λέγουσι # an object external to the semantic medium, περὶ οὗ λέγουσιν # the direct indication of a thing, σημαίνειν ... τὸ ...


Stoicism

The Stoic doctrine of refers to a correspondence between speech and the object referred to in speech, as distinct from the speech itself. British classicist R. W. Sharples cites ''lekta'' as an anticipation of the distinction between sense and reference.


John Stuart Mill

The sense-reference distinction is commonly confused with that between
connotation A connotation is a commonly understood cultural or emotional association that any given word or phrase carries, in addition to its explicit or literal meaning, which is its denotation. A connotation is frequently described as either positive ...
and
denotation In linguistics and philosophy, the denotation of an expression is its literal meaning. For instance, the English word "warm" denotes the property of being warm. Denotation is contrasted with other aspects of meaning including connotation. For insta ...
, which originates with
John Stuart Mill John Stuart Mill (20 May 1806 – 7 May 1873) was an English philosopher, political economist, Member of Parliament (MP) and civil servant. One of the most influential thinkers in the history of classical liberalism, he contributed widely to ...
. According to Mill, a common term like 'white' ''denotes'' all white things, as snow, paper. But according to Frege, a common term does not refer to any individual white thing, but rather to an abstract concept (''Begriff''). We must distinguish between the relation of reference, which holds between a proper name and the object it refers to, such as between the name 'Earth' and the planet
Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. While large volumes of water can be found throughout the Solar System, only Earth sustains liquid surface water. About 71% of Earth's sur ...
, and the relation of 'falling under', such as when the Earth falls under the concept ''planet''. The relation of a proper name to the object it designates is direct, whereas a word like 'planet' has no such direct relation to the Earth at all, but only to a concept that the Earth falls under. Moreover, judging ''of'' anything that it falls under this concept is not in any way part of our knowledge of what the word 'planet' means.Frege, "A critical elucidation of some points in E. Schroeder's ''Vorlesungen Ueber Die Algebra der Logik'', ''Archiv für systematische Philosophie'' 1895, pp. 433-456, transl. Geach, in Geach & Black 86-106. The distinction between connotation and denotation is closer to that between concept and object than to that between 'sense' and 'reference'.


See also

* Descriptivist theory of names * Definite description * Direct and indirect realism *
Frege's puzzles Frege's puzzles are puzzles about the semantics of proper names, although related puzzles also arise in the case of indexicals. Gottlob Frege (1848–1925) introduced the puzzle at the beginning of his article "Über Sinn und Bedeutung" (" On Sen ...
*
Intensional logic Intensional logic is an approach to predicate logic that extends first-order logic, which has quantifiers that range over the individuals of a universe (''extensions''), by additional quantifiers that range over terms that may have such individuals ...
*
Mediated reference theory A mediated reference theory (also indirect reference theory)Leszek Berezowski, ''Articles and Proper Names'', University of Wrocław, 2001, p. 67. is any semantic theory that posits that words refer to something in the external world, but insists th ...
* Temperature paradox *
Theories of language A theory is a rational type of abstract thinking about a phenomenon, or the results of such thinking. The process of contemplative and rational thinking is often associated with such processes as observational study or research. Theories may b ...
* Use–mention distinction


Footnotes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sense And Reference Philosophy of language Philosophical logic Conceptual distinctions Meaning (philosophy of language)