Does sense determine reference?
3.1 The relation between sense and reference Sense determines reference: any two expressions with the same sense/meaning will also have the same reference.
What does Frege mean by sense and reference?
The reference (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, whereas its sense is the thought that it expresses. Frege justified the distinction in a number of ways.
Why does Frege introduced the sense reference distinction?
The distinction between sense and reference was an innovation of Frege in his 1892 paper, “On Sense and Reference”. He initially introduced this distinction in order to be able to deal with a puzzle about equality.
What is Frege’s theory of meaning?
Frege’s theory of sentence meaning explains how it is possible for different people to grasp the same thought—such as The North Sea covers an area of 220,000 square miles—though no two people associate the corresponding sentence with exactly the same ideas, images, or other mental experiences.
What has a sense but no referent?
-a word may have sense, but no referent. and even the word “the” all have sense, but no reference. — a word may have a referent, but no sense.
What is sense theory?
The theory encompasses the knowledge of cybernetics, linguistics, neurobiology, and classical mathematics. The Sense Theory is not a part of traditional mathematics as we know it now, it is a new paradigm of how we can formalize complex cognitive processes of the human brain.
What does reference mean in philosophy?
Reference is a relation that obtains between certain sorts of representational tokens and objects. For instance, when I assert that “Barack Obama is a Democrat,” I use a particular sort of representational token—i.e. the name ‘Barack Obama’—which refers to a particular individual—i.e. Barack Obama.
What is a referent in semantics?
In semantics and philosophy Reference is a relationship in which a symbol or sign (a word, for example) signifies something; the referent is the thing signified. The referent may be an actual person or object, or may be something more abstract, such as a set of actions.
What are the contributions of Frege and Russell to analytic philosophy?
Frege’s creation of quantificational logic and the rebellion by Russell and Moore against British idealism are the two most significant events in the emergence of analytic philosophy, events that lie at the root of many of the ideas and achievements that we associate with early analytic philosophy, such as Frege’s …
What is a function Frege?
Frege draws an important distinction between concepts on the basis of their level. Frege tells us that a first-level concept is a one-place function that correlates objects with truth-values (147). First level concepts have the value of true or false depending on whether the object falls under the concept.
What is the difference between reference and referent?
Reference is a relationship in which a symbol or sign (a word, for example) signifies something; the referent is the thing signified. The referent may be an actual person or object, or may be something more abstract, such as a set of actions.
Why does Frege think a theory of reference must include sense?
We now turn to Frege’s reasons for thinking that a theory of reference must be supplemented with a theory of sense. Frege begins “On sense and reference” with the claim that identity (sameness) raises difficult questions. As we’ll see, identity sentences provide a central reason why
What is Frege’s sense?
It seems that, for Frege, senses are a sui generis category of abstracta which are, in some sense, modes of presentations of (among other things) objects. Intuitive problems with the idea that we should postulate a category of entities whose sole role is to serve as the contents of linguistic expressions and the objects of thought.
Why would one think that sense determines reference?
Why would one think that sense determines reference? One reason: intuitively, if two sentences have the same sense, they same the same thing about the world; and if two sentences say the same thing about the world, they cannot differ in truth-value.
What does a theory of reference look for?
We have now seen how a theory of reference-a theory that assigns to each expression of the language a reference, which is what it contributes to determining the truth or falsity of sentences in which it occurs-might look for a fragment of English. (The fragment of English includes proper names, n-place predicates, and quantifiers.