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TheA '''mediated reference theory'''<ref>Siobhan Chapman (ed.), ''Key Ideas in Linguistics and the Philosophy of Language'', Edinburgh University Press, 2009, p. 202.</ref> (also '''indirect reference theory''')<ref name=Berezowski>Leszek Berezowski, ''Articles and Proper Names'', University of Wrocław, 2001, p. 67.</ref> is aany [[semantics|semantic]] theory that posits that words refer to something in the external world, but insists that there is more to the meaning of a name than simply the object to which it refers. It thus stands opposed to the theory of [[direct reference theory]]. Its[[Gottlob mostFrege]] famousis a well-known advocate isof themediated mathematicianreference theories.<ref name=Berezowski/><ref>G. W. Fitch, ''Naming and philosopherBelieving'', [[GottlobSpringer, Frege]]2012, p. The1.</ref> viewSimilar wastheories verywere widely held in the middle of the twentieth century by philosophers such philosophers as Sir [[Peter Strawson]] and [[John Searle]].
[[Saul Kripke]], a proponent of direct reference theory, in his ''[[Naming and Necessity]]'' dubbed mediated reference theory the '''Frege–Russell view'''<!--boldface per WP:R#PLA--> and criticized it.<ref>[[Saul Kripke]], ''[[Naming and Necessity]]''. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1972. p. 27.</ref> Subsequent scholarship refuted the claim that [[Bertrand Russell]]'s views on reference theory were the same as Frege's, since Russell was also a proponent of direct reference theory.<ref>Howard Wettstein, "Frege-Russell Semantics?", ''Dialectica'' '''44'''(1/2), 1990, pp. 113–135, esp. 115: "Russell maintains that when one is acquainted with something, say, a present sense datum or oneself, one can refer to it without the mediation of anything like a Fregean sense. One can refer to it, as we might say, ''directly''."</ref>
Frege argued that the semantics of words and expressions should be divided into two elements: a ''sense'', which is a "mode of presentation" of the reference of the name; and the reference itself, which is the object to which the name refers. And crucially, for Frege, names that refer to the same object can have different senses. (The difference in "cognitive significance" of 'a = a', and 'a = b', where 'a' and 'b' refer to ''the same object'', has been called [[Frege's Puzzle|Frege's problem or puzzle]]. Frege introduces the concept of ''Sinn'', or sense, to explain the difference.) For example, "the morning star" and "the evening star" both refer to the object Venus, but they present it to us in different ways: the former as the brightest celestial body visible in the morning, the latter as the brightest celestial body visible in the evening. And so it is, says Frege, that the statement that the morning star is the evening star is potentially informative: its meaning is not just that some object is the same as itself, but (roughly) that the brightest celestial body visible in the morning is the same object as the brightest celestial body visible in the evening.
It is because Frege uses [[definite description]]s in many of his examples that he is often taken to have endorsed the [[descriptivist theory of names]], an attribution made by [[Saul Kripke]]. Most scholars of Frege's work now agree, however, that the attribution is mistaken. If so, then it is important to distinguish the mediated reference theory from the description theory of names.
* [[Direct reference theory]]
* [[Sense and reference]]
* [[Descriptivist theory of names]]
==References==
{{reflist}}
==External links==
* [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/meaning/ Theories of Meaning (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)]
{{Philosophy of language}}
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[[Category:Theories of language]]
[[Category:ReferenceMeaning (philosophy of language)]]
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