Content deleted Content added
m Dating maintenance tags: {{Cn}} |
m section Gottlob Frege |
||
Line 1:
{{Unreferenced|date=December 2009}}
The '''mediated reference theory''' is a [[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]]. Its most famous advocate is the mathematician and philosopher [[Gottlob Frege]]. The view was very widely held in the middle of the twentieth century by such philosophers as Sir [[Peter Strawson]] and [[John Searle]].
== Gottlob Frege ==
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.
Line 7 ⟶ 9:
== Bertrand Russell ==
[[Image:Direct reference.gif|thumb|Direct Reference]]
A paradigm example of an indirect theory of reference is that of philosopher [[Bertrand Russell]]. In his direct reference theory, Russell first distinguished between a "logical subject" and a "grammatical subject." The former is the thing in the real world - the [[Reference|referent]]; while the latter is a description or concept. He then claimed that in logic a "feeling for reality" had to be maintained in order to save discussion from a whole host of troubles. And since the logical subject was made up only of reference, tied together in strings by [[propositional functions]], in logic there was no meaning except reference.
| |||