Sense and reference: Difference between revisions

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==Sense==

[[File:Mengs, Hesperus als Personifikation des Abends.jpg|thumb|leftright|160px|[[Hesperus]]]]

[[File:Jean-Marc Nattier, The Countess de Brac as Aurora (1741).jpg|thumb|right|140px|[[Phosphorus (morning star)|Phosphorus]]]]

Frege introduced the notion of Sense"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.<ref>"On Sense and Reference", p. 32</ref> 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''.