Gottlob Frege's Theory Of Sense

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Gottlob Frege developed an entire theory of language in order to provide a foundation for views about the relationship between logic and mathematics. Frege’s theory of sense (sinn) and reference (bedeutung) was initially introduced in his work ‘Funktion und Begriff’, and this theory was later expanded and made clearer in his work ‘Über Sinn und Bedeutung’. Initially Frege uses mathematical equations to draw a distinction between sense and reference but then when Frege expanded on this topic in ‘Über Sinn und Bedeutung’, it came to be seen that the idea of the sense of reference of certain statements did not only apply to mathematical problems, but could actually be applied to all linguistic expressions. Frege produces a ‘puzzle’ that he believes …show more content…

Thus, sense is that which determines the reference. Whilst every sense can can only determine one reference, one reference can be made up of many different senses – George Orwell is the reference, the author of 1984 and the author of Animal Farm are the senses. The relation between these two aspects is a one-way relation – while a sense determines a denotation, the converse does not hold. There is no way to recover a sense from the denotation that it leads to. In summary the Fregean sense has three distinct aspects – it is the mode of presentation of an object, it is what is expressed when we utter a name and it is the semantic content of the …show more content…

While allowing for the possibility of communication, this claim also allows for the existence of objects that possess a sense without possessing a reference. The name ‘Severus Snape’ is intelligible, despite the fact that there is no individual object to which the name corresponds; and thus, one can ultimately say that ‘Severus Snape’, the name of the fictional character from the Harry Potter series expresses a sense. In ‘On Sense and Reference’, Frege puts forward the idea that there are three components that exist when we denote a proper name – there is ‘the idea, which we have in that case, is wholly subjective; in between lies the sense, which is indeed no longer subjective like the idea, but is yet not the object itself’. Idea’s, in contrast to sense, cannot be shared; but they are the things that lead us to ultimately grasp what the sense of the object is. This distinction between our private ideas and our public sense could create a minor issue when dealing with fictional names. J.K Rowling was the individual who had and created the idea of ‘Severus Snape’; she invented his character and his entire being into literary existence. And although through reading the seven Harry Potter novels, one can begin to grasp the sense of who this character is through the manner in which Rowling presents him; he

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