Reading: Frege 'On Sense and Nomination' (Chap 15 in Martinich The Philosophy of Language)
Sainsbury in Grayling Philosophy
Greg McCulloch 'The Name of the Game' (Chap 1 and 5)
In this essay I will firstly outline what Frege's distinction between sense and reference is and then I will evaluate it and highlight some criticisms that can be made of it.
Frege formulated a theory of 'sense' and 'reference' to try and explain why the sentences: "A = A" and "A = B" differ in cognitive value, but I would argue that his account is not as persuasive as it might be.
I will firstly sketch what I understand to be Frege's distinction between 'sense' and 'reference' and then evaluate it. Frege begins by asking whether identity is a relation and if so, what it is a relation between. Frege tells us that he had previously held the metalinguistic view, which states that it must be a relation between names or signs of objects rather than objects, because of the different cognitive significance of the two statements: "A = A" and "A = B".
However, Frege rejected that view because it is arbitrary that 'A' and 'B' stand for the same thing because it is just a convention that we have invented. Frege points out that the relation only holds if 'A' and 'B' both designate something (that is to say that each has the same nominatum or reference) The crux of Frege's theory is that a proper name (or sign) does not just have a reference, but also has a sense. This, he claims, explains the difference in cognitive value of the above sentences, or indeed the sentences:
"The morning star is the morning star"
"The morning star is the evening star"
The nominata, or reference, of 'the morning star' and 'the evening star' are the same, but the difference lies in the senses of the two signs (Frege uses the word 'sign' to mean anything functioning in the same way as a proper name.) So what is 'sense' according to Frege? Frege states that sense is grasped "by everyone who knows the language or the totality of designations of which the proper name is a part" (P.191) Each sign has a definite sense and each sense a definite nominatum, but one nominatum can have a number of different signs. It is important to note that sense determines reference. He says that:
"A proper name expresses its sense, and designates or signifies its nominatum." (P193)
So Sinn (Sense) is the mode of presentation of the thing and Bedautung (Reference/nominatum) is the object it refers to. For example, the sense of the word 'white' is the attribute of being white and the reference is all the white things.
Frege then makes the contentious claim that something can have a sense but no reference (for example 'The heavenly body which has the greatest distance from earth') However, this claim has often been disputed and I will be discussing it a little later.
Frege then makes the distinction between the customary and indirect nominatum of a word and similarly the customary and indirect sense of a word. He says that the indirect nominatum of a word is its customary sense. Frege is careful to make it clear that the sense is not the same as a person's image of an object. He says that a persons image, or 'inner picture' of an object is essentially subjective, whereas sense is not. He claims that one sense can have many images associated with it. So sense lies somewhere in between the objective physical object (the nominatum) and the subjective image. Hence there are three levels of differences of words:
(1) Just the imagery
(2) The sense but not the nominatum
(3) The nominatum
In the latter part of his paper, Frege turns his attention to whole sentences rather than proper names. The discussion is quite detailed and complicated, but a number of important points can be picked out. He states that it is important for a sentence to have a nominatum because we are ultimately concerned with the truth-value of the sentence (He overcomes the problem of fiction by saying that in novels and other fictional work we are not concerned with the truth value of the sentence, and so we do not need the sentence to have a nominatum) He considers every sentence where the nominata of the words matter in the same way as he would a proper name. He states that the nominatum of the sentence is therefore either the True or the False. Frege makes the point that:
"In every judgment a step is made from the level of propositions to the level of the nominata (the objective facts)"
So it is clear that all true sentences have the same nominatum (and likewise for all false sentences). I will now leave Frege's discussion of sentences and turn to a brief evaluation of his theory.
Firstly I will look at why we might need Frege's distinction and then I will assess how successful his theory is in overcoming the problems of differing cognitive value which it is formulated to explain. Unlike philosopher such as Mill, Frege does not think that you can explain proper names simply by saying what they refer to. Mill would argue that different names referring to the same thing have exactly the same properties so there is nothing to choose between them (For example the names 'Cilla Black' and 'Priscilla White' would function in exactly the same way). However, it seems evident that there is a cognitive difference between the two (since the sentence 'Cilla Black is Cilla Black' differs in cognitive value from the sentence 'Cilla Black is Priscilla White') Direct reference theorists (like Mill) have a problem in explaining this difference. Frege attempts to explain it by way of his theory of sense and reference. So Frege comes up with the idea of sense to explain the differing cognitive values of the two sentences (since there is obviously no difference in reference). However it can be objected that Frege has not really solved the problem because he is just labelling the unknown reason for the difference in cognitive value as 'sense'. It can be claimed that he is not actually telling us anything other than that the two sentences differ in some way. I find this a persuasive objection and it certainly seems to me that Frege's theory does not provide a completely satisfactory solution to the problem.
It is also possible to raise an objection against Frege's claim that there can be proper names with sense but no reference. Frege would say that if you know what a word stands for (eg. John) then it means you understand the sense of the word. Since sense determines reference, once you have a sense then you also have the reference of the word. However, Frege goes on to say that it is possible to have proper names with sense but no reference, but I fail to see how this is possible. Frege would argue that it is a good way of explaining empty proper names. He also argues that the sense is not subjective (because he wants to avoid any thought of sense as ideas) However, I think there is an intuitive reason for thinking that there can't be proper names with Fregian sense but no reference because it would seem to me that sense is a way of thinking about the reference. If sense is the mode of presentation of the thing, how can you have it without the thing? Surely you can't have a mode of presentation of nothing?
To conclude, then I would argue that Frege's distinction between sense and reference, as I understand it, is not without its problems and it has not conclusively solved the problem of the differing cognitive value of the sentences 'A = A' and 'A = B'.
© Anne Witton 1996. No part of this article may be copied without my permission.
