Sense and reference: the origins and development of the distinction

Frege’s distinction between sense (Sinn) and meaning (Bedeutung) is his most influential contribution to philosophy, however central it was to his own projects, and however he may have conceived its importance. Philosophers of language influenced by, or reacting against the distinction, and historians of philosophy commenting on it, have all contributed to the voluminous literature surrounding it.1 Nonetheless in this essay I hope to shed new light on the distinction by considering it in the context of the development of Frege’s thought, and connecting it more intimately than is usually done with Frege’s interests in logic, especially his views on judgment, truth and inference, which were central to his own projects as he conceived them