A Problem in the Frege-Church Theory of Sense and Denotation

Noûs 27 (2):158-166 (1993)
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Abstract

There is an inconsistency among claims made (or apparently made) in separate articles by Alonzo Church concerning Frege's distinction between sense and denotation taken together with plausible assertions by Frege concerning his notion of ungerade Sinn-i.e., the sense that an expression allegedly takes on in positions in which it has ungerade Bedeutung, denoting its own customary sense. As with any inconsistency, the difficulty can be avoided by relinquishing one of the joint assumptions from which contradiction may be derived. Yet what seems the most plausible resolution, in light of Church's own arguments, involves abandoning the theory of sense and denotation, in the form in which it has been staunchly advocated by both Frege and Church. That theory has come under sustained criticism from several quarters. Whereas the present difficulty supplements the case against the theory, it is unlike more familiar criticisms, since it is not framed from the perspective of an alternative theory (or picture) but is based instead on an internal conflict, and therefore has special force.

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Nathan Salmón
University of California at Santa Barbara

Citations of this work

On Designating.Nathan Salmon - 2005 - Mind 114 (456):1069-1133.
Salmon on Fregean approaches to the paradox of analysis.Gary Kemp - 1995 - Philosophical Studies 78 (2):153 - 162.

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References found in this work

A puzzle about belief.Saul A. Kripke - 1979 - In A. Margalit (ed.), Meaning and Use. Reidel. pp. 239--83.
Belief and synonymy.Tyler Burge - 1978 - Journal of Philosophy 75 (3):119-138.

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