Questions tagged [sense-and-reference]
The sense-and-reference tag has no usage guidance.
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Is there a significant difference between human intuition and animal intuition? [closed]
Most of people's decisions are actually made by intuition, for example, when you cross the road, even if there is a car coming, but you judge that it is safe to cross the road at the current speed, ...
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A combined theory of reference for proper names
According to this SEP article, there are two common accounts of how proper names. One account holds that the name has a meaning or sense which is a concept (or something like it), and that you get to ...
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Russell's criticism on Frege in "On Denoting"
The one phrase C was to have both meaning and denotation. But if we speak of “the meaning of C,” that gives us the meaning (if any) of the denotation. “The meaning of the first line of Gray’s Elegy” ...
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Is the failure of substitutivity in an intensional context simply due to a lack of clarity in terms of the identity operator?
The oft-given example to demonstrate the failure of substitutivity in an intensional context goes as follows:
(P1) Lois Lane believes Superman can fly
(P2) Superman is Clark Kent
(C) Lois Lane ...
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Are Frege's "ideas" just qualia?
By Frege, there's a reference, sense and idea. I understand about reference and sense, but not about idea. Is it something like a quale?
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In the Twin Earth thought experiment, why doesnt "water" turn out to be a hypernym (parent term)?
Background
Putnam's Twin Earth thought experiment asks us to imagine a planet called Twin Earth, which is exactly like Earth except on Twin Earth their water is not H2O, but rather, XYZ. The ...
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Why is Davidson's Swampman not an argument against Davidson's semantic theory?
In the swampman argument, Davidson imagines a character named Swampman, who is spontaneously formed from a swamp due to a freak lightning strike. This strike coincidentally arranges a swarm of ...
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Does the use of senses require any knowledge about what is sensed? [closed]
Does the use of any sense (hearing, sight, pitch, proprioception, heat/cold, pain) require any knowledge about what is sensed in order to be used effectively?
I phrased this poorly.
I really mean &...
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"Hesperus", "The Evening Star", and externalist theories of concepts
If two names, "N1" and "N2", are introduced into the language for exactly the same purpose, but are made known to a speaker, S, in different circumstances, then it's possible for ...
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How many instances of 1 are there in the expression "1+1"?
Is it just two marks/numerals representing a singular number 1, or are they actually two instances of 1?
And what about in a set with repetition such as {1, 1, 2, 3}?
And if these are actually ...
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How does assignment work? [closed]
The only place that 'assignment' is dealt with in any kind of formal context is in formal logic, the idea of a variable assignment function is one I wish to understand in simple terms to allow me to ...
- 1,201
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Is there a difference between "is an intensional element of" and "is an extensional element of"?
There is a version of set theory according to which there are two flavors (types? categories?) of elementhood relation, and if it's ultimately coherent, it does offer a solution to Russell's paradox (...
- 18.8k
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Do we cause words to mean things, or do words cause us to mean things?
This question occurred to me while reviewing a skeptical argument from Kripke regarding semantics:
Suppose that I’ve never dealt with numbers larger than 57. (Given our finite nature and the ...
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Universals, object-concept and sense
I am confused about "concept", "sense" and "properties" which may have some similarity but fundamentally are different.
I explain my understanding as follows :
Object-...
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What is the nature of the term 'variable', and is it used differently in math, computer science, and logic?
Say I'm given an expression and talk about x changing what do we really mean by this linguistically? What inferences can be drawn about the nature of variables from their practical usage?
When we talk ...
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Why Can't We Replace Names with Descriptions?
If the descriptivist theory says that the sense of a name is a description, then why do the cognitive values of the two differ? i.e. One could believe the first, but not the second.
Superman is ...
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Justification values
The concept of truth values is sometimes expressed in terms of "truth as an object vs. truth as a property." My in-a-slogan understanding of this alternative is "sentences being ...
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Why is it wrong to answer a question with a tautology? Isn't "2+2" correct when answering 'What is "2+2"'?
Many times in class, we are asked to answer, "What is 2+2?" or "What is the derivative of the function x?". It would not be the intended answer to write "2+2" or "...
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On Searle's _Proper Names_ (1958)
I just read Searle's article Proper Names (1958) which was published before Kripke's seminal take on the subject in Naming and Necessity (1980). I think it is a very lucid article but I have a ...