Description - Departing from Frege by Mark Sainsbury
Frege is now regarded as one of the world's greatest philosophers, and the founder of modern logic. In addition to his work on the foundation of mathematics, his writing on sense and reference remains deeply influential. Departing From Frege takes Frege's work as a point of departure, but argues that we must depart considerably from Frege's own views if we are to work towards an adequate conception of natural language. Mark Sainsbury suggests that the two aspects that are most important to retain in Frege's work are the distinction between sense and reference, and the possibility of sense with out a reference. He takes issue with the suggestion that taken as definitive of Fregeanism by philosophers today that for sense to be usefully distinguished from reference it need not be understood as a "mode of presentation of an object" or a "way of thinking of an object". Although Frege used these phrases, Sainsbury argues that they make it hard to do justice to the Fregean thought that a sense should be the common property of all who speak a language.
Modes of presentation differ from person to person, and since it is hard to understand what a mode of presentation "of an object" would be in the absence of an object, this raises problems for the possibility of sense without a referent. In this selection of essays, Mark Sainsbury brings a new position into view. It shares with current "direct reference" theories the rejection of descriptivist accounts, but differs from them in its requirement that some expressions with the same referent be given different semantic descriptions, and it allows for sense with out a referent. Departing From Frege is an outstanding contribution to philosophy of language and logic and will be invaluable to all those interested in Frege and the philosophy of language.
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