Linguistics Encyclopedia.pdf

A-Z 447
which is handy, since we can then check up on the accuracy of the sentence by seeing
whether the state of affairs referred to in it actually obtains in the world: we can identify
the referent of Socrates and check to see whether he is flying.
There are three insoluble problems inherent in this theory:
1 How can true identity statements be informative?
2 How can statements whose parts lack reference be meaningful?
3 How can there be negative existential statements?
These questions cannot be answered from the standpoint of a theory of primitive
reference; and since there are true, informative identity statements, such as The morning
star is the evening star, and since there are meaningful statements whose parts lack
reference such as The present king of France is bald, and since there are negative
existential statements such as Unicorns do not exist, the theory of primitive reference
cannot be correct. This was demonstrated by Gottlob Frege, who showed how the first
two questions could be answered in his article, ‘On sense and reference’ (1892/1977a); he
dealt with the third question in two articles, ‘On concept and object’ (1892/1977b), and
‘Function and concept’ (1891/ 1977).
The first problem is this: if the meaning of a word is its reference, then understanding
meaning can amount to no more than knowing the reference. Therefore, it should not be
possible for any true identity statements to convey new information; a=b should be as
immediately obvious to anyone who understood it as a=a is, because understanding ‘a’
and understanding ‘b’ would simply amount to knowing their references. If we knew
their references, we would know that the reference of a was the same as the reference of
b, so that no new information would be being conveyed to us in a sentence like a=b.
However, many such true identity statements do, in fact, convey new information; for
instance, that the morning star is the evening star was an astronomical discovery, and by
no means a truism. Consequently, there must be more to understanding the meaning of a
term than knowing what it refers to, and Frege suggested that in addition to that for which
a sign stood, ‘the reference of the sign’, there was also connected with the sign ‘a sense
of the sign, wherein the mode of representation is contained’. Then (1892/1977a, p. 57):
‘the reference of “evening star” would be the same as that of “morning star” but not the
sense’.
Sense is the identifying sound or sign by means of which an object is picked out—it is
a kind of verbal pointing; and understanding meaning amounts to knowing that this
particular object is at this particular time being picked out by this particular sense. So
(ibid., p. 61): ‘A proper name (word, sign, sign combination, expression) expresses its
sense, stands for or designates its reference.’
The new information in a true statement of identity amounts, then, to the information
that one and the same referent can be picked out by means of the different senses. The
circumstance that the morning star stands for the same as that for which the evening star
stands, is not just a fact concerning relationships within language, but is also a fact about
the relationship between language and the world, and the identity relation does not hold
between the senses, but between objects referred to by the senses. Things are not the