Carsten Hansen,

Autumn 2006

FREGE: ’ON SENSE AND NOMINATUM’

Frege wrote in German, and the original article is entitled “Über Sinn und Bedeutung”. His
main concern is to draw a distinction between two phenomena – between the Sinn and
Bedeutung of expressions, as well as to explain the significance and range of application
of this distinction.

1. Terminology and a temptation to be resisted:

Sinn Bedeutung

sense nominatum

sense reference

It is easy to suppose that this is simply Frege’s terminology for what we would ordinarily
call:

the meaning of an expression what the expression stands for

Why this is misleading:

Even though ‘Sinn’ and ‘Bedeutung’ are words that occur in ordinary German, Frege uses
them in a particular way. When they figure in Frege’s work ‘Sinn’ and ‘Bedeutung’ are
technical terms whose precise meanings are given by the role that they have in his theory
of language. Thus, Frege’s concepts do not have exact equivalents in ordinary language
(either German, English or Norwegian),

Nevertheless, we can say the following about how they relate to our pre-theoretic notions:

(i) Whereas Frege’s notion of ‘sense’ is narrower than the ordinary notion of
meaning, there is more to his notion of ‘nominatum’ than simply the fact that it is
what an expression stands for, or refers to.

(ii) The notion of ‘sense’ corresponds to what we can call ‘cognitive meaning’. It is a
form of meaning that pertains to knowledge and thought (cognition).

(iii) The nominatum of an expression is what the expression stands for. However,
the concept of nominatum plays a crucial explanatory role in Frege’s theory. It is the
central notion in terms of which he accounts for logical consequence and validity.


In the lecture itself, we only covered the first 5 pages or so. I have tried to write out the remaining material so that it
is as accessible as possible. It covers important material, which is relevant for the obligatory essay.
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[See the Frege notes on the notion of nominatum for a discussion of this.]

2. The range of application of the distinction between sense and nominatum:

When Frege initially argues for the need to distinguish between sense and nominatum, he
does so by looking at names as they occur in statements of identity. Nevertheless, his
view is not that only names have sense as well as nominatum. Rather, he goes on to
argue that the range of application of the distinction is entirely general: it applies to
individual words, complex expressions and sentences. Notice, in particular, that a very
large part of the paper is taken up with a discussion of the distinction between sense and
nominatum as it applies to sentences.

3. The initial argument for the need to distinguish between sense and nominatum:

(i) The starting point of Frege’s argument is the question how we are to understand
statements of identity:

Should identity statements be taken as expressing ‘a relation between objects’

or between ‘names or signs of objects’?

His first examples of identity statements are:

a=a

a=b

The ‘=’ sign is here used, as in arithmetic, to express identity. In ordinary English, the
word ‘is’ sometimes expresses identity; and when it does, it can be replaced by ‘is the
same as’ or ‘is identical to’. (The constrast here is with ‘predicative’ uses of ‘is’; as when
one says ‘red is a colour’ or ‘mathematics is difficult’.)

So the contrast Frege intends is a contrast between statements such as

125 = 125
The morning star is identical to the morning star
Clark Kent is Clark Kent

78+47 = 125
The morning star is identical to the evening star
Clark Kent is Superman

(ii) In his earlier work, Frege had adopted the view that identity statements should be
taken as expressing a relation between ‘names or signs of objects’ in order to explain the
following important difference between these two kinds of identity statements:
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A sentence of the form ‘a=a’

is a priori [roughly, can be known independently of experience] and according to

Kant is to be called analytic

Sentences of the form ‘a=b’, on the other hand,

often contain very valuable extensions of our knowledge and cannot always be
justified in an a priori manner.

(iii) Now the problem, according to Frege, is that if identity is taken to be a relation
between objects, this difference in cognitive value appears inexplicable.

For then statements of both kinds would seem to be saying that something is identical to
itself:

If we wished to view identity as a relationship between the objects designated by

the names ‘a’ and ‘b’ then ‘a=b’ and ‘a=a’ would not seem different if ‘a=b’ is true.
This would express a relation of a thing to itself, namely, a relation such that it holds
between everything and itself but never between one thing and another. (199)

Remember that Frege’s over-all point – what he ultimately wants to establish - is that there
is no satisfactory account to be had of informative identity statements within a theory that
only operates with expressions, on the one hand, and their nominatum (reference), on the
other. (What he is saying, then, is that if you have such a theory and think of identity as a
relation between objects, then identity statements of the two kinds would appear to be
saying the same thing.)

(iv) Within such a theory, it appears that the only way of accounting for the difference in
cognitive value between the two kinds of identity statements is to maintain that identity is a
relation between names or signs.

In that case, identity statements actually tell us something about the names or signs that
appear in them – namely, that they stand for the same thing. And this is what Frege went
on to suggest in his first book:

What one wishes to express with ‘a=b’ seems to be that the signs or names ‘a’ and
‘b’ name the same thing. (199)

What is wrong with this proposal?

Well, on this account, statements of the form ‘a=a’ and ‘a=b’ will exhibit a difference in
‘cognitive significance’: ‘a=a’ is a priori whereas ‘a=b’ isn’t, and ‘a=b’ looks like it is, or
could be informative. However, something has gone wrong along the way. The problem
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with this proposal is that it gives an incorrect account of what statements of the form ‘a=b’
express, of the kind of information they contain.

This fundamental problem is due to the fact that the proposal rests on a ‘use/mention’
fallacy. That is to say:

It fails to distinguish between using an expression (to talk about something),

and mentioning an expression (i.e., talking about, or referring to the
expression itself).

We need to be aware of the difference between what is expressed by statements of the

following two kinds:

a=b

‘a’ names the same thing as ‘b’

We can make the difference vivid by considering two corresponding examples:

‘The morning star is the evening star’ records an astronomical discovery

‘The morning star’ names the same thing as ‘the evening star’ records a lexical fact

The problem with Frege’s first attempt at a solution, then, is that it fails to explain the
crucial point that identity statements of the form ‘a=b’ can provide valuable extensions of
our knowledge of the world. This is what Frege is aiming at when he says that, on this
view, a=b would not express ‘genuine knowledge.’

4. The upshot of the argument:

Frege concludes that identity statements of the two kinds can only differ in cognitive
significance – concerning knowledge about the world – if we recognize a further element
beyond expressions and the things they stand for.

Real cognitive difference is possible, he says, only if

the difference of the signs corresponds to a difference in the way in which the
designated objects are given. (199)

And he immediately goes on to give an example:

Let a,b,c, be straight lines which connect the corners of a triangle with the midpoints
of the opposite sides. The point of intersection of a and b is then the same as that
of b and c. Thus we have different designations of the same point and these names
(‘intersection of a and b’ and ‘intersection of b and c’) indicate also the manner in
which these points are presented. Therefore the sentence expresses a genuine
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cognition. (199-200, italics added)

It is this ‘mode of presentation’, as it is now usual to call it, which constitutes the sense of
the name or sign.

It is worth remembering that Frege’s explanation how language can be cognitively

significant appeals to the notion of reference as well as the notion of sense: Where ‘a=b’
is informative and true, ‘a’ and ‘b’ differ in sense – which accounts for its informativeness –
and they have the same reference – which accounts for its truth and the fact that it
expresses a ‘genuine cognition’.

5. Basic information about the notion of sense:

The first paragraph of ‘On Sense and Nominatum’ does more than give us an argument for
the need of a notion of sense. It gives us our most basic handle on the notion of sense
itself.

One of the things that you need to keep firmly in mind is that the notion of sense is
introduced with a view to explaining a cognitive phenomenon: namely that of cognitive
value or significance. But there is further substance to the idea that the notion of sense is
a cognitive notion.

Frege speaks of the manner in which a nominatum is presented, and we can reasonably
ask to whom?

The answer Frege intends is: to the subject who is entertaining the relevant thought. This
is tantamount to saying that a mode of presentation of an object corresponds to ‘a way of
thinking of the object in question’.

A bit more generally, we can say that senses (or modes of presentation) are
ways things are presented to a thinker, or ways a thinker conceives of or
otherwise represents entities in those cases where there are no entities. [The
last bit because there can be sense without reference.]

6. What else does Frege say about sense, and how else does he put it to use?

Even if Frege has succeeded in giving us an initial handle on the notion of sense, it would
be entirely appropriate to ask for further information and elucidation.

However, it is important to keep in mind that the notion of sense is one of the fundamental
or primitive concepts in Frege’s philosophy of language. For that reason, he doesn’t give
us - nor can we reasonably expect - an explicit definition of it.
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What he does instead is lay down certain principles governing the notion of sense, and its
relation to other fundamental concepts – such as those of reference (nominatum),
understanding and communication – as well as say something about the further
explanatory role of the notion of sense.

(a) Sense, Understanding and Communicability.

One of the first things he points out concerns the connection between sense and
understanding. The sense of an expression, he claims, ‘is grasped by everyone who
knows the language’ to which it belongs (p. 200).

If an expression is part of a common language, a person must grasp the sense of that
expression in order to count as a competent speaker of a language. Correlatively,
competent speakers of a language, by and large, associate the same senses with their
expressions. (However, Frege is well aware that there ‘are exceptions’ to this.) This, in
turn, plays an important role in ensuring the communicability of sense (thoughts) – another
feature of sense that Frege insisted on. [There are further remarks about understanding
and communicability below.]

(b) Expressions, their senses and what they stand for.

As a matter of terminology, he suggests that we say that an expression (sign) ‘expresses’

its sense and ‘stands for or designates’ its nominatum. About them he writes that:

the regular connection between a sign, its sense, and its nominatum is such that there
corresponds a definite sense to the sign and to this sense there corresponds again a
definite nominatum; whereas not one sign only belongs to one nominatum (object). In
different languages, and even in one language, the same sense is represented by
different expressions. (200)

’Regular’ is here to be understood normatively: Frege is not just talking about what is
usually the case, but rather about what ought to be the case, or how things are when a
language is functioning as it should.

On this conception, different expressions (signs) may have the same sense. And
furthermore, different signs or names may pick out the same nominatum. What the picture
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rules out, is that two expressions can have the same sense and a different nominatum. In
other words, if they have the same sense, then they have the same reference .1
Note that this idea - which we can express by saying that ‘sense determines reference’ -
doesn’t guarantee that ‘in grasping a sense one is assured of a reference (nominatum)’.
There can be sense without reference, and Frege gives two examples: ‘the celestial body
most distant from the Earth’ about which it is doubtful that it has a reference, and ‘the least
rapidly convergent series’ about which he claims that is has a sense, and yet demonstrably
fails to have a reference.

(However, sense without reference is a defect in Frege’s view - at least in a language which
is meant for the expression of scientific knowledge. For that reason it is to be avoided.)

Frege mentions a further deviation from the norm of a properly functioning language. In
natural languages the same sign or name will often be associated with more than one sense.
Here, he writes, we must be content if the same word has the same sense in the same
context.

(c) Sense and nominatum used to explain direct and indirect discourse.

After that, Frege goes on to mention one of the important further explanatory uses to which
the notion of sense is to be put. This is in connection with his discussion of what is known
as direct and indirect discourse (or direct and indirect quotation).

What happens in such cases is that we talk about linguistic expressions or the senses they

1
In contemporary terminology, this amounts to saying that reference supervenes on sense:
Frege’s claim is that there can be no difference at the level of reference unless there is a
corresponding difference at the level of sense. Or: sameness of sense implies sameness of
reference. In philosophy of mind, you will come across another philosophically important example
of supervenience in connection with discussions of the Mind-Body Problem. Most philosophers
hold that mental phenomena supervene on physical phenomena. You will find a discussion of this
in Jaegwon Kim’s book.
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express. In direct discourse we do the former, whereas we talk about (refer to) the senses
of words in indirect discourse.

Albert said: "Armageddon will happen in the year 2007." [Direct discourse]

Albert said that Armageddon will happen in the year 2007. [Indirect discourse]

In direct quotation the words ’Armageddon will happen in the year 2007’ designate the words
of the other speaker – i.e. the words used by Albert. And only his words have their normal
reference/nominatum. (The effect of putting quotation marks around an expression or a
sentence is to construct a name which refers to the expression or sentence in question.
Thus, one ends up mentioning or referring to that expression or sentence – rather than using
it.)

In indirect discourse our words do not, according to Frege, have their usual reference, but
refer rather to what is usually their sense. In connection with indirect quotation, Frege
suggests that we employ the following terminology: here words are used indirectly or have
their indirect reference. And the indirect reference of a word is its customary sense.

(Note that the report

Albert said that Armageddon will happen in the year 2007

says nothing about which language Albert used in saying what he did. Albert could have
said what he did in Spanish or Norwegian or…).

At the same time, however, the principle still holds that words have reference in virtue of
their sense. Thus words with indirect reference must also have sense, but it must then be
what Frege calls their indirect sense . He says very little about indirect sense – see the
paragraph at the top of the second column of p. 204, beginning ‘Among the abstract
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clauses…’. (p.37 original text, p. 66 in Geach’s translation).

(d) Sense as an objective feature of expressions: understanding (grasp) and

communicability once again.

After the discussion of direct and indirect discourse, Frege goes to considerable lengths to
contrast sense, as well as reference or nominatum, with ’mental images’. As a first pass, it
would be fair to say that Frege’s primary point is that mental images are subjective whereas
the sense and reference of expression are not. The latter are, in other words, objective
features of expressions.

However, the problem with this way of putting things is that the expressions ‘subjective’ and
‘objective’ are extremely slippery, not to say treacherous. Whenever a philosopher uses
these expressions, you need to think about what they are being taken to express. So let us
try to tease out what Frege wants to say about the relation between mental images, on the
one hand, and senses, on the other:

First of all, Frege insists – plausibly enough – that a mental image is ‘subjective’ in the
sense that it is ‘a part or mode of the single person’s mind’ (201). In contrast, ‘it cannot
well be denied that mankind possesses a common treasure of thoughts which is transmitted
from generation to generation’: the sense of a sign can be ‘common property of many’.
Frege, then, is insisting that, whereas it is possible for two people to grasp or ‘apprehend’
one and the same sense, it is not possible for two people to have the same image.

Here, you might well protest that Frege is not comparing like with like – an objection which is
best expressed using the type/token distinction: It is true that the same token of a mental
image cannot be in the minds of two people. That, however, does not prevent them from
each having a token of the same mental image type. In fact, however, Frege seems to be
conceding this when he writes: ‘When two persons imagine the same thing, each still has
his own mental image’ (201).
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In these passages, then, Frege’s insistence on the ‘objective’ nature of sense appears to
come to this: Senses can be the ‘common property of many’ – in the sense that different
people can grasp one and the same sense – and senses are communicable. The ‘common
treasure of thoughts’ that he writes about is ‘ transmitted from generation to generation ’
(italics added). By contrast, we cannot, in general, ‘detect differences in the images or even
in the sensations of difference persons’.

In the present context, then, the primary difference between senses and mental images
seems to be the one concerning communicability. Elsewhere, of course, Frege writes a good
deal else, which would serve to distinguish senses from mental images. (Including the fact
that thoughts (the sense of sentences), - unlike mental images - are truth-evaluable, and
enter into logical relations with one another.)

Finally, it should be noted that Frege never really tries to explain how language serves as an
instrument of communication – he more or less takes it for granted that thoughts are
communicable. This is a reflection of the epistemic orientation of his work – his fundamental
interest lies in language insofar as it can shed light on the nature of thought and human
knowledge.

7. Sense and nominatum, as applied to whole declarative sentences, and Frege’s

criterion for sameness and difference of sense.

From the third paragraph on p. 202 and onwards, ‘On Sense and Nominatum’ is an inquiry
into the sense and nominatum of ‘whole declarative sentences’. This is an important, but
also very difficult discussion, so we will do no more than note the main points that Frege
seeks to establish. He begins by noting that a declarative sentence ‘contains a
proposition’ (a thought), and then raises the question whether the proposition should
regarded as the sense or the nominatum of the sentence.

What follows after that is a tentative argument in favour of the hypothesis that the
proposition ought to be regarded as the sense of the sentence, whilst the truth-value of a
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sentence – ‘the circumstances of its being true or false’ – is its nominatum.

From page 203 onwards (the section beginning ’if our conjecture... is correct’), Frege goes
on to test the hypothesis that a sentence’s sense is the proposition it expresses, whilst its
nominatum is it’s truth value.

If you have time, it is well worth grappling with these sections, and especially to try to
understand the initial ‘tentative argument’. For reasons of time and space, however, I shall
restrict myself to emphasizing a very important principle about sense which Frege
articulates in the course of his argument.

Frege’s criterion for sameness and difference of sense:

When do two expressions express the same or a different sense?

Frege provides a (partial) answer to this important question on page 202 (‘On Sense and
Nominatum’). An answer which highlights the fact that senses are individuated by
considerations of cognitive significance. This is where he explains why the two sentences
“the morning star is a body illuminated by the sun” and “the evening star is a body
illuminated by the sun” express different propositions:

Someone who did not know that the evening star is the same as the morning star
could consider the one proposition true and the other false.

The basic idea is as follows: if it a person who understands two sentences can assert one
and deny the other (or merely be agnostic about it) – without being irrational - then the
thoughts they express must be different.

Here’s a slightly different way of putting the point: if a person who understands two
sentences cannot, on pain of irrationality or incoherence, assert one and deny or remain
agnostic with respect to the other, then the sentences in question express the same
proposition.

Note that this criterion does not tell us all that we need to know about sameness and
difference of sense: it doesn’t suffice to answer questions about what it is for two different
persons to express the same or different proposition, or about the conditions under which one
and the same person has expressed the same or a different proposition at different times.
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Neverthess, it is still a very important principle. Frege formulates it for whole sentences, but
it can be generalised so as to apply to individual expressions. Try, as an exercise, to
formulate it so that it applies to the senses expressed by sub-sentential expressions.
(Individual words.)