This article was downloaded by: [Nanyang Technological University]

On: 25 April 2015, At: 04:54

Publisher: Routledge
Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954
Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH,
UK

Philosophical Papers
Publication details, including instructions for
authors and subscription information:
http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rppa20

THE NOTION OF SENSE IN

FREGE'S ONTOLOGY
a
James Zaiss
a
East Carolina University ,
Published online: 20 Jan 2010.

To cite this article: James Zaiss (1992) THE NOTION OF SENSE IN FREGE'S ONTOLOGY,
Philosophical Papers, 21:1, 21-32, DOI: 10.1080/05568649209506368

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/05568649209506368

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the
information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform.
However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no
representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness,
or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views
expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and
are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the
Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with
primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any
losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages,
and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or
indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the
Content.
 This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes.
Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan,
sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is
expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at
http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions
Downloaded by [Nanyang Technological University] at 04:54 25 April 2015
 Philosophical Papers
Vol. XXI (1992). No. 1
Downloaded by [Nanyang Technological University] at 04:54 25 April 2015

THE NOTION OF SENSE IN FREGE’S ONTOLOGY

James Zaiss
East Carolina University

Frege envisioned a deep and intricate connection between language and

the world. His theory of language and his ontology hang together in a
relationship of mutual support. Sometimes a logical or linguistic insight
leads him to postulate a type of entity or to draw an ontological distinction.
Other times an alleged insight into the nature of reality shapes his views
on what language is (or should be) like. The notion of Sense’ plays a
vital role in his theory of language and seems to carry a special ontological
commitment. For a variety of reasons this apparent commitment has
made many uncomfortable with Frege’s system.
I shall argue that this commitment is merely apparent: that, in the
context of the philosophical program in which Frege was engaged,
Senses should not be viewed as constituting a sui generis category (or
categories) in his ontology. To be sure, Senses are real, objective en-
tities for Frege; but I show how in his system they can be identified with
other, less ‘controversial’,entities. The methods for these identifications
are implicit in Frege’s writings and must be used, I argue, if plausible
Fregean accounts of thought and reference are to be possible.
The paper is organized as follows. I briefly describe in Section I the
general structure of Frege’s ontology, including his notion of Sense. In
Section I1 I present and defend a method, derived from Church, for
ontologically reducing the sorts of Senses expressed by what Frege calls
‘incompletesigns’. In Section III I argue that the sort of Senses expressed
by ‘complete signs’ should not be viewed as ontological primitives
either. Finally, in Section IV I sketch a general method for a reduction
of these latter Senses.

21
 22 JAMES ZAISS

Frege draws a fundamental ontological distinction between objects and

functions. Everything there is, for Frege, is either an object or a function,
and nothing is both. Both notions are supposed to be too basic to define.2
Examples of objects are physical bodies, persons, places, times, Ideas
Downloaded by [Nanyang Technological University] at 04:54 25 April 2015

(i.e. private mental experiences), numbers, and the two truth-values:

the True and the False. Objects are the sort of entities denoted by
‘complete signs’, such as proper names, definite descriptions, and declar-
ative sentences. Functions come in an infinite variety of types. The type
of a given function depends on how many arguments it takes at a time
(i.e. its being singulary, binary, etc.) and on the type of entity it takes as
arguments. Functions are denoted by ‘incomplete signs’, such as
predicates, sentence connectives, and quantifiers. Concepts, denoted by
monadic predicates, are singulary functions from objects to truth-values.
Frege introduces the notion of Sense (CP 157ff) to account for the fact
that the interchange of co-referential constituentscan alter the ‘cognitive
value’ of a sentence. A meaningful sign, we are told, in addition to
referring3to something, also expresses a Sense. It is in virtue of its Sense
that a sign refers to what (if anything) it does. The Sense of a sign is
grasped by anyone who speaks the language. The Sense contains the
sign’s particular mode ofpresentation: the specific way in which the
sign presents its referent to a speaker. Two signs that refer to the same
thing might express different Senses and thus present that thing in
different ways. As mode of presentation is primarily an epistemological
notion, Frege’s invocation of Senses provides the outline of an account
of how a single entity can be conceived of or thought about in different
ways. More generally, it provides an account of what it is to think about
a given entity in a particular way: it is to grasp a Sense that ‘presents’
that entity in that way (i.e. mode).4Although the notion of Sense plays a
number of roles in Frege’s system, its epistemically most fundamental
role is as that which enables thinkers to think about things in the world.
Yet having secured this role for Sense, and despite making scattered
remarks on the topic, Frege never went on to develop his account of
thinking in any detail. Surely this was not because he thought the topic
unimportant, but because he did not see it as part of his main interest. He
would have considered an account of thinking mainly the business of
psychology rather than ‘logic’.
Frege appears to draw an ontological distinction between things that
 THE NOTION OF SENSE IN FREGE’S ONTOLOGY 23

are Senses and things that are not. He insists that Senses are neither
language- nor mind-dependent. Senses come to be expressed in language
and grasped in thought, but the existence and essential nature of a given
Sense do not depend upon these contingencies. A thing’s being a Sense
does not entail that it is actually expressed by some sign, but only that
it could be expressed by a linguistic sign and grasped by a thinker.
Downloaded by [Nanyang Technological University] at 04:54 25 April 2015

Senses are timeless, unchanging, and abstract. Thus, Frege seems to

view Senses as constituting their own ontological category.
Frege says (i) signs that express different Senses sometimes refer to
the same thing (e.g. ‘the morning star’ and ‘the evening star’) and (ii)
signs that express the same Sense always refer to the same thing (if
either refers at all). Thus the Sense of a sign can be said to ‘determine’
the sign’s referent (if there is one), in that there is a many-one relation
between Senses and referents. But the connection between the Sense
and the referent of a given sign goes deeper than this. For according to
Frege it is a contingent fact that this Sense is expressed by this (or any
other) sign; and it is solely in virtue of this fact that the sign refers to
what it does. So this Sense itself can be said to determine this referent
itself, independently of their association with this (or any other) sign. In
the case of a meaningful sign that does not refer (such as ‘Pegasus’), the
Sense expressed is (let us say) empty: it does not determine anything. It
follows that there is a many-one relation - which I shall call determining
- that relates a proper subclass of the class of Senses to a class of things.
Frege does not discuss the nature of determining as such -what it is for
a Sense to determine something and how a given Sense determines the
entity that it does; but I hope to shed some light on this below.
Like their referents, Frege conceives of the Senses of complete signs
as objects and the Senses of predicates and other incomplete signs as
function^.^ So the distinction between Senses and things that are not
Senses is apparently supposed to cut across the object/function distinction.
Thus, there are (i) objects that are not Senses, (ii) functions (of all types)
that are not Senses, (iii) objects that are Senses, and (iv) functions (of
all types) that are Senses. Call entities of these four respective sorts
ordinary objects, ordinaryfunctions, Sense-objects, and Sense-functions.
Non-empty Sense-objects determine objects and non-empty6
Sense-functionsdetermine functions. Call the Sense-functionsexpressed
by monadic predicates Sense-Concepts; these, of course, determine
Concepts. Thoughts, the Senses expressed by declarative sentences,
determine (when non-empty) truth-values.
 24 JAMES ZAISS

I1

Alonzo Church7 has shown, in effect, how our two notions of

Sense-function and ordinary function can be reduced to a single notion.
On Church’s approach a Sense-function is to be understood as a function
that has only Senses as arguments and values.8 So for example the
Downloaded by [Nanyang Technological University] at 04:54 25 April 2015

Sense-functionexpressed by the predicate ‘is wise’ is simply a particular

function from Sense-objects (such as that expressed by ‘Socrates’) to
Thoughts (in this case the Thought that Socrates is wise). And a given
Sense-function determines another functionjust in case a certain logical
relationship obtains between them. More precisely, Church stipulates
that one function characterizes another just in case whenever the second
maps an arbitrary (n-tuple of) argument(s) A to the value V , the first
maps any (n-tuple of) Sense(s) that determines (pointwise, the elements
of) A to a Sense that determines V. From some well known Fregean
semantic principles - viz. (i) the Sense of any sign determines its
referent (if any); (ii) the Sense and the referent of a complex sign are
yielded by the Senses and the referents, respectively, of its constituent
signs via the application of function to argument; and (iii) any Sense is
in principle expressible by a sign - it follows that any Sense-function
that determines a given function f characterizes f. In other words,
characterizing a function is a necessary condition for determining it.
Church postulates the converse as well: that any function that
characterizes a given function f determines f - i.e. that characterizing
a function is also a sufficient condition for determining it.
Church points out that both the above postulation and its negation are
consistent with everything Frege says. Still, there are two very good
reasons why Frege himself should have gone along with it. The frst
reason is one of ontologicalparsimony. As somethingis a Sense-function
just in case it determines a function, the postulation allows for an
ontological reduction: Sense-functionsneed not be viewed as constituting
a sui generis ontological category. A Sense-function,it turns out, is just
a function that characterizes some other function. The reduction is
especially significant because, by eliminating the need to consider
Sense-functions of any given type t as an ontologically significant
subcategory of the functions of that type, it actually eliminates an
infinitely large number of such categories: one for each type of function.
The second, and more important, reason for claiming that Frege
should have agreed to Church’s postulation follows from the first and is
 THE NOTION OF SENSE IN FREGE’S ONTOLOGY 25

epistemological:the above reduction would help to clear a major obstacle

to a general Fregean account of thought. For Frege, to think about
something - to be ‘presented with’ an entity in thought - is to grasp a
Sense that determines the entity. Once we have distinguished
Sense-objects and Sense-functions, and have seen how complex signs
are often built out of signs that express both, it might look as if grasping
Downloaded by [Nanyang Technological University] at 04:54 25 April 2015

the Sense of such a complex sign will inevitably require grasping (or at
least the ability to grasp) both Sense-objects and Sense-functions - that
is, it will require thinking about objects and thinking about functions.
But this raises a conceptual problem. The notion of thinking about an
object is familiar and relatively straighqorward(though the mechanisms
underlying it may not be); and so this intuitiveness carries over, in
Frege’s system, to the idea of grasping a Sense-object: to grasp a Sense-
object is to think(in a particular way) about the object (if any) determined
by that Sense-object. However, there is no comparable intuitive notion
of thinking about a Fregeanfunction or Concept;so it is not at all clear,
pretheoretically, what it is to ‘grasp’ a Sense-function or Sense-Concept.
Some explanation of this notion is desperately needed in Frege’s system,
and the most reasonable candidates are all ones that presuppose, and
depend crucially upon, the notions of determining an object and grasping
a Sense-object. Thinking that Socrates is wise, for example, does not
seem to require thinking about the Concept named by the predicate ‘is
wise’ in anything like the way it requires thinking about Socrates. In
what sense must one be thinking about this Concept? Surely not by
somehow conceiving of its extension, or the totality of its argument/
value pairs; for any mortal thinker is mostly ignorant of these. Perhaps
one need only conceive of some representative portion of this extension
or totality. But this extension and these argument/value pairs consist
exclusively of objects (viz. wise things, non-wise things, and
truth-values), so such a conception presupposes the idea of grasping a
Sense-object. Perhaps, instead, one must be ‘thinking about what it is to
be wise’ in a sense that entails being able (at least in principle) to
ascertain, given an object, whether or not that object is wise; but this
again presupposes the ability to think about objects, and, hence, to grasp
Sense-objects.
So the notion of thinking about an object is better understood than,
and seems to be presupposed by, the notion of thinking about a Fregean
function or Concept. If Sense-functions are treated as ontological
primitives, the act of grasping a Sense-function (-Concept) will have to
 26 JAMES ZAISS

be taken seriously, on a par with that of grasping a Sense-object,despite

its threat to defy independent analysis. Frege’s account of thought
would rest on an undefined and unintuitive notion.
Alternatively, if Sense-functions are eliminated from the primitive
ontology, and an account of grasping a Sense-object can be given in-
dependently of the idea of grasping a Sense-function, the latter might be
Downloaded by [Nanyang Technological University] at 04:54 25 April 2015

‘reduced’to the former. ‘Grasping’a singulary first-level Sense-function

f might be likened to following a rule that takes one from the act of
grasping a given Sense-object a to the act of grasping the Sense-object
J a ) ; and analogously for Sense-functions of other types. For example,
grasping the Sense expressed by the sentence ‘Socrates is wise’ might
be explicated as first grasping the Sense expressed by ‘Socrates’ (i.e.
thinking about Socrates in a certain way) and then proceeding - at the
prompting of the predicate ‘is wise’ -to the act of grasping the Thought
that Socrates is wise (i.e. thinking about the True in a certain way). Of
course, one would not be able to proceed in this way without also being
able to proceed (in the appropriate circumstances) from grasping the
Sense of ‘Plato’ to thinking that Plato is wise, from grasping the Sense
of ‘Aristotle’ to thinking that Aristotle is wise, and so on. On such an
account there would be no separable act of grasping a Sense-function;
instead, one’s ability to ‘grasp’ the Sense expressed by an incomplete
sign would be explained in terms of one’s awareness of how the sign
contributes to the Sense of any complex complete sign that contains it.

111

In view of the foregoing I shall suppose, for the rest of the paper, that
Frege would agree to Church’s postulation and to the elimination of
Sense-functions from the basic ontology. So the general question,
mentioned earlier, about how a Sense determines what it does is reduced
to the question about how a Sense-objectdetermines an object. (And in
turn, the problem of giving a general account of how one grasps a
Sense, and thereby thinks about or refers to the entity it determines, is
reduced to that of giving an account of how one grasps a Sense-object.)
How does a Sense-object determine an object? Frege does not address
this question directly. Some commentators have ventured that the
connection between Sense and object is a contingent one secured via
satisfaction orfit: the object determined by a given Sense is the thing
that happens uniquely to satisfy a condition (or collection of conditions)
 THE NOTION OF SENSE IN FREGE’S ONTOLOGY 27

intrinsically associated with the Sense. Had things been different in

certain relevant ways, it is claimed, some other object would have
uniquely satisfied that condition (or conditions) and thus would have
been determined by that Sense; or - if nothing, or if more than one thing,
had happened to satisfy the condition(s) - the Sense would have been
empty. I call this the Satisfaction View (SV)of determinir~g.~
Downloaded by [Nanyang Technological University] at 04:54 25 April 2015

Seen in the context of Frege’s system, however, SV is clearly not an

adequate account of determining. The problem lies in its appeal to the
idea of an object’s satisfying a condition contingently. A ‘condition’ on
an object might plausibly be construed in Frege’s ontology either as (i)
a Concept or as (ii) a Sense-Concept. So an object’s ‘satisfying a certain
condition’ - and thus, according to SV, its being determined by a given
Sense-object - would amount to either (i) the object’s falling under (i.e.
being mapped to the value True by) a certain Concept or (ii) its falling
under a Concept determined by a certain Sense-Concept. As a (Sense-)
Concept is a kind of (Sense-) function, SV is thus tantamount to a
reductionof Sense-objects to Sense-functions. But it is clear from the
last section that a reduction in this direction would be both unlikely to
work and undesirable in itself. Furthermore, the idea of an object’s
satisfying (i.e. falling under) a given Concept or satisfying (i.e. falling
under a Concept determined by) a given Sense-Concept contingently
has no clear sense. Concepts, being extensional, are ultimately identified
and distinguished only in terms of what values they have for which
objects; so it is constitutive of a given Concept that it map any given
object to the truth-value that it does. And a Sense-Concept’sdetermining
(i.e. characterizing) a given Concept is also a purely logical, and thus
necessary, relationship.
If SV fails and there is no ‘condition’ in virtue of which a Sense
determines its object, the relationship between Sense and object must be
taken to be direct and intrinsic: it is partly constitutive of a given Sense
that it determines the very object that it does. I call this the Direct View.
The Direct View by itself obviously offers little insight into the nature
of thought and reference. Since, for Frege, one t h i n k s about or refers to
an object by grasping a Sense that determines it, a Fregean analysis of
thought and reference should divide into (i) an explication of how one
grasps a Sense and (ii) an explication of how a Sense determines an
object. But the Direct View, unlike the Satisfaction View, does not
purport to provide us with (ii): it is just supposed to be a primitive fact
about this Sense that it determines this object; end of story.
 28 JAMES ZAISS

It follows that if we attribute the Direct View to Frege, as I have

argued we should, we cannot reasonably treat Sense-objects as
constituting a primitive, sui generis, ontological category. For to treat
them thus would pre-empt the possibility of giving any deeper, in-
formative explication of determining. And this, in turn, would condemn
the notions of thought and reference to a status of impenetrable opacity
Downloaded by [Nanyang Technological University] at 04:54 25 April 2015

in his system. On the other hand, if Sense-objects are treated as com-

plex, it might be possible to maintain the Direct View and at the same
time provide an informative analysis of how a Sense determines an
object by appealing to certain features of the Sense’s internal structure.
The idea is that while the Direct View instructs us to see the relation of
object-determining as semanticallv simple - i.e. unanalyzable from the
point of view of semantics - we might still see it as metaphysically
complex.

IV

I have argued that an adequate Fregean account of thought and reference

requires, first, identifying Sense-functions with certain other functions,
and second, somehow eliminating Sense-objects from the basic ontology
as well. The first cut was carried out in Section 11. Attempting to carry
out the second in detail would take us well beyond both the work of
Frege and the scope of this paper; so I shall merely sketch a sort of
approach that looks promising.
Before embarking on this task it is important to realize that there is no
good reason to suppose that Frege would necessarily be unsympathetic
to the eliminationof Sense-objectsfrom his primitive ontology. Although
he clearly considers Senses real, objective entities, he does not show
particular concern over their precise ontological status. Moreover, a
couple of remarks in his article ‘Thoughts’ (CP 35 1-372) suggest some
general lines along which such an elimination might be accomplished.
In that article Frege separates objects into three distinct ‘worlds’ or
‘realms’: (i) the ‘outer world’ of physical objects (and he includes
persons, places, and times here); (ii) the ‘inner world’ of Ideas, or
private mental experiences, which includes token sense-impressions,
images, sensations, feelings, moods, and so forth; and (iii) the ‘third
realm’ of abstract objects, which includes Sense-objects, ‘courses-of-
values’ of functions (which include ‘extensions’of Concepts),numbers,
and truth-values. He apparently views the distinctions between different
 THE NOTION OF SENSE IN FREGE’S ONTOLOGY 29

kinds of objects he groups in a given realm as less significant than those

between the three realms themselves. Elsewhere, for example, he
identifies the natural numbers,*Oand the True and the False,” with the
extensions of certain Concepts, thereby reducing some portions of the
third realm to others. Arguably, Sense-objects need not be seen as
making up their own ontological category either. This suggests that it is
Downloaded by [Nanyang Technological University] at 04:54 25 April 2015

not completely wrongheaded to try to identify Sense-objectswith another

sort of abstracta (preferably, one that is more clearly defined and
relatively uncontroversial).
Then, in a passage near the end of the article, Frege gives what (with a
little ingenuity) can be interpreted as a recipe for such an identification.
In an attempt to demystify his notion of grasping a Thought (CP 369),
Frege compares it with the familiar act of seeing a physical object:

Having visual impressions is certainly necessary for seeing things, but

not sufficient. What must still be added is not anything sensible. And
yet this is just what opens up the external world for us; for without this
non-sensible something everyone would remain shut up in his inner
world. So perhaps, since the decisive factor lies in the non-sensible,
something non-sensible, even without the co-operation of sense-
impressions, could also lead us out of the inner world and also enable
us to grasp Thoughts.

Frege portrays this ‘non-sensible something’ he thinks necessary both

for perceiving objects and for grasping Thoughts (and, presumably,
other Senses) as independent of the perceiver’s or thinker’s inner world
of Ideas - that is, independent of her conscious subjective experience.
To help flesh out Frege’s analogy, one might note that the necessary
non-sensible extra ingredient in an act of sense perception is (or includes)
the fact that there is an actual physical object appropriately related to the
perceiver’s concurrent sense impressions. This relationship is (at least
partly) a contextual one. Perhaps Frege is suggesting that an act of
grasping similarly requires that the object of thought - the entity
determined by the Sense being grasped - is somehow contextually
related to the act’s inner-worldly (i.e. conscious psychological)
component.
For such a suggestion to be plausible the contextual relationships seen
as holding between subjects and objects of thought obviously have to be
construed as generally far more complex and indirect than those involved
 30 JAMES ZAISS

in sense perception. Indeed, given that Senses are typically grasped only
through the use of language (PW 143,2690, the notion of context has to
be construed even more broadly than is usual in discussions of thought
and reference - so that the language itself is treated as possible a
contextual factor.
Thinking of an object within one’s current perceptual purview is a
Downloaded by [Nanyang Technological University] at 04:54 25 April 2015

paradigm case of context-dependent thought; but as one moves along

the relevant spectrum - culminating, at the far end, with thinking of an
object purely ‘by description’ - the contribution of context seems to
shrink, ultimately, to nothing. Put in terms of reference: intuitively, the
referent of an indexical expression is usually determined largely by the
context of use, the referent of a proper name is usually determined
partly by the context, and the referent of a definite description is usually
determined only slightly or not at all by the context. But this picture
seems natural only because we are so used to taking the language itself
(or, rather, the entire physiologico-psychologico-socio-culturo-histoncal
milieu of which the language is a product and a part) for granted, as
fixed, and simply looking at its uses in various settings. From Frege’s
perspective, however, according to which Senses are conceptually prior
to linguistic meanings and thought is logically prior to reference, such
an approach looks artificial and too narrow to support a general account
of thought and reference.Viewed instead as a physiologico-psychologico-
socio-culturo-historicalorganism, a language is a concrete (and evolving)
artifact of human convention that plays an essential role in relating its
users to the world. Our language sets up many (sometimes extremely
complex) contextual relationships to things in the world in which we
would otherwise be unable to stand.
As it must be possible for different subjects (or the same subject at
different times) to grasp the same Sense, it has to be types of contextual
relationships that are at issue here. Furthermore, to accommodate the
Direct View, the object of thought - i.e. the object (if any) determined
by the Sense grasped - must itself be .counted a constituent of the
relevant contextual relationship. Thus, on the analysis being considered,
grasping a given (non-empty) Sense is explicated as standing in a
certain type of (possibly language-mediated) contextual relationship to
a particular object. (The same applies if the Sense is empty, except that
there is no object to which the context relates the subject.)
Obviously, if such an account is going to fly, much more needs to be
said about the ramifications of seeing the language as a possible
 THE NOTION OF SENSE IN FREGE’S ONTOLOGY 31

contextual factor, about what sorts of contextual relationships are

appropriate channels for thought and reference, and about what it is for
a thinker/speaker to stand in such a relationship to an object. But my
goal has been merely to show that an account along these lines would be
compatible with Frege’s expressed views and in the spirit of his overall
enterprise.
Downloaded by [Nanyang Technological University] at 04:54 25 April 2015

Supposing that a sufficiently developed version of this account of

grasping were given, an obvious next move would be to simply identifv
each Sense with its correspondingcontextual relationship. An explication
of object-determining would fall out of this identification: a Sense
determines the object that it does in virtue of its being a contextual
relationshipship to that very object. Such an identification I see as also
Fregean in spirit. For these relationships, being types, are properly
classified as abstracta: inhabitants of Frege’s third realm.12The
identification has two additional virtues. First, it further reduces the
number of primitive ontological categories. Second, and more
importantly, identifying Senses with contextual relationships between
thinkers and (usually)13 ordinary physical objects renders them less
austere and mysterious.

Although Frege has exerted a profound and widely acknowledged

influence on subsequent philosophy of language, a central feature of his
own theory - the notion of Sense and its attendant relations of determining
and grasping - has been met with much scepticism and criticism. Many
of these complaints, I believe, are misguided and based on an incomplete
understanding of his system in general and his ontology in particular.
Seen rightly, Senses are not part of Frege’s primitive ontology. The
semantic and epistemic roles in which he casts them leave their
metaphysical natures greatly underdetermined. Filling in the details
requires following up on his sketchy remarks while trying to remain true
to his vision. This is something that must be done before the virtues and
vices of his system can be fully understood and adequately weighed. I
suspect that Frege still has a lot more to show us.
 32 JAMES ZAISS

NOTES

1. To avoid possible confusion I capitalize the following words when using them to express
technical notions in Frege’s system: ‘Sense’, ‘Function’, ‘Idea’, ‘(the) True’, ’(the)False’, ‘Concept’,
and ‘Relation’.
2. See Gottlob Frege, Collected Papers on Mathematics, Logic, and Philosophy, ed. Brian
McGuinnes (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1984). p. 147 (henceforth CP); and Posthumous Writings,
Downloaded by [Nanyang Technological University] at 04:54 25 April 2015

ed. Hans Hermes, et al. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), p. 235 (henceforth PW).
3. Throughout this essay I use ‘refer’ (rather than ‘mean’) and its cognates for Frege’s ‘bedeuten’
and its German cognates.
4. In characterizing Fregean Senses in this way I follow Gareth Evans, The Varieties of Reference
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982). pp. 15f.
5. For a detailed defense of this see Howard Jackson, ‘Frege on Sense-Functions.’ Analysis 82
(1962). pp. 84-87.
6. It is not clear whether Frege would admit the possibility of non-referring incomplete signs, and
thus, the existence of empty Sense-functions. For convenience I shall henceforth ignore this
possibility.
7. ‘A Formulation of the Logic of Sense and Denotation,’ in Structure, Method and Meaning, ed.
Henle, et al. (New York: Liberal Arts Press, 1951).
8. This is a departure from Frege’s own view that each function has a value for every entity of the
appropriate type (so for example each singulary function on objects would have a value for any
given object, be it an ordinary object or a Sense-object). But the reduction suggested in the text can
be carried out on Frege’s view as well as on Church’s.
9. The Satisfaction View is often presented in the guise of a semuntical claim about how the Sense
of a sign determines its referent, rather than as a metaphysical claim about how a Sense itself
determines an object. But in the context of Frege’s system the import is the same. See e.g. Rudolph
Camap, Meaning and Necessity, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956). p. 125f;
Saul Kripke, Naming and Necessity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980). pp. 127,
12811, and 134f; Hilary Putnam, ‘The Meaning of ‘Meaning’ ’, Mind, Language, and Reality:
Philosophical Papers, Vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975). pp. 21 8-222;
Nathan Salmon,Reference and Essence (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1981). pp. 9f,
12 and 21; Salmon, Frege’s Puzzle (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1986), p. 47; and John
Searle, Intentionality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 242 and 256.
10. The Foundation of Arithmetic, 2nd revised ed. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1978), sec. 68, pp.
79f.
11. The Basic Laws of Arithmetic, ed. Montgomery Furth (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1964). sec. 10, p. 48.
12. On this identification at least some Senses would turn out to be language-dependent in a way.
But a contextual relationship need not be taken to depend upon any particular piece of syntax. So I
do not see this as contradicting the intent of Frege’s claim that Senses are language-independent.
Nor need my suggestion to treat the object of thought as a ‘constituent’ of the contextual
relationship (i.e. the Sense) be seen as incompatible withqrege’s insistence that an ordinary object
cannot be a ‘part’ of a Thought (PW 225,254). For what he denies is that an ordinay object can be
a part of a Thought in the same way that (on his view) a Sense can. He admits to using ‘part’, in this
connection, in a metaphorical sense (CP 388), which he contrasts with the sense of ‘part’normally
used in connection with physical bodies. But it is this latter sense, or something similar, that is
intended by the word ‘constituent’ in the present analysis.
13. For generality, the present account would have to be extended to make sense of the notion of
standing in a ‘contextual relationship’ to an abstract object. Even grasping a (non-empty) Thought,
for Frege, entails ‘thinking about’ an abstractum - viz. a truth-value - in a certain way.