Fregean senses, modes of presentation, and concepts. (English) Zbl 1047.03008

Zalta, Edward N.

Tomberlin, James E. (ed.), Metaphysics, 2001. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers (ISBN 0-631-23029-7/pbk; 0-631-23028-9/hbk). Philosophical Perspectives 15, 335-359 (2001).

The paper aims at a theory of Frege’s notion of “sense”, and its relation to modes of presentation and concepts. The author identifies modes of presentation and concepts in terms of an axiomatic theory of abstract objects which he had formulated in earlier writings.
In the first section the relation between senses and the more general modes of presentation is analyzed presupposing the author’s typed intensional logic ILAO (‘the intensional logic of abstract objects’). Section 2 integrates modes of presentation into ILAO.
The next section “Plugging theoretical gaps” shows how to overcome theoretical shortcomings in earlier work on this topic by D.Kaplan, G.Forbes, N.Salmon, and M.Crimmins. The main tool is the PLUG operation of ILAO’s formal semantics which takes “objects \(o_1, \dots, o_n\), having types \(t_1, \dots, t_n\), respectively, and ‘plugs’ them into a relation of type \(\langle t_1, \dots, t_n\rangle\), producing a 0-place logical structure (of type \(p\))” (p.346).
In the final section the unsolved technical question is discussed “whether we can develop in ILAO a new reading of belief reports which involves modes of presentation without invoking senses” (p.351).
For the entire collection see [Zbl 1005.00013].

Reviewer: Volker Peckhaus (Paderborn)

MSC:

03A05

Philosophical and critical aspects of logic and foundations

Keywords:

philosophy of language; abstract objects; properties; concept; type theory; semantics; sense; denotation