ON THEORY OF REFERENCE (PIERCE & FREGE)

                                    ON THEORY OF REFERENCE (PIERCE & FREGE)

                                                                (Position Paper)
       

Charles Sanders Pierce and Gottlob Frege’s on theory of reference give their respective understanding on how language is used, which may come off unclear. Even so, these have been influential in contemporary understanding of philosophy of language and logic.

Pierce believed that signs are the primary means through which we understand and communicate meaning. However, Peirce's focus on the process of semiosis, which involves the sign generating interpretants in the mind of an interpreter, can be challenging to follow. In CP, Volume 5, paragraph 484, he writes, "Semiosis is an action or influence which is, or involves, a cooperation of three subjects, such as a Sign, its Object, and its Interpretant, this tri-relative influence not being in any way resolvable into actions between pairs.".

Moreover, his thought of solving the problem of reference came up to an idea of “pragmatism,” that is meaning and reference are not fixed by mental ideas and abstract concepts but grounded on beliefs and actions. 

On the other hand, Frege argued that the sense of an expression corresponds to its meaning or the way it presents an object, while the reference is the actual object in the world to which the expression refers.One of the central elements of Frege's theory is the distinction between "sense" (Sinn) and "reference" (Bedeutung) of linguistic expressions. The sense is the way we understand the meaning of a term, while reference is what the term actually refers to in the world. Critics argue that Frege's explanation of this distinction is not always clear. For example, he writes, "The reference (Bedeutung) of a sentence is its truth value." 

 Now the aforementioned philosophy [of Pierce and of Frege], their ideas seem to be further polished because of the complex view of how signs function and generate meaning. Same goes with the idea of Frege, that is, the definition clarifies the reference of a sentence, the notion of sense is still subject to interpretation and debate. In other words, subjective interpretation could be inferred.

With these, I believe that it can be denoted the need of rigorous examination of their respective philosophies to have a glimpse of what they really meant of such ideas. But as for the plausibility of the two great thinkers, they were still considered as pioneering contributors as to how language had been established. It’s just that there is a need to clarify with their intricate terminologies to fully grasp and to understand their thoughts universally.

References:

Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce (CP), 8 volumes, edited by Charles Hartshorne, Paul Weiss, and Arthur W. Burks (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1931–1958; volumes 1–6 edited by Charles Harteshorne and Paul Weiss, 1931–1935; vols. 7–8 edited by Arthur W. Burks, 1958)

• P. Geach and M. Black (eds. and trans.), 1980, Translations from the Philosophical Writings of Gottlob Frege, Oxford: Blackwell, third edition.