Direkte und Fregesche Referenz

Zusammenfassung

“Therefore, if we are to associate a proposition (not merely a truth-value) with a formula containing a free variable (with respect to an assignment of a value to the variable), that proposition seems bound to be singular (even if valiant attempts are made to disguise this fact by using constant functions to imitate individual concepts). The point is, that if the component of the proposition (or the step in the construction of the proposition) which corresponds to the singular term is determined by the individual and the individual is directly determined by the singular term - rather than the individual being determined by the component of the proposition, which is directly determined by the singular term - then we have what I call a singular proposition.” (Kaplan, 1977, S. 484). Mit dem Postulat einer singulären Proposition unterscheidet Kaplan (ebd. S. 506) zwei Ebenen der Bedeutung - “Character” und “Content” - jenseits der Extension: “Now that we have two kinds of meaning in addition to extension”. Kaplan meint mit “Extension” den Wahrheitswert des Satzes.

“There are, therefore, obvious similarities between the psychological problem of relating thoughts to actions and the linguistic problem of relating sentences to thoughts. The linguistic problem has been analysed in great detail; a psychologist might profit from considering that analysis as a model. Fortunately, some reasonably definite proposals have been advanced by David Kaplan (1977), which can be taken as a starting point.” (Miller, 1982, S. 62)