Introduction

Abstract

In the 1960’s and 1970’s a number of philosophers began questioning the accepted theory of meaning for proper names and indexicals (i.e., words such as T and ‘now’). The traditional theories of meaning and reference could be divided into two major groups; versions of Bertrand Russell’s theory of language and versions of Gottlob Frege’s theory of language. While there are major differences between Russell’s and Frege’s views, both agreed that the meaning of ordinary proper names (e.g., ‘John Smith’) is determined by definite descriptions (e.g., ‘the first person to land on the Moon’). Frege distinguished between what he called the sense of an expression and the referent of an expression. The referent of a proper name is the object that we use the name to talk about. The referent of the name ‘Richard Nixon’ is the man Richard Nixon. In addition to the object that the name refers to there is the sense of the name. Frege says “besides that to which the sign refers, which may be called the reference of the sign, [there is] also what I should like to call the sense of the sign, wherein the mode of presentation is contained.”¹ The sense of a proper name is given by the sense of some associated definite description.