Vol. 34 No. 1 (2014)
Articles

On Fregean Sense and Mental Content

Eduardo García-Ramírez
Instituto de Investigaciones Filosóficas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México

Published 2014-05-01

Keywords

  • Referencia,
  • Individuación,
  • Determinación
  • Reference,
  • Individuation,
  • Determination

Abstract

Fregeans follow Frege (1892) in accepting informativeness and substitution failure as reliable criteria for the existence of senses as objects of thought. In this paper I show that if we accept this, we must also accept the existence of an infinite hierarchy of senses as objects of thought. This is a bad result since it turns Fregeanism into a doctrine according to which object-related thoughts either have an infinite number of objects as contents or none at all. This shows, against the Fregean, that senses cannot themselves be constituents of thought.

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