Mediated reference theory
Overview
Semantics
Semantics is the study of meaning. It focuses on the relation between signifiers, such as words, phrases, signs and symbols, and what they stand for, their denotata....
theory that posits that words refer to something in the external world, but insists that there is more to the meaning of a name than simply the object to which it refers. It thus stands opposed to the theory of direct reference. Its most famous advocate is the mathematician and philosopher Gottlob Frege
Gottlob Frege
Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege was a German mathematician, logician and philosopher. He is considered to be one of the founders of modern logic, and made major contributions to the foundations of mathematics. He is generally considered to be the father of analytic philosophy, for his writings on...
. The view was very widely held in the middle of the twentieth century by such philosophers as Sir Peter Strawson and John Searle
John Searle
John Rogers Searle is an American philosopher and currently the Slusser Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley.-Biography:...
.
Frege argued that the semantics of words and expressions should be divided into two elements: a sense, which is a "mode of presentation" of the reference of the name; and the reference itself, which is the object to which the name refers.
