Abstract
In part 4 of Meaning, Expression, and Thought, Davis rejects what he calls Fregean ideational theories, according to which the meaning of an expression is an idea; and then presents his own account, which states that, e.g., the meaning of ‘Primzahl’ in German is the property of meaning prime number. Before casting doubt on the latter ontology of meanings, I come to Frege’s defence by pointing out that he was not an advocate of the position Davis named after him because Fregean senses are not lexical meanings and Fregean thoughts are not types of mental events.
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Notes
Cf. Frege (1891, pp. 29, 31, 1892a, pp. 46–48, 54, 1892b, pp. 62f., 1918, pp. 4–7, 1979, pp. 119, 129, 131, 167f., 192, 194, 200, 206, 216, 225, 231–234, 243, 255). Frege mentions a further class of sentences expressing thoughts, namely, interrogative sentences of the yes/no-type like ‘Is 17 a prime number?’ (cf. 1918, p. 7, 1979, pp. 138f); and he says about subsentential expressions that their senses are parts of thoughts (cf. 1892b, p. 66, 1979, pp. 187, 190–193, 201, 207f., 225, 231–234, 243, 254f.).
Geach wrongly translated ‘Wortlaut’ by ‘utterance’.
Against the background of Davis’s expression theory of meaning, this implies that the meaning of e in L is the property of expressing the idea μ iff e means μ in L (cf. Davis 2003, p. 561). But this move is irrelevant to the following considerations.
I would like to thank Wayne Davis, Wolfgang Künne and Mark Textor for their highly valuable comments on a precursor of this paper.
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Siebel, M. The ontology of meanings. Philos Stud 137, 417–426 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-007-9129-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-007-9129-5