On the Content and Object of Representations

Abstract

(…) Mill, when writing about names, asks whether it is more proper to consider names as names of things or as names of our representations of things.¹ (…) The word ‘Sun’ — according to Mill — is a name of the Sun, and not the name of representation of the Sun; he does not deny, however, that a name evokes in, or conveys to, a listener only a representation, and not the thing itself. The function of a name thus appears to be twofold: a name conveys to a listener the content of a representation, and at the same time names an object. But we have been persuaded that we must distinguish three, and not two, elements of every representation: the act, the content, and the object. If a name really gives an exact linguistic image (Bild) of the corresponding mental relations, then it must also have a correlate of the act of representation. This does in fact happen, and the three elements of a representation: the act, the content, and the object, have counterparts in the triple task which every name has to perform.