Remarks on the problem of Sense in a pragmatic reading

Abstract

The division of the problems about Meaning in an extensional and an intensional theory was accused of unnecessarily duplicating the theoretical problems involved in the knowledge of Meaning. The result was either 1. an aggressive rejection of the intensional part of the problem or 2. the adoption of non-classical semantics to account for intensions. This paper suggests a reading of Frege's theory of Meaning that preserves the contribution of the intensional aspect of the question without sacrificing the benefits of the classical insights. For this, however, we need to expand his theory to cases of semantic values which are not directly assertive, that is, what Micheal Dummett called ingredient value. This solution preserves the direct and intuitive insights of classical semantics, expanding it to cases where the designation of truth or falsehood does not have a unified interpretation: speculative, modal, ambiguous, relative cases or cases in which theories disputing Meaning is not straightforwardly mapped to the truth or the not-truth. The paper is a contribution to support the pragmatic interpretation of Frege's legacy by Micheal Dummett.

Keywords

• sense
• reference
• extensionalism
• pragmatism
• micheal dummett