Is Sense Superfluous?

Last time, we looked at the sense & reference of unreal objects like the Present Emperor of China. Of course, there is no Present Emperor of China, so any statement using the denoting phrase the Present Emperor of China is necessarily false. But, this leads to the possibility that sense & reference might be the same thing, since definite descriptions of unreal objects seem to have no sense and can’t be used truthfully in a sentence. This led Philosopher Bertrand Russell to declare that sense is superfluous and only referents are meaningful.

So, is sense superfluous as Russell says? Or, can sense be rescued beyond the shackles of the nominatum? In this video, we look at a critique of Russell’s reductionism provided by P.F. Strawson.

Bertrand Russell voiced by Alexander Moneypenny.

Music sampled from Zoë Blade.

Works Cited:
Russell, Bertrand. “On Denoting (1905).” The Philosophy of Language, edited by Aloysius Martinich, 2nd ed., Oxford University Press, 1990, pp. 203–211.
Strawson, P.F. “On Referring (1950).” The Philosophy of Language, edited by Aloysius Martinich, 2nd ed., Oxford University Press, 1990, pp. 219–234.

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