A mediated reference theory (also indirect reference theory)
[Leszek Berezowski, ''Articles and Proper Names'', University of Wrocław, 2001, p. 67.] is any
semantic 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
direct reference theory A direct reference theory (also called referentialism or referential realism)Andrea Bianchi (2012) ''Two ways of being a (direct) referentialist'', in Joseph Almog, Paolo Leonardi, ''Having in Mind: The Philosophy of Keith Donnellan''p. 79/ref> is a ...
.
Gottlob Frege
Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege (; ; 8 November 1848 – 26 July 1925) was a German philosopher, logician, and mathematician. He was a mathematics professor at the University of Jena, and is understood by many to be the father of analytic ph ...
is a well-known advocate of mediated reference theories.
[ Similar theories were widely held in the middle of the twentieth century by philosophers such as ]Peter Strawson
Peter Frederick Strawson (; 23 November 1919 – 13 February 2006) was an English philosopher. He was the Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy at the University of Oxford (Magdalen College) from 1968 to 1987. Before that, he ...
and John Searle.
Saul Kripke
Saul Aaron Kripke (; November 13, 1940 – September 15, 2022) was an American philosopher and logician in the analytic tradition. He was a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and em ...
, a proponent of direct reference theory, in his ''Naming and Necessity
''Naming and Necessity'' is a 1980 book with the transcript of three lectures, given by the philosopher Saul Kripke, at Princeton University in 1970, in which he dealt with the debates of proper names in the philosophy of language. The transcript ...
'' dubbed mediated reference theory the Frege–Russell view and criticized it. Subsequent scholarship refuted the claim that Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British mathematician, philosopher, logician, and public intellectual. He had a considerable influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, linguistics, ...
's views on reference theory were the same as Frege's, since Russell was also a proponent of direct reference theory.[Howard Wettstein, "Frege-Russell Semantics?", ''Dialectica'' 44(1/2), 1990, pp. 113–135, esp. 115: "Russell maintains that when one is acquainted with something, say, a present sense datum or oneself, one can refer to it without the mediation of anything like a Fregean sense. One can refer to it, as we might say, ''directly''."]
See also
* Sense and reference
In the philosophy of language, the distinction between sense and reference was an idea of the German philosopher and mathematician Gottlob Frege in 1892 (in his paper "On Sense and Reference"; German: "Über Sinn und Bedeutung"), reflecting the ...
* Descriptivist theory of names
In the philosophy of language, the descriptivist theory of proper names (also descriptivist theory of reference) is the view that the meaning or semantic content of a proper name is identical to the descriptions associated with it by speakers, whil ...
References
External links
Theories of Meaning (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mediated Reference Theory
Theories of language
Meaning (philosophy of language)