Frege's Philosophy of Language Essay

Philosophy wasn't Frege's first area of specialty, so for him to come up with the language of philosophy was something innovative to the whole philosophy field. Before Frege founded and made his theory about the philosophy of language, there was a misunderstanding of language. He wanted to find a link between mathematical notions and philosophy notions. Finding out if you can be analytical when it comes to linguistics just like mathematics was the goal for Frege. To demonstrate that mathematics is reducible to or just logic, Frege invented a formal logic language essentially.
Frege starts off his theory with making a distinction that sense and reference were both important components to sentences but they do not mean the same thing whatsoever. He starts off with explaining that all sentences have senses, whether they mean the same thing or not. Frege establishes that " a proper name (word, sign, sign combination, expression) expresses its sense, stands for or designates its reference" (Frege, 40). Frege believes that reference is not the only thing when it comes to meaning in a sentence because in order for a reference to exist, if any, a sense has to be determined first. Firstly, for Frege, a sense is a linguistic meaning or a characteristic. For example Hesperus and Phosphorus are two different stars, the evening and the morning star, respectively. Although they both mean Venus, each word can express a different sense. Depending on which star you are talking about, it is expressed differently. Another example is Mark Twain and Samuel Clemens. They are both the same exact person but depending which one is decided to be used in the sentence, both delivers a unique mode of presentation (sense). Senses are objective, shareable entities. They are not ideas in the mind. Even two sentences that have the same words and meaning in different languages can have the same sense because they are the same words, just in a different language. So if you say "snow is white" and "la niege est blanche," the same sense is being expressed.
This is why Frege believes there is more to just reference in a meaning of a sentence. With the sense determined, it is not possible to determine reference. More specifically, the reference is related to the truth-value of the words. So if Hesperus and Phosphorus are being talked about, although they have different sense, they have the same reference. They are both talking about Venus. So if two different statements have the same truth-value and talking about the exact same thing, the reference is exactly the same. An example of this is " the father of Mark Twain" and "the father of Sam Clemens." Although they both are saying different names and have different senses, they have the same reference because the same person is being talked about. But if it changed to "the father of David Bowie," the reference has changed as well. In other words, the reference of the declarative sentence is its truth-value.