Sense and Descriptions

Click here and press the right key for the next slide (or swipe left)

also ...

Press the left key to go backwards (or swipe right)

Press n to toggle whether notes are shown (or add '?notes' to the url before the #)

Press m or double tap to slide thumbnails (menu)

Press ? at any time to show the keyboard shortcuts

Samantha is Samantha

Samantha is Charly

Samantha Caine

Suburban homemaker and the ideal mom to her 8 year old daughter Caitlin. She lives in a New England small town, teaches in a local school and makes the best Rice Krispie treats in town.

Charly Baltimore

a highly trained secret agent and cold-blooded killer involved in the government's most unscrupulous affairs.

It is perhaps tempting to think of senses as descriptions ... at least, this way you can see how sense fulfils the three functions given on the previous slide

The sense of my utterance of ‘Charly Baltimore’ is this description:
the highly trained secret agent suffering from amnesia in New England.

The sense of my utterance of ‘Samantha Caine’ is this description:
the New England teacher with an 8 year old daughter who makes the best Rice Krispie treats in town.

‘all that anyone has been able to think of is that different [i.e. senses] are a matter of different descriptions being associated with the signs.

Some other views have been tried ... But these ideas have not been found compelling’

Campbell, 2011 p. 340

I wish someone had told me this before. I have the sense that the answer was out there and I could not find it.

‘all that anyone has been able to think of is that different modes of presentation [i.e. senses] are a matter of different descriptions being associated with the signs. Some other views have been tried, such as those that say all uses of co-referential terms in a single discourse must be anaphorically linked. But these ideas have not been found compelling’ \citep[p.~340]{campbell:2011_visual}.

This isn’t an argument ... we can do better

Is this correct?

The sense of my utterance of ‘Charly Baltimore’ is this description:
the highly trained secret agent suffering from amnesia in New England.

The sense of my utterance of ‘Samantha Caine’ is this description:
the New England teacher with an 8 year old daughter who makes the best Rice Krispie treats in town.

Contrast that utterance of ‘Charly is Charly’ with the utterance ‘Charly is Samantha’

ftbe: These may differ in informativeness.

Terminology: call whatever aspect of meaning explains the difference ‘sense’.

If senses are descriptions, can they explain why one utterance is informative and the other not?

Jein: Ja--we can see that the descriptions are different; Nein--what does this have to do with informativeness?

To understand sense, we need to link it to knowledge of reference (as I explained last time) ...

The sense of an utterance of a word (or phrase)
is what you know when you
have knowledge of reference.

NB: sense isn’t knowledge of reference, but the think known.

How are these connected?

Contrast that utterance of ‘Charly is Charly’ with the utterance ‘Charly is Samantha’

ftbe: These may differ in informativeness.

Terminology: call whatever aspect of meaning explains the difference ‘sense’.

So if senses are descriptions and if sense are what you know when you have knowledge of reference, can we explain the difference in informativeness?

Yes, absolutely.

The sense of my utterance of ‘Charly Baltimore’ is this description:
the highly trained secret agent suffering from amnesia in New England.

The sense of my utterance of ‘Samantha Caine’ is this description:
the New England teacher with an 8 year old daughter who makes the best Rice Krispie treats in town.

Keyboard Shortcuts?

Sense and Descriptions

Keyboard Shortcuts`?`