Questions: Meaning and Reference: Core Distinctions

Question 1

'Morning star' and 'evening star' both refer to Venus. What does Frege's puzzle about these expressions show?

• A. That proper names are ambiguous and should be avoided in philosophical argument
• B. That two expressions can refer to the same object while differing in meaning, so meaning cannot simply be reference
• C. That astronomical terms have no precise meaning without empirical verification
• D. That co-referring expressions are always interchangeable in any context

Answer: (B)

If meaning were just reference, 'morning star = evening star' would be as trivially uninformative as 'Venus = Venus.' But it was a substantive discovery that these expressions pick out the same planet. This shows that expressions can share a referent while conveying different information — meaning must involve more than reference alone.

Question 2

The meaning of a proper name like 'Aristotle' is simply the individual it picks out in the world.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: False

This is the 'direct reference' view, which many philosophers reject on grounds of Frege's puzzle and related problems. If meaning were just reference, then 'Aristotle' and any other term referring to Aristotle would be semantically identical, and 'Aristotle is Aristotle' would be just as informative as 'Aristotle was a philosopher' — clearly they aren't. Frege argued we need sense (mode of presentation) in addition to reference to explain informational content.

Question 3

Why does the fact that 'Lois believes Superman can fly' can be true while 'Lois believes Clark Kent can fly' is false matter for the theory of meaning?

Model answer: If meaning were just reference, substituting co-referring terms should always preserve truth. But 'Superman' and 'Clark Kent' refer to the same person, yet substituting one for the other in belief contexts changes truth value. This shows that meaning involves more than reference — cognitive or descriptive content (how an expression presents its referent) must also be part of meaning.

This is the problem of substitution failure in intensional (belief, desire, knowledge) contexts. It is one of the strongest arguments that we need a notion of meaning beyond reference — something like Frege's sense or a descriptive content — to explain why co-referring terms are not always interchangeable.