An Analysis Of Dummett’s Defense-Arguments For The Distinction Between Sense And Reference

Since from Frege, the distinction between sense and reference in the research of meaning-theory has always been one of the most important issues, in which concern the problem of relation between sense and meaning of any given expression. For Dummett, he definitely takes the theory of sense as one part in the construction of meaning-theory, and this means that it is necessary for him to defense the ’sense-reference’distinction in order to justify the sense as a unit of meaning. This paper will elaborate and analyze the defense-arguments from Dummett so as to improve the understanding of the problem of sense-reference distinction.The following is the basic framework of my thesis:The first section describes the features of the meaning-theory of Dummett and the historical background of the problem of sense. Dummett regards the problems of knowledge as the core in the research of meaning-theory and lays out the principle of manifestation of knowledge about language, with which the theory of sense closel; associated. Therefore, the statues of’sense’must be justified. Frege initially puts forward the sense-reference distinction. We trace back to the original motivation of the distinction by the introduction of related theories of Frege.The second section firstly comes up with an idea that there are two versions in the defense-arguments of Dummett, differing in the conceptual apparatus serving for the respectively critical steps. The first version advances the inferences based on the linguistic modes, but the second does the inferences based on the types of knowledge. Secondly this paper explicates the understanding of these two conceptual apparatus with’knowing a sentence to be true’ and "knowing the proposition expressed by the sentence". And lastly it expounds respectively the two versions of defense-arguments. The first version incorporates identity argument and cognitive argument; the second version includes argument of anti-bare knowledge and identity argument.The third section reviews the two versions of defense-arguments. In the version with the inferences based on the types of knowledge, Dummett attempts to illustrate the manifestation of the sense of a given expression in using language by transforming the knowing-that to knowing-how, but he can not give a sufficient explanation to the transformation. In another version with the inferences based on linguistic modes, though it seems to be more rigorous, it also encounters a logical problem, because Dummett attributes inconsistent understanding to linguistic modes.