From Frege, Russell To Strawson

Referential theory is a proposition about how to determine the meaning of words, namely that a word’s meaning is the referential object of this word. Reference theory research is an important part of contemporary philosophy of language. The central issue of philosophy of language is the meaning issues and the relationship between language and reality, while the central issue of theory of reference is the relationship between meaning and reference, which defines that the meaning of words is the reference of words. Thus, theory of reference not only answer to the problem of meaning, but theoretically establish a relationship between language and the real world, which marks a new development of philosophy. Among them, Frege is a pioneer of this theory. Started from him, philosophy shift to linguistics. Frege’s theory is a great revolutionary evolution and even subversive to the traditional theory of reference. Frege’s main contribution is the distinction between meaning and reference. Russell is Frege’s inherited and developed, but Russell’s point of view is quite different from Frege’s. Russell seems to adhere to the traditional theory of reference and classify meaning and reference to the same, while his Description Theory solved the problems left by the traditional theory of reference. From this angle, Russell’s theory of reference is an innovative and elevated it to a new height from the perspective of semantics. Strawson criticized Russell’s theory from the perspective of everyday language and introduced pragmatics into the theory of reference for the first time, which not only provided a new perspective for the study on the theory of reference, but made an outstanding contribution to the later development of it. I found that the development of contemporary theory of reference is based on these three’s theoretical study and then extended. So during this period, the evolution of theory of reference is very significance. This paper, aims to the combing the evolution and development of theory of reference through this period from Frege, Russell and Strawson’s theory, and then reveals the internal logic of the evolution of this theory. It elaborates on the research significance and function of theory of reference combined with main ideas of contemporary theory.