Project SherlockEst. Knowledge

Paper

1905

On Denoting

Bertrand Russell

A definite description like 'the present King of France' does not refer to anything, and a sentence using it is not meaningless but simply false, once its underlying logical form is properly analysed — the founding move of analytic philosophy of language.

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Not a difficulty warning — a route. These are in the library too.

On Sense and ReferenceGottlob Frege, 1892Two expressions can refer to the same thing while differing in sense — 'the morning star' and 'the evening star' both name Venus but express it differently — which is why identity statements can be informative rather than trivial.

Groundwork for

Works in the library that name this one as a prerequisite.

Tractatus Logico-PhilosophicusLudwig Wittgenstein, 1921The world is everything that is the case, language pictures facts by sharing their logical form, and whatever cannot be pictured this way — ethics, aesthetics, the meaning of life — must be passed over in silence.

Filed under Nineteenth & Twentieth Century Philosophy in Philosophy.