PARTICULAR IDEAS

AND GENER A L
MEANING
GEORGE BERKELEY
PRINCIPLE OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE
GEORGE
BERKELEY
Bishop George
Berkeley (1685 - 1753)
was an Irish
philosopher of the
Age of
Enlightenment, best
known for his theory
of Immaterialism, a
type of Idealism
George Berkeley’s A Treatise
Concerning the Principles of Human
Knowledge (1710) presents a form
of Metaphysical Idealism which
asserts that there are two kinds of
reality, idea and spirit.
Berkeley argues that ideas are
derived from physical and mental
perceptions, from memory, and
from imagination. The existence of
an idea depends on its being able to
be perceived. An idea does not exist
unless it is perceived.
 "esse est percipi“
("to be is to be perceived")
 Knowledge= Sensation
 Experience the World= Mind
 No physical world = only the
mind
• Berkeley argues that there is no substance other than spirit.
• Substance is not material, but spiritual. Matter neither perceives,
nor is perceived. Therefore, matter does not exist. What we
describe as matter is only the idea derived from the sensory
perception of solidity, extension, form, motion, or other physical
properties of an object. But the object only exists if it can
perceive or is perceived, and therefore its existence is ideal or
spiritual.
• According to Berkeley, existence consists of the state of actively
perceiving or of passively being perceived. If something is not
able to perceive or is not able to be perceived, then it does not
exist.
• Everything that can perceive, or that can be perceived, exists.
Everything that exists can either perceive or can be perceived.
• According to Berkeley, existence consists of the state of actively
perceiving or of passively being perceived. If something is not
able to perceive or is not able to be perceived, then it does not
exist.
• Everything that can perceive, or that can be perceived, exists.
Everything that exists can either perceive or can be perceived.
Berkeley argues that the existence
of God can be perceived by human
beings. The spirit of human beings is
finite, but the spirit of God is
infinite.
Berkeley also argues that our own
existence as perceiving beings
depends on God. He maintains that
everything that exists is perceived in
the mind of God.
 DENOTATION
VERSUS
CONNOTATION
JOHN STUART MILL, A SYSTEM OF LOGIC
JOHN STUART MILL
A System of Logic Mill introduced a
distinction between what he called
"connotation" and "denotation.
• Connotation is a relation between a name (singular or general)
and one or more attributes. For example, ‘widow’ denotes
widows and connotes the attributes of being female, and of
having been married to someone now dead. If a name is
connotative, it denotes what it denotes in virtue of object or
objects having the attributes the name connotes. Connotation
thus determines denotation.
• CONNOTATIVE “denotes a subject and implies an attribute”
White denotes each white thing, and connotes the attribute of
whiteness
Man denotes each man, and connotes the attribute of humanity
“All general names are connotative”
NON-CONNOTATIVE:
“signifies a subject only or an attribute only”
Concrete: John, London, England
Attribute: Whiteness, length, virtue
DENOTATION VS. CONNOTATION
Roughly: denotation=reference, and connotation=meaning

Consider the definite description “The captain of the England

football team in 2005”
Denotation: David Beckham (the man, not the name)
Connotation: the property of being captain of the England team in
2005
All expressions have both
denotation and connotation, except
for proper names which only
denotation.
NAMES AND
THEIR
MEANING
GOTTLOB FREGE
SENSE AND REFERENCE
REFERENCE AND SENSE

• Two aspects of meaning proposed for the first

time by Frege (German semanticists) who tried to
set the differences between sense and reference
in a systematic for.
 Gottlob Frege (1848-1925) pointed out
that the same individual may have
different names, whose meaning is
somewhat different.
His own classic example was that "Hesperus" is the name of the
"Evening Star," while "Phosphorus" (or "Lucifer") is the name of
the "Morning Star"; but it turns out that the Evening Star and the
Morning Star are the same thing, the planet Venus. The identity
of the object, however, does not make it correct to call Venus in
the evening "Phosphorus." Since logic demands that things
produced by the free substitution of identities should be
identical, the lack of identical truth for "Venus in the evening is
Hesperus" and "Venus in the evening is Phosphorus" means that
"Hesperus" and "Phosphorus" are not identical in meaning.
• Also, if the entire meaning of a proper name is in the reference,
then a sentence like "Pope John Paul II is Karol Wojtyla," should
be no more meaningful or informative than "Pope John Paul II is
Pope John Paul II." The second sentence, however, is a trival
tautology that tells us nothing, while the former gives us real
information. A proper name, therefore, must have a meaning
independent of its reference. In Frege's terminology, that is the
"sense" of the name -- completing Frege's distinction between
"sense" and "reference." "Phosphorus" and "Hesperus," "Pope
John Paul II" and "Karol Wojtyla," refer to precisely the same
objects but have different "senses."
TO SUM UP

The sense of an expression is the thought it

expresses (meaning) while the reference is the
object it represents.
 HOW THE
REFERENCE OF
TERM IS FIXED
SAUL KRIPKE
NAMING AND NECESSITY
HOW THE
REFERENCE
OF TERM IS
FIXED?
BAPTISM
• The event which fixes the reference of a term – typically a new term – is called its baptism
or a dubbing. The theory which tells us how the baptism/dubbing works is a theory of
reference fixing. We can start by describing the standard form which such an event takes.
Let’s suppose that we want to name our dog ‘Fido’. In the presence of the object to be
named, the person doing the naming points at the object and says, ‘this is called ‘Fido’’. We
can see that in this case there is some sort of causal link between the object and the term.
Just being present and observing the object involves a causal linkage between the object and
the observer, and the observer seeing the object and pointing at it and saying ‘Fido’ is a chain
of events distinguishable from other events in terms of the causal links between the observer
who makes this ostensive definition of the term and the object whose name is being defined,
and the utterance of the name term itself. In this standard/normative case the introduction
of the term is by ostension.
REFERENCE BORROWING
But what about those people who did not observe the original event? Most of us here were
not present when each of us were given our names (I mean Bob wasn’t there when Carol
was named and Carol wasn’t there for Bob either) and yet we have no difficulty in using and
understanding those names. What can account for that ability? Apparently, the story goes
that those not at the original baptismal event obtain their ability to refer to the object using
its name from other speakers who already possess this ability, and the ability of any speaker
who uses the name successfully can eventually be traced back to one of the participants in
the dubbing. I can talk about Napoleon, because I have read about Napoleon in a book, and
I’ve gotten my referring ability via that channel. The author of the book may have heard
about Napoleon from a lecturer. The lecturer may have heard stories told by his relatives. The
relatives will have heard from other folks. And some of those folks, somewhere along the
line, will have seen Napoleon being pointed to and addressed as Napoleon, and so on … all
the way back to Mrs. Buonaparte saying ‘What a lovely little boy. I’ll call him Napoleon.’