[Bups-dis] A query regarding the translation of Frege´s ' On Sense and Reference'

[lurdes melo]

Concerning Frege´s translations of ' Sinn' and ' Bedeutung' , I used to have
the same doubt. I say ' I used to have'  because some time ago I came across
a text in Logic that somehow gave me a clearer idea of what could be a
unofficial translation and yet one that throws some light on the problem.
And I quote: " (...) Thus, on the Frege-Church theory, a sentence has a
proposition as its sense, and it has its truth-value as its denotation (...)
a sentence denotes one of the truth-values and it connotes (has its sense) a
proposition. Sentences having the same denotation, may differ in
connotation. Both of the sentences, ' 2=2' and ' The earth is a planet'  are
true, and so denote truth, but they differ in sense, that is, they express
different propositions. (...) Frege´s terms in German are ' Sinn'  for sense
and either ' Bedeutung'  or 'Bezeichnung'  for denotation. (...) Other words
used in place of ' denotation'  are ' designatum'  (which is the literal
Latinization of ' Bezeichnung' ) For example, the phrase, ' The Morning
Star'  and the phrase, ' The Evening Star'  both denote the planet Venus but
seem to have different meanings (...)"
 
Thus, in my opinion, whereas I´ve found it useful to think of ' Sinn'  as
connotation and of ' Bedeutung'  as denotation, I´ve found it a bit
confusing to attend both to the various translations one may usually see and
to the translation directly from the German once naturally it doesn´t take
into account Frege´s theory.
 
I apologize for the length of the quoting, but I do think it is of some use.
 
Regards,
Maria