‘Bedeutung’ in Frege: a reply
IN 'The Meaning of "Bedeutung" in Frege' [ANALYSIS 30.6 (June, 1970), pp. 177-189] Professor Ernst Tugendhat takes exception to the Geach-and-Black rendering of 'Bedeutung' as 'reference', claiming that it misleadingly suggests that 'what Frege meant by the Bedeutung of an expression is the object which the expression names' [p. 177]. It turns out, however, that Tugendhat's quarrel is not so much with Frege's translators as with Frege himself; he is bent less upon amending our English version of ' Uber Sinn undBedeutung' than upon revising the original article.' Among other things he seeks to revoke Frege's doctrine that sentences are names of objects. Tugendhat's proposed modifications of Frege I find initially obscure, particularly as regards their ontological