CONCEPT
Sense and Reference
Frege's 1892 distinction between the internal mode of presentation of an expression (its sense) and the object in the world it actually picks out (its reference)—the sharpest diagnostic available for what a language model has and what it lacks.
The morning star and the evening star are the same object, Venus, yet learning that they are the same object is a genuine discovery. How can two expressions with, apparently, the same content differ so completely in what they teach? In his 1892 essay
Über Sinn und Bedeutung,
Gottlob Frege answered by distinguishing two dimensions of meaning. Every expression has a
reference—the object in the world it picks out, its
Bedeutung—and a
sense—its
Sinn, the mode of presentation, the internal route by which a mind arrives at the object. The morning star and the evening star have identical reference (Venus) but different senses: one presents the planet as the last light to fade at dawn, the other as the first to appear at dusk. A name without a sense is a noise; a sense without a reference—like “the greatest prime number”—is a perfectly coherent meaning that grasps at nothing. Together, sense