Question

What are the sense and reference of a concept? How do the sense and reference of concepts “vary inversely”? Is it possible to have two concepts with the same sense and different reference?

Answer 1

Reference and sense

The reference of a concept or word is the relation between the linguistic expression and the entity in the real world to which it refers. In contrast, sense is defined as its relations to other expressions in the language system. Thus, there are words that have a sense, but no referents in the real world. Concepts may differ in sense, but not necessarily in reference, and vice versa.

In other words; the ‘reference’ of an expression is the entity the expression designates or applies to. The ‘sense’ of an expression is the way in which the expression presents that reference. For example, the ancients used ‘the morning star’ and ‘the evening star’ to designate what turned out to be the same heavenly body, the planet Venus. These two expressions have the same reference, but they clearly differ in that each presents that reference in a different way. So, although co-referential, each expression is associated with a different ‘sense’. The planet itself is the referent, the morning star is one sense, the evening star the other sense. It could have other senses.