Twardowski on Content and Meaning

Abstrakt

DOI: https://doi.org/10.26333/sts.xxxvii2.03

Kazimierz Twardowski elaborated an original conception of intentionality in his habilitation thesis, On the Content and Object of Presentations, in 1894. He gives a crucial place to the notion of content, as the basis of any presentation. This allows him to offer a solution to the problem of objectless presentations. But I will focus here on a property he attributes to content, that is, its ability to convey meaning. Outside the proper scope of philosophy of language, he provides a conception of meaning that does not focus on reference but rather on designation. His theory does not account for the Fregean distinction between sense and reference, so I will propose a comparison between the two philosophers’ conceptions of meaning.

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