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View submission: /r/philosophy Open Discussion Thread | February 10, 2025
This is a very interesting topic.
So think about it this way. Before Venus was "discovered" to be the planet Venus, people thought it was 2 different stars: the Morning Star and the Evening Star .
Now, what is the reference of "the Morning Star"? Why, it's the planet Venus, of course. What is the reference of "the Evening Star"? It is also the planet Venus. And yet, if you told someone "the Morning Star is the Evening Star", once upon a time they would have disagreed with you!
And it's not like the two terms changed references when it was discovered that they're both the planet Venus. Their reference was always the same thing, and yet people did not realise that it was the same thing.
Now, suppose I discover that the Morning Star is Venus, but not the Evening Star. Consider that this proposition is true: (i) "I believe that the Morning Star is Venus." If I don't know that the Morning Star is the same thing as the the Evening Star, then this proposition can also be true: "I believe that the Evening Star is not Venus." But if "Morning Star" just means "Evening Star", then that proposition is equivalent to (ii) "I don't believe that the Morning Star is Venus.".
But (i) and (ii) contradict each other! They'd be a genuine, real-life contradiction!
So. The solution is to give names senses. The sense of "Morning Star" is "the star that appears in the morning", or something like that. And by factoring senses into our truth-conditions, we can avoid such contradictions.
I hope this helps!
There's nothing here!