Cognitive Phenomenology and Indirect Sense

Abstract

Abstract Acquaintance with the non-sensory cognitive phenomenology of a given intentional content can act as a Fregean sense presenting that content. This provides (i) a mechanism for acquaintance with (a kind of) sense, (ii) a sense that is subject and context invariant, and (iii) a mechanism for the immediate presentation of a referent. This kind of sense can be used to defend Kripke’s acquaintance-based development of Frege’s claim that when a sentence S is embedded in an attitude ascription it refers to the thought that S expresses in that context (and not its unembedded referent, the true).