Abstract

It is a commonly held view that Frege's doctrine of senses and references is not compatible with the idea that there are de re beliefs. The present paper is meant to challenge that view. Moreover, it seeks to show that, instead of forcing Frege's semantic framework to answer questions raised by twentieth-century philosophy of language, we could try to find other questions to which it might be an answer. It is argued that the proper treatment of Frege's views requires the acknowledgement of the central role of individualistic epistemology in his thought. Once this is recognized, Frege's doctrine of senses and references can be considered a theory, or at least a sketch of a theory, of cognition, which has interesting connections with Kant's and Husserl's views