Boole on Reference and Universe of Discourse: Reply to John Corcoran

In §1 I examine Boole’s “principle of wholistic reference” in relation to Frege’s postulation of truth-values as referents for sentences. I also consider in this connection Frege’s interpretation of quantification and his view that functions and concepts (of objects) must be defined for all objects. I then present my own contrasting views on the reference of sentences. In §2 I discuss Boole’s introduction of the notion of universe of discourse and consider whether one of the issues implicit in John’s paper is a confrontation between absolute interpretations of logic and relativistic interpretations of logic. I conclude with a brief examination of Tarski’s views on this issue.