Gray's Elegy

Russell's Gray's Elegy Argument:

An argument designed to show that, on Frege's theory, you cannot talk about denoting concepts.

E.G. Want to refer to the sense of 'the dog'. Cannot use 'the sense of the dog', as would refer to some dog.

'The sense of ''the sense of 'the dog'''? (Russell assumes that when we wish to refer to the sense of a referring expression, we do so by enclosing it in commas; Searle does so via {the dog}.)

But, if the sense is referred to, it would become a constituent of the proposition... so, the reference would then be made to the referent of the sense, i.e. the dog.

Take any referring expression, e.g. 'x', and its sense will be called {x} when it occurs inside inverted commas: it refers to x, not to the sense.

Our subject must be something which…