ABSTRACT
Objective reference is an element of significance and not of meaning. This is so because of the fact that while the connotative content changes from one proposition to another, all of them are invariably about something. This something is objective in the sense that a proposition which is about it, unless purely verbal, does not refer to a mere word or even to the connotation of the word but to a thing. This Paradox is not avoided by treating language as the result of conventions of formation and transformation of sentences. However conventional the basis of a language may be, it must allow, to use Carnap’s terminology, for the distinction between real object-sentences and pseudo-object-sentences. The chapter illustrates this distinction by Carnap’s own examples: he contrasts “Babylon was a big town” as an object-sentence with “Babylon was treated of in yesterday’s lecture” as a pseudo-object-sentence.
