You can't eat the meaning

In my first week or two as an undergraduate in the autumn of 1962, I was assigned, for the introductory logic course in PPE, various readings on the concept of 'meaning'. I shared tutorials on this course with my (newly-made) friend Vince, and since we were each as new to the topic as the other was, we decided to do some of our preparatory reading together. Well, when you're 19 and struggling to make sense of something unfamiliar to you, some perfectly sober arguments can seem hilariously funny, and I can remember one particular session where Vince and I were helpless with laughter over the proposition that 'You can't eat the meaning of cake' - as obviously true as that is.

I'm reminded of that time by coming across a summary, in this obituary of P. F. Strawson today, of the latter's article 'On Referring'. It was, I'm pretty sure, one of the readings we were assigned. Here's the summary:

Ryle, then editor of Mind, was soon impressed with reports of Strawson's lectures, and asked to publish one. On Referring, published in Mind in 1950, attacked Russell's On Denoting (1905). Russell had claimed that any sentence referring to non-existent or contradictory entities (such as unicorns, round squares, or the king of France) can be logically analysed into an assertion that a particular thing exists and has certain properties - the sentence turns out to be simply false.

But Strawson argued that sentences are not in themselves true or false, simply meaningful; it is the statements that they are used to make that are true or false. "The King of France is wise" could have been used to make a true or a false statement during the years of the French monarchy, but after France became a republic, the sentence "The King of France is wise" used in a fairy story, historical legend, or joke, did not give rise to a question of truth or falsity.

Strawson said Russell had failed to distinguish between a sentence and a statement, and had confused referring or mentioning with meaning. Merely by implying that someone existed, Russell had presupposed his existence. He had distorted the nature of how "we actually use and understand" language in an attempt to squash its complexity into uniform usage.

So you can eat what you refer to in saying 'cake', but you can't eat the word's meaning. Or something like that.