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The Logical Form of Descriptions*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 April 2010

Bernard Linsky
Affiliation:
University of Alberta

Extract

Stephen Neale defends Russell's famous theory of definite descriptions against more than 40 years' worth of criticisms beginning long before Strawson's “On Referring.” Ever since Strawson's parting shot in that paper (“… ordinary language has no exact logic”), the theory of descriptions has been a battleground for the larger issue of whether a systematic theory of the semantics of natural language is really possible. Neale provides us with a sketch of part of that project as it currently stands. All of the complexities and irregularities of the use of definite descriptions in natural language can be combined, after all, in a single theory based on an “exact logic.” Neale argues that one can give a Russellian account of “incomplete descriptions” (as in ‘The table is covered with books’), generic uses of ‘the’ (‘The whale is a mammal’), plural descriptions (‘The men carried the piano’) and, of central interest, the purportedly referential uses identified by Donnellan (as in ‘The murderer of Smith is insane’ when it is Jones the accused we have in mind). Neale follows familiar answers to these objections; incorporate demonstratives into the account (to get ‘The table over there …’), distinguish the proposition expressed from the one meant (the “referential” use is what was meant not said), and point out that the problem is not unique to definite descriptions and so cannot be a fault of any particular theory of them (many expressions have generic, plural and “referential” uses).

Type
Critical Notices/Études critiques
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1992

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References

Notes

1 Strictly speaking, quantifiers apply to formulae which may have more than one free variable, resulting in an open formula. This is important, among other things, for Neale's account of anaphora, where descriptions may have a variable still free to be bound by “higher” quantifiers. A description can also contain a demonstrative element as in ‘The table there …’. Neale's distinction between descriptions and “purely referential expressions” is not an exclusive one.

2 In the “Philosophy of Logical Atomism” lectures Russell says, “In logic you are concerned with the forms of facts, with getting hold of the different sorts of facts, different logical sorts of facts that there are in the world” (Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell, [London: Allen and Unwin, 1986], Vol. 8, p. 191Google Scholar).

3 I hereby reveal a personal interest in this issue.