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A Re-Examination of the Russellian Theory of Descriptions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

Czeslaw Lejewski
Affiliation:
University of Manchester

Extract

The theory of descriptions occupies a very prominent place in Russell's system of logic and indeed in his system of philosophy. Since the publication of the now classical paper “On Denoting” in Mind for 1905 the theory had been incorporated into Principia Mathematica, the first volume of which appeared in 1910. In 1918 Russell discussed descriptions in his lectures on the Philosophy of Logical Atomism, which subsequently were published in The Monist for 1919. A very lucid exposition of the main tenets of the doctrine is to be found in the Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy dating from the same year. Epistemological aspects of the theory of descriptions are examined in “Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description“, in the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society for 1910–11, and also in Chapter V of The Problems of Philosophy, first published in 1912.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1960

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References

page 14 note 1 The papers “On Denoting” and “The Philosophy of Logical Atomism” are now available in Russell, B., Logic and Knowledge, London, 1956.Google Scholar

page 15 note 1 See Russell, B., Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy, London, 1919, pp. 177 f.Google Scholar

page 17 note 1 A similar “syntactical” definition of noun-expressionis to be found in T. Kotarbiński,Elementy teorji poznania, logiki formalnej i metodologji nauk (Elements of Epistemology, Formal Logic and Methodology), LwÓw, 1929, pp. 6 f.

page 17 note 2 Concerning our classification of noun-expressions see T. Kotarbiński 1.c.; see also J. H. Woodger, Biology and Language, Cambridge, 1952, p. 17 and “Science without Properties”, The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science,2 (1952), p. 196.

page 19 note 1 See Łukasiewicz, J., “The Principle of Individuation”, Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume XXVII, 1953, pp. 77 f.Google Scholar

page 20 note 1 See S. Leśniewski, “Über die Grundlagen der Ontologie”, Comptes rendus des séances de la Societé des Sciences et des Lettres de Varsovie, Classe III, XXIII Année, Warszawa, 1930, p. 1143.

page 20 note 2 See Lejewski, C., “Proper Names”, Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume XXXI, 1957.Google Scholar

page 21 note 1 On the subject of the interpretation of the quantifiers see Lejewski, C., “Logic and Existence”, The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 5 (1954).Google Scholar

page 21 note 2 See, for instance, Russell, B., Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy, London, 1919, p. 179.Google Scholar

page 22 note 1 See Lejewski, C., “On Leśniewski's Ontology”, Ratio, Vol. 1, pp. 172 f.Google Scholar

page 23 note 1 The analysis of propositions like “the whale is a mammal”, is outside the scope of the present essay.

page 24 note 1 See Lejewski, C., “Proper Names”, Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume XXXI, 1957, pp. 250 f.Google Scholar

page 26 note 1 One must bear in mind that in some cases an expression of the form “a so-and-so” has the same logical import as the corresponding expression of the form “every so-and-so”. Consider, for instance, the proposition which says that a bird in hand is worth two in the bush.

page 27 note 1 See Russell, B., Logic and Knowledge, London, 1956, p. 244.Google Scholar

page 27 note 2 See B. Russell, ibid., pp. 246 f.

page 28 note 1 See Russell, B., Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy, London, 1919, pp. 175 f.Google Scholar

page 28 note 2 In this connection see Lejewski, C., “On Leśniewski’s Ontology”, Ratio, Vol. I, p. 158.Google Scholar