Lycan (1999) Philosophy of Language: A Contemporary Introduction (2) Definite descriptions
Lycan, William G. (1999). Philosophy of Language: A Contemporary Introduction. New York: Routledge.
2 Definite descriptions
Overview
Even if the Referential Theory of Meaning does not hold for all words, one might think it would apply at least to singular terms (terms that purport to refer to single individuals, such as proper names, pronouns, and definite descriptions).
But Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell argued powerfully that definite descriptions, at least, do not mean what they mean in virtue of denoting what they denote.
Rather, he contended, a sentence containing a definite description, such as “The woman who lives there is a biochemist,” has subject–predicate form only superficially, and is really—logically—a trio of generalizations:
it is equivalent to “At least one woman lives there, and at most one woman lives there, and whoever lives there is a biochemist.”
Russell argues for this analysis both directly and by showing that it affords solutions to each of four vexing logical puzzles:
the Problem of Apparent Reference to Nonexistents,
the Problem of Negative Existentials,
Frege’s Puzzle about Identity, and
the Problem of Substitutivity.
P. F. Strawson pointed out that it is at odds with our usual linguistic habits: though a sentence having “the present King of France” as its subject presupposes that there is at least one King of France, it is not false for lack of a King; rather, it cannot be used to make a proper statement at all, and so it has no truth-value.
And Russell’s theory ignores the fact that most descriptions are context-bound, and denote uniquely only within a circum scribed local setting (“Bring me the book on the table”).
Strawson argues more generally that Russell treats sentences and their logical properties in too abstract and disembodied a fashion, forgetting how they are actually used by flesh-and-blood people in concrete conversational practice.
Keith Donnellan notes that, even if Russell is right about some uses of descriptions, he has ignored a common sort of case in which a description is used “referentially,” merely to indicate a particular person or thing, regardless of that referent’s attributes.
Finally, there are further uses of descriptions, called “anaphoric” uses [대용적 사용], which may defy Russellian treatment.
Singular terms
In English or any other natural language, the paradigmatic referring devices are singular terms [단칭명사], expressions that purport to denote or designate particular individual people, places, or other objects (as opposed to general terms such as “dog” or “brown” that can apply to more than one thing).
Singular terms include proper names [고유명] (“Jane,” “Winston Churchill,” “Djakarta,” “7,” 3:17 p.m.”), definite descriptions [확정기술] (“the Queen of England,” “the cat on the mat,” “the last department meeting but one”), singular personal pronouns [단수 인칭 대명사] (“you,” “she”), demonstrative pronouns [지시대명사] (“this,” “that”), and a few others.
Even if the Referential Theory of Meaning is not true across the board, one might reasonably expect it to be true of singular terms. But Gottlob Frege (1892/1952a, 1892/1952b) and, following him, Bertrand Russell (1905/1956, 1918/1956, 1919/1971) showed definitively that it is not true of definite descriptions, and raised serious doubts whether it is true of other ordinary singular terms either.
Frege and Russell set forth four puzzles about singular terms, the first three of which go back to objections raised in chapter 1 against the Referential Theory of meaning.
THE PROBLEM OF APPARENT REFERENCE TO NONEXISTENTS
(1) James Moriarty is bald.
The following set of state ments is inconsistent (that is, on pain of logical contradiction, the statements cannot all be true)
J1 (1) is meaningful (significant, not meaningless).
J2 (1) is a subject–predicate sentence.
J3 A meaningful subject–predicate sentence is meaningful (only) in virtue of its picking out some individual thing and ascribing some property to that thing.
J4 (1)’s subject term fails to pick out or denote anything that exists.
J5 If (1) is meaningful only in virtue of picking out a thing and ascribing a property to that thing (J1, J2, J3), and if (1)’s subject term fails to pick out anything that exists (J4), then either (1) is not meaningful after all (contrary to J1) or (1) picks out a thing that does not exist. But:
J6 There is no such thing as a “nonexistent thing.”
The rub [문제, 어려움] is that every one of J1–J6 seems true.
THE PROBLEM OF NEGATIVE EXISTENTIALS
(2) Pegasus never existed.
(2) seems to be true and seems to be about Bellerophon’s steed, Pegasus. But if (2) is true, (2) cannot be about Pegasus, for there is no such entity for it to be about. Likewise, if (2) is about Pegasus, then (2) is false, for Pegasus must then in some sense exist.
It is worth noting a previous solution to the Problems of Apparent Reference to Nonexistents and Negative Existentials, rejected by Frege and later even more vehemently so by Russell. J1 is uncontroversial; J2 seems obvious; J4 is just a fact; and J5 is trivially true.
Alexius Meinong (1904/1960) had boldly leapt to deny J6, insisting à la St. Anselm that any possible object of thought—even a self-contradictory one—has being of a sort even though only a few such things are so lucky as to exist in reality as well. Moriarty has being of that sort and can be referred to, even though—fortunately for England and the world—he lacks the property of existing.
Frege himself dealt with Apparent Reference to Nonexistents by rejecting J3: He posited abstract entities that he called “senses” and argued that a singular term is meaningful in virtue of having one of those over and above its referent—or in the case of a nonreferring singular term, instead of a referent. That is, since the singular term expresses a sense, it is meaningful whether or not it actually refers.