Philosophy 565: Philosophy of Language Prof. Clare Batty

Russell, “On Denoting”

1. More Philosophical Jargon definite description: a singular noun phrase which applies to exactly one person, often beginning with the definite article: e.g., ‘the funniest woman in Canada’, the present King of France’. According to Russell, a phrase is denoting solely “in virtue of its form”. This is to say, the phrase needn’t actually denote in order to be a denoting phrase. Law of the Excluded Middle: By the law of the excluded middle, either ‘A is B’ or ‘A is not B’ must be true.

2. Frege and Russell

We now know that Frege is committed to: (F3) Ordinary proper names and definite descriptions are singular terms. (F4) Ordinary proper names and definite descriptions all have sense (and perhaps reference). (ST1) The business of a singular term is to refer to an object. (ST2) A sentence containing a singular term has no truth-value if there is no object corresponding to that singular term. Russell’s focus is on definite descriptions. Not under discussion at this point: proper names (e.g. ‘Clare’, ‘Kentucky’, etc.) Russell denies (F3) and, as a result (he claims), (F4). Like Frege, Russell thinks that his alternative view can deal with certain problems. “The evidence for [my] theory is derived from difficulties which seem unavoidable if we regard denoting phrases as standing for genuine constituents of the propositions in whose verbal expressions they occur." We have seen some of these before: (P1) Frege’s Puzzle About Identity (P2) Substitutivity (P3) Apparent Reference to Non-Existents And some more: (P4) Law of the Excluded Middle (LEM) By the LEM, either (S1) ‘The King of France is bald’ or (S2) ‘The King of France is not bald’ had better be true. Frege said that sentences containing apparent reference to non-existents have no truth-value. (ST2) Russell thought that Frege was wrong about this. Russell thought that sentences containing apparent reference to a non-existent are false because there is no such thing. If so, then both sentences above are false. But this defies LEM. What to do? (P5) Negative Existentials How can a non-existent be the subject of a (true) proposition of the form: [NON-ENTITY] doesn’t exist. (Fill in the brackets with the name of your favorite non-existent.) I have chosen: (1) The Fountain of Youth doesn’t exist. But if, as Russell thought, a sentence containing apparent reference to a non-existent is false, then (1) is false. But isn’t (1) true?

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1 Russell’s Theory of Descriptions

Russell’s surprising claim about denoting terms: “denoting phrases never have any meaning in themselves, but every proposition in whose verbal expression they occur has a meaning”.

Background Distinction: Grammatical Form of a sentence: The form most straightforwardly suggested by the surface syntax of the sentence. ‘I met a man’ has a similar surface structure to ‘I met Obama’. Logical Form of a sentence: The syntactic form that best reflects the logical structure of the sentence (thus the form that is most apt for theorizing). E.g.: ‘I met no one’ has the same surface form as ‘I met Obama’. But ‘Obama’ is functioning to pick something out in the world, and that’s clearly not what’s going on with ‘no one’. What is going on? Russell argues that superficial between types of sentences should not be taken as evidence for thinking that the sentences really work in the same ways. Definite Descriptions: ‘The teacher of this class is odd’ = a. someone teaches this class. (‘x teaches this class’ is not always false.) b. at most one person teaches this class. (‘if x and y teach this class, x and y are identical’ is always true.) c. whoever teaches this class is odd. (‘if x teaches this class, x is odd’ is always true.)

Denoting terms don’t appear as such once the sentences are translated into their logical form. But what’s the point of translating them into their logical form?

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