Form and Content

Abstract

Even though George the IV wished to know whether the author of Waverely was Scott, Russell was certain that the first gentleman of Europe didn't take any interest in trivial matters. A. Church looked at his majesty's predicament from the contrapositive angle, pointing out that we can't really accept the suggestion that whenever the emperor didn't believe that x was y, x wasn't y. For, as Church added, we can't attribute such impressive powers even to the first gentleman of Europe. Russell and Church, acting under the auspices of the description theory of names, operated with a pair consisting of a description (The author of Waverely) and a name (Scott). This didn't matter because the name was a disguised description anyway. In modern, post-Kripkean, times, many have revived the Russel-Church story with a vengeance. It is often pointed out that even if George the IV had turned his inquisitive mind away from English literature and into Roman history, wishing to know whether Tully was Cicero, it would still be absurd to suggest he displayed interest in trivia. Equivalently, the fact that the uninformed gentleman may have failed to believe that was Tully hardly gives us any reason to deny that was The modern heirs of Russell and Church look at all this as impregnable intuitive data. Data for what? Not so much for anything, but rather against something, viz., against any theory of reference which assigns is Cicero the same content as is Tully. Less diplomatically put, data against Direct Reference theory. 2