The Pragmatics of Non-denoting Descriptions

Abstract

One challenge that the proponent of the Fregean theory of definite descriptions has to meet is to account for those truth-value intuitions that do not match the predictions of her theory. What needs an explanation is why sentences such as ‘The king of France is sitting in that chair’ [pointing at an empty chair] are intuitively false, while semantically truth-valueless (on the Fregean account). The existence of such cases was pointed out by Strawson (Philos Rev 63(2):216–231, 1954) and Russell (Mind 66(263):385–389, 1957), and much discussed in the subsequent literature. The standard pragmatic explanation that Fregeans have proposed (Lasersohn, J Semant 10(2):113–122, 1993; von Fintel, Descriptions and beyond, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2004; Elbourne, Definite descriptions, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2013) invokes an epistemic strategy of verification of the utterance of the sentence. I raise three objections to this strategy, two concerning its descriptive adequacy, and one concerning the motivation offered for the approach. Finally, I propose an alternative account that relies on an inferential pattern that leads to the relevant truth-value judgements in certain contextually specified conditions.