Tres dificultades en la teoría de las descripciones de Bertrand Russell

Predicates and proper names have been traditionally treated under different semantic categories. Proper names are considered as singular noncomplex terms whereas predicates are taken as general ones. There are two major positions on the question of the role that proper names play in a formal semantic theory, namely, the referential theories and the predicative theories. Referential theories claim that a proper name is a singular noncomplex term and that it stands for its reference. However these theories are not able to explain certain uses of non-descripting names and the occurrences of proper names in identity or existential statements and opaque contexts. In order to cope with these difficulties and form a Fregean view ordinary proper names were considered by Russell as abbreviations of definite descriptions or as disguised definite descriptions and he reserved the role of singular terms for “logical proper names”. Quine also holds a predicate view but rejects the Russellian distinction between ordinary and logically proper names. He provides us a method to transform ordinary proper names into artificial predicates and guarantees the univocity of reference stipulating that the constructed predicate must be true of only one bearer. In “Reference and Proper Names” Tyler Burge goes farther that Quine maintaining a modified predicate view. He rejects both the Russellian position for violating the preconception that proper names do not describe and the Quinean thesis since it has been widely regarded as having the vice of artificiality. Burge argues that there is no reason to hold that the constructed predicate must be true of only one object because the multiple applicability of ordinary proper names shows that there are more than one object to which a proper name is applied. The failure to appreciate this point has stemmed largely from concentrating on singular uses of proper names. Proper names also take the plural, indefinite or definite articles and quantifiers: “There are relatively few Alfreds in Princeton”, “An Alfred joined the club today”, “The Alfred who joined the club today was a baboon”, “Some Alfreds are crazy; some are sane”. However, the modified uses of proper names urged by Burge seem to go against the idea that a proper name is a nomen individui because they behave as count nouns. We can ask: How many? But the question is pointless for proper names as singular terms. Hence there is an anomaly that must be explained. According to Burge the anomaly stems from considering modified uses only as metaphoric or ironic ones. Therefore he distinguishes between literal and metaphoric uses arguing that the above examples are cases of literal modified uses of proper names where no anomaly is presented. It is argued on this paper that even adopting the literal/metaphoric distinction for modified and unmodified uses of proper names the non-predicative conception can do justice to the intuition that proper names are the paradigm of singular terms and the apparent functioning of proper names as count names can be explained. The way out is twofold: (i) when literal modified uses of proper names occur in a sentence it must be regarded as an elliptical sentence that involves a self-referential element. The sentence “There are relatively few Alfreds in Princeton” must be read as “There are relatively few persons called ‘Alfred’ in Princeton”. (ii) when a metaphoric use of a proper name occur in a sentence like “George Wallace is a Napoleon” it should be read as “George Wallace is a Napoleon” it should be read as “George Wallace is a Napoleon (under certain relevant aspects)”. Therefore Burge has no conclusive argument to rule out modified uses of proper names either literal or metaphoric as special cases. Burge gives another reason to lodge proper names in the category of general terms based on a semantic principle of simplicity claiming that postulation of special uses of a term, semantically unrelated to what are taken to be its paradigmatic uses, is theoretically undesirable. However this principle meets counterexamples: given the predicate “x smokes” and the use of modifiers we can obtain expressions like “the x such that x smokes” or “the smoker” and the just constructed expressions are not assigned to the predicate category but to the singular term category. Hence the simplicity principle though desirable is not a reliable one. According to Burge proper names are predicates in their own right but differ from many other predicates; they are “special” kind of predicates. He rejects special uses of predicates at the cost of recognizing “excentric predicates” which involve a mild self-referential element in the application conditions of proper names. However, the non-predicate view used the self-referential element to vanish the apparent functioning of proper names as count names. These excentric predicates have to include the proper name itself in the application conditions since a proper name is (literally) true of an object just in case that object is given that name in an appropriate way. However, the non-predicate view also takes the notion of “giving that name in an appropriate way” to claim that proper names are singular terms. In this paper it is argued that such notion is vague and calls for a pragmatic elucidation. Burge maintains that modified uses of proper names play the role of predicates and the unmodified singular uses play the roles of a demonstrative and a predicate. Then singular proper names are incomplete definite descriptions and those sentences in which they occur are open sentences that take on truth value only if the user of the sentence carries out an act of reference. Therefore the object referred to by the language user is specified in the truth theory by means of a set of reference clauses. Letting aside the technical problems pointed by other authors the main difficulty that can be found is to reverse the priority of referential and predicate uses of proper names. The deep structure of singular uses reveals a predicate and a demonstrative and for that reason singular uses are considered as secondary uses whereas the primary use must be ascribed to the modified uses where the deep structure reveals only a predicate. However it is implausible to subordinate singular uses to modified ones because (a) from a statistical point of view predicative uses are secondary uses of proper names and (b) proper names play a vocative role strongly tied with the referential functioning of singular uses of these terms. To conclude: Burge’s formal account seems to be simpler that the position which regards proper names as ambiguous indexed individual constants. But simplicity is only apparent. It is necessary for Burge’s theory to add primitive referential clauses in which it is reproduced the indexation phenomena in order to deal with demonstrative constructions.

Russell's theory of descriptions was first published in his 1905 essay, “On Denoting”, which is surely one of the two or three most famous articles in twentieth-century analytic philosophy. It has been described as “a paradigm of philosophy”, and has been employed by many later analytic philosophers, such as Quine, although disputed by others, perhaps most notably Strawson. Writing in 1967, an astute commentator said: “In the forty-five years preceding the publication of Strawson's 'On Referring', Russell's theory was practically immune from criticism. There is not a similar phenomenon in contemporary analytic philosophy”. What is the theory which has excited such interest and acclaim? To put it briefly and more or less neutrally, it is a method of analyzing definite descriptions , also called singular descriptions , i.e., phrases, in English typically beginning with the word “the”, which pick out or purport to pick out a single (“definite”) object – e.g., “the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo”, or “the first President of the USA”. Many philosophers who have accepted the theory of definite descriptions, including Russell himself, have also treated some or all proper names in similar fashion. They are taken to be disguised definite descriptions, and then subjected to the same analysis as overt definite descriptions. Definite descriptions may be contrasted with indefinite descriptions, which do not purport to pick out any particular number of objects – e.g., “any President of the USA”. Note that while the two phrases “the even prime number” and “any even prime number” in fact direct our attention to the same object – the number two – the first is a definite description, while the second is an indefinite description.

_Russell_ journal (home office): E:CPBRRUSSJOURTYPE2602\REVIEWS.262 : 2007-01-24 01:12 eviews THE DENOTING CENTURY, 1 19 90 05 5– –2 20 00 05 5 Michael Scanlan Philosophy / Oregon State U. Corvallis, or 97331, usa mscanlan@oregonstate.edu Guido Imaguire and Bernard Linsky, eds. On Denoting: 1905–2005. Munich: Philosophia Verlag, 2005. Pp. 451. 98.00. isbn 3-88405-091-5. his anniversary collection of papers connected with Russell’s 1905 publiTcation of “On Denoting” reflects both the almost mythic status that paper has achieved in analytic philosophy and the quite variegated nature of the significance that philosophers have seen in it. The papers in this collection break down roughly into two sorts. There are those which take a historical approach and attempt to explicate various aspects of the content of the OD article. The other sort might be labelled “application” papers in which Russell’s analysis in OD is seen as a tool or a model for subsequent philosophical work, in the spirit of Ramsey’s much quoted “paradigm of philosophy” remark. The volume opens with a reprint of the OD text with pagination indicated for the original Mind printing, for the text in Collected Papers 4 and for the widely referenced Logic and Knowledge Russell collection edited by R. C. Marsh. The Mind and Papers texts use the American convention of single quotation marks within double quotation marks. The Marsh edition (and the text given here) uses the inverse British convention. Readers need to be aware that paper authors here, and elsewhere, vary in which text they cite. The end of the volume has a comprehensive 21-page bibliography of the secondary literature . In between there are thirteen papers. I will be rather brief with the “application” papers, since I believe that Russell readers will tend to favour the more historically oriented papers. Some of the application papers wander quite far afield from Russell’s treatment of definite descriptions. For instance the paper by Thomas Mormann on “Description, Construction and Representation from Russell and Carnap to Stone” takes off from Russell’s assertion that his theory of descriptions was an early version of his subsequent interest in substituting “constructions” for “inferred entities” such as space-time points. The paper is almost exclusively a (worthwhile and mathematically astute) analysis of Russell’s efforts along these lines in Our russell: the Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies n.s. 26 (winter 2006–07): 167–90 The Bertrand Russell Research Centre, McMaster U. issn 0036-01631 _Russell_ journal (home office): E:CPBRRUSSJOURTYPE2602\REVIEWS.262 : 2007-01-24 01:12 168 Reviews Knowledge of the External World and The Analysis of Matter. The author argues that Russell’s constructions did not actually achieve the effects he wanted, but that (curiously) they can be properly developed within the later framework of topological spaces developed by Marshall Stone in 1937. The paper by Guido Imaguire, “Theory of Descriptions and Inferential Semantics”, explicitly eschews an “exegetical” approach and allies itself with a “systematical approach, in which one analyses possible new features and extensions of the proposed theory” (p. 397). The extension considered here is to “inferential semantics”, especially that of Robert Brandom. The spirit of this approach is to take the semantics of a language to be determined by the set of allowed inferences within that language. Imaguire takes as an essential lesson of Russell’s theory of descriptions that definite descriptions and proper names cannot be treated as singular terms of a language in the same manner. He goes on to argue for a criterion for distinguishing proper names from definite descriptions based on inferences allowed between sentences containing them, and he takes this distinction to argue for a modification of Brandom’s treatment of singular terms in his inferential semantics. Elena Tatievskaya’s paper on “Russell’s Theory of Descriptions and Wittgenstein on Internal Properties of Propositions” is another paper that is mainly about something other than Russell and his theory of descriptions. It is a very detailed study of Wittgenstein’s attempt to make good on his claim that the logical symbols of propositional logic notation, such as v and ~, do not correspond to “logical” components of propositions (Tractatus...

Do Apparently Empty Names Help <scp>M</scp>illianism Prevail Against Widescopism? A Note

Definite descriptions, A reader, edited by Gary Ostertag, Bradford books, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., and London, 1998, xii + 411 pp. - Gary Ostertag, Introduction, Pp. 1–34. - Bertrand Russell, On denoting, A reprint of 1119. Pp. 35–49. - A. N. Whitehead and Bertrand Russell, From Principia mathematica, A reprint of pp. 30–32, 66–71, 173–175 of 1941. Pp. 51–65. - Bertrand Russell, Descriptions, A reprint of pp. 167–180 of 11126. Pp. 67–77. - Stephen Neale, Grammatical form, logical form, and incomplete symbols. A reprint of LXI 1391. Pp. 79–121. - Rudolf Carnap, From Meaning and necessity, A reprint of pp. 32–42 of XIV 237. Pp. 123–133. - P. F. Strawson, On referring, A reprint of XVIII 87, Pp. 135–160. - Karel Lambert, A theory of definite descriptions, A revised reprint of XXXII 252(1, 3) with altered title, Pp. 161–171. (Reprinted from Philosophical applications of free logic, edited by Karel Lambert, Oxford University Press, New York and Oxford 1991, pp. 17–27). - Keith Donnellan, Reference and definite descriptions, A reprint of XL 276(12), Pp. 173–193. - H. P. Grice, From “Vacuous names,” A reprint of pp. 138–144 of XL 479(7), Pp. 195–200. - Christopher Peacocke, Proper names, reference, and rigid designation, Pp. 201–224. (Reprinted from Meaning, reference and necessity, New studies in semantics, edited by Simon Blackburn, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge etc. 1975, pp. 109–132.) - Saul Kripke, Speaker's reference and semantic reference, Pp. 225–256. (Reprinted from Contemporary perspectives in the philosophy of language, edited by Peter A. French, Theodore E. Uehling, Jr., and Howard K. Wettstein, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis 1979, pp. 6–27; also in Studies in the philosophy of language, edited by Peter A. French, Theodore E. Uehling, Jr., and Howard K. Wettstein, Midwest studies in philosophy, vol. 2, The University of Minnesota, Morris 1977, pp. 255–276.) - Howard Wettstein, Demonstrative reference and definite descriptions, Pp. 257–273. (Reprinted from Philosophical studies, vol. 40 (1981), pp. 241–257.) - Scott Soames, Incomplete definite descriptions, Pp. 275–308. (Reprinted from Notre Dame journal of formal logic, vol. 27 (1986), pp. 349–375.) - Stephen Neale, Context and communication, Pp. 309–368. (Reprinted from Stephen Neale, Descriptions, Bradford books, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., and London, 1990, pp. 62–117.) - Stephen Schiffer, Descriptions, indexicals, and belief reports: some dilemmas (but not the ones you expect). Pp. 369–395. (Reprinted from Mind, n.s. vol. 104 (1995), pp. 107–131.) - Volume 64 Issue 3

Longobardi proposes a syntactic-semantic theory to explain the distribution of the definite article with proper names. In this article I examine and modify this theory with regard to the semantic component. Concerning thesemantics of DPs with common nouns Longobardi adopts Russell's theory of definite descriptions (existence and uniqueness are elements of the article meaning). Concerning the semantics of proper names, however, Longobardi follows Kripke's idea that proper names are rigid designators. Longobardi assumes - in connection with the DP hypothesis - that the syntactical difference between proper names and common nouns consists in the fact that, in contrast to a common noun, a chain is established between the proper name and the D-position. In this article I will show that - in accordance with von Heusinger's theory of salience - DPs with proper names are context dependent expressions like other definite DPs. The data show clear differences between DPs with proper names and DPs with common nouns: this can be explained if proper names are regarded as inherent definite expressions. It means that proper names contain the syntactic-semantic feature [+D].

Proper names play an important role in our understanding of linguistic ‘aboutness’ or reference. For instance, the name-bearer relation is a good candidate for the paradigm of the reference relation: it provides us with our initial grip on this relation and controls our thinking about it. For this and other reasons proper names have been at the center of philosophical attention. However, proper names are as controversial as they are conceptually fundamental. Since Kripke’s seminal lectures Naming and Necessity the controversy about proper names has taken the form of a debate between two main camps, descriptivists and non-descriptivists like Kripke himself. Descriptivists hold that there is a close connection between proper names and definite descriptions: the meaning or sense of a proper name can be given by a (bundle of) definite description(s). The satisfier, if any, of the definite description(s) that provide(s) the meaning of a proper name is its referent. Descriptivists can allow for empty proper names that are meaningful. They also have an initially plausible account of true informative identity statements (‘Marilyn Monroe is no one other person than Norma Jean Baker’). Their informativity is grounded in a difference in meaning-giving descriptions.

In his excellent book Frege: Philosophy of Language, Michael Dummett proposes five criteria that are supposed to delimit formally the class of singular terms (in Frege's terminology, 'proper names').' I shall argue that Dummett's criteria, even as amended by Crispin Wright and Bob Hale, do not delimit the class of singular terms in English,2 that further refinements of the criteria probably will not help, and that in any event the criteria face other difficulties. For Frege the class of singular terms includes what might be called proper proper names (like 'New York' and 'Socrates'), and most definite descriptions (like 'the longest river in North America', 'that lime tree', 'the famous teacher of Plato', 'the colour red', 'the number nine', 'the weight of the earth', 'the shape of the earth', and 'the equator'). It does not include sentences, predicates, or general terms like 'nothing', 'nobody', 'something', 'everything', 'every sheep', or 'a poet'. Of course these brief remarks are merely intended to give someone proficient in English the general idea. Dummett's criteria are meant to be more formal. Why should it be thought important (to a Fregean at any rate) to delimit formally the class of singular terms? If Michael Dummett and Crispin Wright are correct, then as Wright puts it, for Frege 'the notion of an object is posterior in the order of explanation to that of a singular term'.3 That is, syntax is, in a sense, 'prior to' ontology; to determine what there is, determine first what the syntax is. The objects are simply the referents of the singular terms, and the functions are the referents of the predicates. Predicates can be defined in terms of singular terms and sentences as follows: a predicate is what remains when one or more singular terms has been removed from a sentence. (We assume that we have some means for determining what a sentence is.) Hence everything hinges on the singular terms. On Dummett's understanding of Frege, then, it is crucial to the Fregean programme to characterize the class of singular terms. Besides, the idea that the singular terms might be a guide to what there is has much to recommend it, Quine notwithstanding.

Some recent work in the philosophy of language has rightly emphasized the role which contextual factors play in the use of language. An adequate theory about how language operates, we are told, must distinguish between (a) that which expressions, constructions and sentences carry with them from one context to another and (b) that which is added by a context of utterance. The features which carry from one context to another have been referred to as context-independent factors, and those which are added contextually as contextdependent factors. This distinction is not, of course, a new one; but it is fair to say that it has not always been given its due in discussions of logical form. Notably, it is not given its due in Russell's famous theory of definite descriptions. In this paper I will propose an alternative way of analyzing sentences containing definite descriptions which does do justice to this distinction. Before I present this theory, however, I want to distinguish three things: referring, language, and what I will call the referential link. By referring I mean the identification of some object by a speaker (as a subject for communication). By the link I mean the semantical connection between a token of a singular term (e.g., a proper name or a definite description) and an object which makes the utterance containing that token literally about that object. By language I mean singular terms or sentences containing singular terms. Typically, a speaker refers to an object by producing

‘Alice Cooper’ is a proper name; ‘the famous shock-rock musician’ is a definite description which tells you something about the person whose name it is. Frege thought that both names and descriptions were singular terms – expressions whose business is to refer to objects. Russell thought that neither ordinary proper names nor definite descriptions were singular terms. But Russell and Frege were agreed in this: they both thought that names and descriptions work in the same way. Indeed, they both seem to have thought that ordinary proper names were equivalent in meaning to definite descriptions.

Journal Article On the Use of Proper Names and Definite Descriptions Get access Richard T. Garner Richard T. Garner The Ohio State University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Philosophical Quarterly, Volume 19, Issue 76, July 1969, Pages 231–238, https://doi.org/10.2307/2218109 Published: 01 July 1969

I compare Russell’s theory of mathematical functions, the “descriptive functions” from Principia Mathematica ∗30, with Frege’s well known account of functions as “unsaturated” entities. Russell analyses functional terms with propositional functions and the theory of definite descriptions. This is the primary technical role of the theory of descriptions in P M . In Principles of Mathematics and some unpublished writings from before 1905, Russell offered explicit criticisms of Frege’s account of functions. Consequenly, the theory of descriptions in “On Denoting” can be seen as a crucial part of Russell’s larger logicist reduction of mathematics,aswellasanexcursionintothetheoryof reference.

It has been said that besides proper names and certain other singular terms, natural-kind terms and certain other general (non-singular) terms are rigid designators. If so, what do these general terms rigidly designate, and what would it be for a general term to designate non-rigidly? It is argued that contrary to popular opinion, some general terms rigidly designate kinds or similar universals, while some definite descriptions are general terms that are non-rigid designators, e.g., ‘the color of the sky’. It is shown that the opposing view is committed to implausibly positing extremely unlikely ambiguities in both components of a predicate like ‘is blue’. Robert May's reply is rejoined.

Quine has presented powerful arguments against the intelligibility of any statement involving quantification into the scope of a non-extensional sentence connective purporting to express logical necessity, logical possibility, or strict implication. He has also presented a fully general argument against the possibility of satisfactory non-extensional connectives. It is easy to be lured into thinking that if definite descriptions (and also, perhaps, proper names) are analysed in accordance with Russell’s Theory of Descriptions — an idea to which Quine is highly sympathetic — then facts about substitution and deduction in primitive notation yield all that is needed to circumvent Quine’s formal arguments. I have claimed as much myself, and so have Carnap, Church, Fitch, Føllesdal, Kripke, Marcus, Myhill, Prior, Sharvy, Smullyan, and others. But as far as logical modality is concerned this is a mistake. Only Quine’s general argument is thus undermined, and seeing why leads to an interesting logico-semantic hypothesis, suggested by Quine and Gödel, and, as far as I know, hitherto unproved. Furthermore, it would seem that the only way to answer Quine’s original challenge to quantified modal logic is to make the controversial assumption that names of the same object are synonymous and hence intersubstitutable in all contexts. But even this does not provide a full answer; and in fact what has happened is that ideas in the work of Føllesdal, Hintikka, Kanger, Kripke, and Quine, have resulted in a metamorphosis of subject matter.KeywordsModal LogicSingular TermDefinite DescriptionLogical TruthModal ContextThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

Only very recently have philosophers of religion begun to apply and adapt contemporary theories of meaning and reference to god-talk. Of particular interest here is the Causal Theory of Reference initially developed by Saul Kripke. 1 This theory is also known as the Historical Explanation View. 2 This theory offers a sharp contrast with traditional "descriptivist" theories of reference and poses some interesting and thorny problems when it is applied to god-talk. I will briefly sketch the essential differences between the two kinds of theories and then show the consequences of opting for a causal theory within religious language. Finally, I will argue that recent attempts to incorporate the causal theory within religious language have ignored a very significant consequent of the causal theory which makes the causal theory unacceptable for the religious person. I will conclude that some minimalist descriptivist theory is preferable within a religious context. Descriptivist theories of reference maintain that referring expressions such as definite descriptions and proper names are able to refer to some unique individual only because of some "content" or description or characteristic which truly applies to the individual thing named or described which is the referent. Let us focus here only upon singular, definite reference involving the use of proper names or definite descriptions of the form, 'the so-and-so.' According to the descriptivist accounts of reference, singular definite reference is successful only because the name or description "contains" some description of a property which is actually possessed by the individual. For reference to be completely successul there must be some unique reference which fits only the individual which is the reference of the referring expression under consideration. In other words given the old Principle of the Identity of Indescemibles, any individual must possess some unique property in order for us to